News

Conservation at St Germain L’Auxerrois

An important window at one of Paris’s most famous churches, St Germain L’Auxerrois (Fig. 1), is currently undergoing restoration at Claude and Fabrice Courageux’s workshop in Crevecoeur-le-Grand, France. The church is often regarded as the parish church of the kings of France, as it is situated next door to the Louvre Palace. It also contains a wealth of sixteenth-century Renaissance glass.

Last month Vidimus was given an exclusive preview of the work to date on window 121 (Fig. 2), a composite arrangement that depicts St Vincent and the martyrdom of St Sixtus II in the main lights and a number of saints in the tracery lights above (including St Margaret, St Elizabeth of Hungary, St Agnes, and St John the Baptist). The story of the martyrdom of St Vincent was told in Vidimus no. 21 (September 2008). St Sixtus II was a pope who was martyred in AD 258 during persecutions led by the Roman emperor Valerian.

‘We have been working on the window for the last six months,’ Fabrice Courageux (Fig. 3) told our reporter, ‘and we hope to be finished by the end of the year.’ Our before and after conservation photographs (Figs 4 and 5) show a tracery light depicting St Mary of Egypt, a penitent woman who lived in the desert.

Further Reading
Louis Grodecki, Jean Taralon and Françoise Perrot, Les Vitraux de Paris, de la Region Parisienne, de la Picardie, et du Nord Pas-de-Calais, CVMA France, Recensement des vitraux anciens de la France, I, Paris, 1978, pp. 43–47.

Susan Matthews Retires: New Curator Sought for Ely Stained Glass Museum

Susan Matthews is retiring as curator of the world-famous Stained Glass Museum based in Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire.

Susan has spent nineteen years developing the museum and has been a crucial figure in its success. She will formally leave at the end of March 2009, and will be greatly missed. The trustees of the museum are now advertising for her successor.

STAINED GLASS MUSEUM, ELY: CURATOR
The Stained Glass Museum The South Triforium, Ely Cathedral,

Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4DL.

A new Curator is sought to lead this specialist museum, attractively situated in the south triforium of Ely Cathedral. The museum’s collection tells the story of the glazier’s art from the Middle Ages to the present day, and the new Curator will build on its established success and further develop its potential for visitors, research and education.

An appropriate degree, museum qualifications, management experience, good interpersonal skills, enthusiasm and flexibility are looked for. In-depth knowledge of stained glass is not essential, but sympathy for the decorative arts is required.

A job description is available by emailing or telephoning the museum (01353 660355). Closing date for applications: 7 November 2008.

Stained Glass Museum Autumn Lectures

The Stained Glass Museum in Ely will be hosting two lectures on medieval stained glass later this year as part of its autumn lecture series.

Medieval Stained Glass from Burgundy and Canterbury in the Stained Glass Museum: a Rediscovery

The first lecture in the series, given by Dr Brian O’Callaghan, CVMA (GB) author and senior lecturer in the history of art and architecture at Reading University, will take place on Tuesday 7 October at 7.30pm. The venue is The Long Gallery, Sue Ryder Care, The Old Palace, Palace Green, Ely. Tickets are £6 at the door or £5 in advance, by emailing the museum.

Personalities, Politics and Plays in East Harling Church, Norfolk

CVMA (GB) author David King will be speaking at the third of the museum’s autumn lectures on Tuesday 4 November. The event will take place at 7.30pm, in The Long Gallery, Sue Ryder Care, The Old Palace, Palace Green, Ely. Tickets are £6 at the door or £5 in advance, by emailing the museum.

Forum for the Conservation and Restoration of Stained-Glass Windows, New York, 1–3 June 2009

 
Preliminary details have been announced of the next international forum on the conservation and restoration of stained-glass windows. The forum will take place in New York City 1–3 June 2009 under the joint auspices of the American Corpus Vitrearum and the International Committee of the Corpus Vitrearum for the Conservation of Stained Glass. It promises to be a memorable event.

The three-day conference will consist of two full days of oral presentations and poster sessions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Evening receptions will be held at The Cloisters Museum, and in the newly renovated Engelhard Courtyard, which will allow participants to view some of the museum’s extensive holdings of European and American stained glass. The final day of the conference will be spent viewing stained glass in situ in Manhattan churches in the company of local experts and culminate in an end of conference reception at the National Arts Club, a landmark nineteenth-century building with stained glass by John LaFarge and Donald MacDonald.

The forum will be preceded by a ‘Sunday at the Met’ event, an afternoon of public keynote lectures devoted to general themes connected to the forum. The forum is open to all interested stained glass professionals, including conservators, conservation scientists, architects, cultural heritage managers, art historians, students, etc. The venue is intended to provide an unprecedented opportunity for professionals from Europe and North America to meet and share their expertise and experience. The theme of the forum will be ‘The Art of Collaboration: Stained-Glass Conservation in the Twenty-First Century’. Papers will be delivered in English, French and German with simultaneous translation. Texts of the oral presentations and summaries of the poster presentations will be published by Brepols Publishers in cooperation with the American Corpus Vitrearum. Preprints will be available at the forum and will be sold by Brepols afterwards. A preliminary list of presentations and other information about the conference is available at the forum’s website, which will be updated regularly as more information becomes available.

‘Exhibition of the Year’ Extended at the VitroMusée, Switzerland

 

The stained glass ‘exhibition of the year’ – the beautiful Légendes dorées collection of North European roundels now showing at the VitroMusée in Romont – is being extended until Sunday 23 November, three weeks longer than originally planned.

The exhibition features some of the finest examples of this unique art form, including a superb image of an unknown hero battling a sea monster. Interpretation of the image on this piece has divided opinion into two camps. It is thought to show one of two mythical scenes:
•the Greek hero Herakles defeating a monster sent by the sea god Poseidon to devour Hesione, the daughter of the crooked Trojan king Laomedon, after the king defaulted on a debt to the god
•the rescue of the royal princess Andromeda by a different legendary hero, Perseus, best known for killing the gorgon Medusa.

Many of the items on display were lent to the museum by Dr Klaus Tiedemann, a distinguished collector who is also the author of an important privately printed German text only catalogue, Flämische Roundels und Artverwandtes aus einer süddeutschen Renaissance-Sammlung, copies of which are available from the museum. The catalogue has 78 pages and includes 57 illustrated full page descriptions of the loaned items.

For details of opening hours, visit the museum’s website.

Works of a Renaissance Master: The Prints of Albrecht Dürer from the National Gallery of Canada, 23

August – 2 November 2008
An exhibition of over fifty prints by Albert Dürer will be on show at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, until 2 November. Drawn from the National Gallery of Canada’s own collection of Dürer prints, the exhibition includes a number of works subsequently used as models by stained-glass artists.

The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent website about Dürer, which features a video interview with the exhibition curator, Dr John Collins, talking about the artist’s life and work and an analysis of some of Dürer’s best known works (available on CyberMuse).

For more information, about the exhibition itself, including opening times and an associated lecture programme, visit the Edmonton Art Gallery’s website.

Society of Glass Technology 2009 Conference

The Society of Glass Technology has issued a call for abstract submissions for their next annual conference, due to be held at the University of Lancaster (UK), 16–18 September 2009. For more information visit the conference website.

Diary Reminders

25 October ICON conference ‘Stained Glass Conservation Techniques: Past & Present’. For more details, see Vidimus no. 19 (June 2008).

Until 4 January 2009 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA, ‘Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum’, including four panels of stained glass. For further details, see Vidimus no. 15 (February 2008) and the museum’s website.