Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1872-04-27

1t is difficult to assign any sufficient
reason why the art of making beautiful
windows should decline, yet certainly it
is impossible to compare the medieval
glass pictures with the modern without
feeling that the latter are inferior. The
modern g'ass-staining was carried to its
greatest perfection by the late Max
Emanuel Ainmuller who died in De
cember, 1870. After the fall of Lola
Montez from power, the whole superin.
tendence of the works, in which he had
long been a principal artist fell into his
doubtedly beautiful glass illuminating
the cathedral and other churches at
Munich, Cologne, and Regensburg is to
be credited. His best work is to be seen
in England-the "Opening of Parlia
ment by James H." made for st. Pauls
in London, after painting of Kaul-
bach's, being particularly fine. His
works in Cambridge University Church,
in Glasgow Cathedral, and Parliament
House Edinburgh are admirable. Yet,
in looking upon all these, one sees faults
that are not his, but those of his cen
tury-that is, the attempt is to make
ant more realistic than it can be, espe-
cially on glass. On this transparent
surface efforts at perfect perspective
at once reveal their impossibility. The
more you put deep shades, to make
forms look solid, the more do you block
up and cumber a medium whose first
object is to be as transparent as is con-
sistent with any medium at all. If
stained glass is ever to recover its original
beauty, it must be by pretending to be
more than the merest surface of colOred
srots. 1t must be simply decorative,
like the flowers on bowl. 1t must not
attempt to picture solid and substantial
men and women perched in a window
where they would be quite unable to
climb. Several of Ainmuller's best
windows seem to have been animated
by a tendency in this direction, and are
proportionately finer than others. This
is especially 50 in the Glasgow. For the
rest, it must be admitted that, so far as
his colors are concerned, they have
never been surpassed in purity or in
tensity. He has well deserved that
statue, eleven feet high, made by Prof.
Halbig for his grave in Campo Santo.
They who sit in the light of so many
brilliant windows little know, perhaps,
how much labor goes to the making OF
them. They are first designed, then
stained in bits; their colors are burned
10 separately-frst the blue, then the
red-and each requires three successive
heatings in the oven. They must then
be pieced into a whole, with leadings
connecting the pieces, then swung in a
large window-trame te be examined. If
any defect be discovered the parts must
be burned together The scene in the
Glasmaleriis is remarkable enough. Here
is man engaged upon martyrs toes,
while in another room the eyes of the
saint cat upon you their last look of
despair as they are showed into fur
mace heated sevenfold-,just as if Herr
Fortner, who now presides, | believe,
were another Diocletian. A week later
you will see the martyr, purified by his
ordeal smiling down Il whole rainbow
upon the workmen in their shirt
sleeves in an apartment full of chalk,
old plauks, coke, and all manner of
odds and ends. These fellows are no
respecters of persons, either. Gods and
saints, st. Georges dragon, and the
chamois destined for some nobleman's
hunting box, are cast together into the
even, and shine together along the
waIls.-By N. ID. Conway, in Harper's
Naga='ne for april.