IMAGES OF MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE

France: Benedictine Abbey Church of Saint-Denis

Twelfth-Century Windows

Click on a window's image for more information about it.

Moses
North III

Anagogical
North II

Infancy
North I

Jesse Tree
South I

Ezekiel
South II

Griffin Window I 
North VII

Click here for fragments from other windows no longer at Saint-Denis.

St Denis was the burial place of French kings for over 800 years. Though the original church was built around 800 AD, its most notable architectural features were added when the east and west ends were rebuilt by Abbot Suger in 1141-44. The revolutionary vaulting and construction techniques used at this time make it the first Gothic Church. St Denis is also important to art historians because there is a detailed first person accounts of this reconstruction by Abbot Suger; these accounts give very valuable information about medieval financial, organizational and construction techniques and about the values and attitudes of medieval patrons. Here is what he had to say about the windows in general:

ABBOT SUGER OF SAINT DENIS: ON WHAT WAS DONE IN HIS ADMINISTRATION

Section XXXIV
We also had painted, by the hands of many masters sought out in various nations, a splendid variety of new windows below and above, from the first in the chevet representing the tree of Jesse to the one over the principal door of the entrance.....Since their marvelous workmanship and the cost of the sapphire and painted glass makes these windows very valuable, we appointed a master craftsman for their protection and maintenance, just as we also appointed a skilled goldsmith for the gold and silver ornaments. These would receive their allowances and whatever was apportioned to them in addition, such as coins from the altar and flour from the common storehouse of the brethren, and they were never to neglect their duties.
Translated by David Burr, History Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, and reproduced here with his kind permission.

Bibliography

Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures, ed. tr. and annotated by Erwin Panofsky, 2 ed. Gerda Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946/1979)
Grodecki, Louis. Les Vitraux de Saint-Denis (Corpus vitrearum medii aevi, Série "Études", I) (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1976)
Cothren, Michael. "A Re-Evaluation of the Iconography an d Design of the Infancy Window from the Abbey of Saint-Denis," Gesta 17 (1978), 74-75.

The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis in the Time of Abbot Suger (1122-1151) (exhibition catalogue) (New York: The Cloisters), 1981, nos. 10-22.

Radiance and Reflection: Medieval Art from the Raymond Pitcairn Collection (exhibition catalogue), ed. Jane Hayward and Walter Cahn (New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 1982)

Caviness, Madeline. "Suger's Glass at Saint-Denis: The State of Research," in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. Paula Lieber Gerson (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986), pp. 257-72.

Cothren, Michael. "The Twelfth-Century Infancy of Christ Window from Saint-Denis: A Re-Evaluation of its Design and Iconography," Art Bulletin LXVIII (1986), 398-420.

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Last updated by:JV Date: September 18, 2007