Stained Glass Fragments: Cathedral of Saint-Étienne in Bourges

About these Fragments:

These are glass fragments from a stained window. The Cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Bourges maintains a collection of stained glass, and thus has some fragments of stained glass as well. These fragments are all of very high quality, which suggests that the original, larger decoration also was quite ornate. The black bands enhance the quality of the fragments, giving them a smooth look, rather than the jagged appearance that fragments often take.

Although the objects are just fragments of stained glass, the manner in which the curators present them creates an art form of its own. In particular, by looking at just these individual depictions, rather than the massive image that they are part of, we can focus on specific attributes, and can extract different meanings. This is crucial, because if these images were part of the larger stained glass image, people would likely not look at the individual drawings in this much detail, and so the fact that they remain ornate upon close inspection shows the degree to which the artists were interested in the quality of the piece they were making. Furthermore, these fragments tended to focus on the heads of various figures, which may suggest that these were the most elaborate parts of the fragments, and thus the ones most worth preserving in this way.