Three windows by Mayer & Co. of Munich, previously thought lost, have been found at Bolligen, near Berne in Switzerland.
Fig. 1. ‘Suffer little children … to come unto me’.
The glass was made for the three choir windows of the protestant church at Bolligen. They are not dated, but were probably executed around 1900; they are however signed ‘Mayer’sche kgl. Hofkunstanstalt München’. The central window shows the Crucifixion, and the left-hand one Christ and the little children (Matthew XIX, 14: ‘But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’); the right-hand window shows a scene from after the Resurrection, where two apostles recognize that the man with them at Emmaus is in fact Christ (Luke XXIV, 13–32; Mark XVI, 12–13). In 1963, the church received three new choir windows (abstract compositions by the Bernese glass-painter Max von Mühlenen). The Mayer windows were removed at this time and deposited in the loft of the parsonage in Bolligen. During the recent renovation of the parsonage (dated 1581) the windows were rediscovered.
Fig. 2. Christ is recognized at Emmaus.
They are well preserved, and each had been stored in a wooden chest in five pieces. The parish is currently trying to raise the money to have the windows reinstalled in the parish house.
