Details

Object type

stained glass panel

Title

Christ Appearing to St Peter

Place Associated

Germany, Boppard on Rhine, Carmelite Church (place associated); Germany, Rhine Region (place of manufacture); Jesse Tree Window (place of use)

Date

circa 1444

Materials

coloured glass, lead

Dimensions

overall: 560 mm x 740 mm x 10 mm

Description

Stained glass panel depicting ‘The Annunciation’. This panel once formed part of much larger window commissioned for the Carmelite Church of Boppard-am-Rhein, Germany (see 45.485).

The Carmelite Church and former monastery at Boppard was under construction in 1320 and extended with a new north nave which was consecrated in 1444. This window was one of 7 monumental windows made for this extension circa 1440-1446.

An original layout for the window was suggested by Jane Hayward, Associate Curator at The Metropolitan Museum, in her 1969 article, ‘Stained-Glass Windows from the Carmelite Church at Boppard-am-Rhein’. In her reconstruction, Hayward places these panels within a ‘Tree of Jesse’ window. Some panels from this arrangement are now lost, although others can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Salve Regina University, Rhode Island.

'Tree of Jesse' windows commonly represent the ancestry of Christ in the form of a family tree, with branches emanating from the biblical figure of Jesse, reaching upwards and supporting an array of prophets and kings, culminating in the figures of the Virgin Mary and Christ (see 45.393-45.394). In Germany during the 13th-15th centuries, this genealogy was sometimes replaced with important scenes from the Life of Christ and the Virgin. In the Boppard arrangement, the central panels are dedicated to scenes from the Life of the Virgin, while the outer panels represent Christ’s Passion and Resurrection.

This scene is based on a legend which does not appear in the Bible. Set sometime after the crucifixion, it shows St Peter fleeing Rome when he meets the risen Jesus heading the other way. Christ stands triumphant in glorious red robes before the seated figure of St Peter, who is identified by his large golden key. Christ’s right hand is raised in blessing, while he holds a cross and banner in the left.

Prior to the window's removal in 1818, Boppard had endured decades of French occupation (1794-1814), during which time the church was secularised. Impoverished by the events of recent years, the town could afford neither the maintenance nor the repair of the windows. A contemporary, Wilhelm Schlad, recalls their poor condition in later writings “the wind blew terribly through the church through the gaps and missing sections… but all that was left was beautiful”. Subsequently the windows were removed and replaced with plain glazing by the aristocrat, Count Hermann Von Pückler, for an insubstantial sum. Pückler died in 1871 with his ambitious plans to install the windows in his family chapel at Muskau unrealised. Pückler’s heir sent many of the panels, still crated, to Berlin for restoration, later selling them to the Parisian dealer Friedrich Spitzer, from where they were widely dispersed by auction after his death in 1893.

Burrell acquired this window, alongside other Boppard glass (45.487), from William Randolph Hearst in 1938-1939. Panels from a further window (45.489), were acquired in 1939 from Robert Goelet. Too large for inclusion in Burrell’s domestic glazing scheme at Hutton Castle, he may have only viewed these panels on very rare occasions.

As Linda Cannon wrote in ‘Stained Glass in the Burrell Collection’ (1991), “The importance of the Boppard windows cannot be overemphasised, not only because of their scale and beauty, but also because of their survival as an important iconographical scheme based on the cult of the Virgin Mary. Similar windows were often smashed or totally destroyed during the periods of religious intolerance and war the swept across Europe."

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted by Sir William and Lady Burrell to the City of Glasgow, 1944

Collection

Burrell Collection: Stained Glass

ID Number

45.485.3.b

Location

Burrell Collection