Books
Susan Foister, Art of Light: German Renaissance Stained Glass. National Gallery Company, London; distributed by Yale University Press. 32 pp., 28 col. ills. ISBN 978 185709 348 3 525339. £4.95 from the National Gallery. This slim volume is published to accompany the exhibition of the same title at the National Gallery, London, which runs from 7 November 2007 to 17 February 2008. (For the opening of this exhibition, see the News section of this issue.) The text, written by the Director of Collections at the National Gallery, and Curator of Early Netherlandish, German and British Paintings, succeeds in presenting a clear and succinct account of the purpose, production techniques and key features of stained glass in Germany c.1500, generously illustrated with examples from the exhibition. With a central aim, outlined in this volume’s opening paragraph, to demonstrate the close ties between stained glass and leading artists in other media in Germany in the period around 1500, the exhibition explores further some of the issue raised by the successful Painting on Light exhibition held at the Getty Museum in 2000 and early 2001, which discussed broadly the glass and artists of Switzerland and Germany 1495–1530. The National Gallery’s exhibition differs from this earlier project in providing a highly accessible publication that requires no previous knowledge of stained glass, and in introducing two very specific groups of art works: a collection of sixteenth-century stained glass panels from the Victoria & Albert Museum, together with German paintings of the same period from the gallery’s own collections.
Hartmut Scholz, St. Sebald in Nürnberg, Meisterwerke der Glasmalerei 3, Schnell & Steiner, 2007, German text only, 96 pages, 87 photographs (mostly colour), €12.90. Available through Amazon.
Schnell & Steiner Catalogue
. Apart from publishing the Meisterwerke der Glasmalerei series, this company also publishes other German-text only studies of medieval glass and art. To request a copy of their latest catalogue, visit their website.
New Pevsners
Alan Brooks & Nicholas Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Worcestershire (revised edition). Hardback, 848 pages, ISBN 030011298X, Yale University Press, 2007. The first of two new Pevsner architectural guides with plenty of information about where to see stained glass in the county. This book supersedes the 1968 edition. £29.95, but can be found cheaper on line.
James Bettley & Nicholas Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Essex (revised edition). Hardback, 960 pages, 120 colour illustrations, ISBN: 9780300116144, Yale University Press, 2007. This book supersedes the 1965 edition. £29.95, but can be found cheaper on line.