Details

Object type

stained glass panel

Title

Christ carrying the Cross

Place Associated

Germany, Cologne, probably (place made); England, Norfolk, Costessey Hall (place of use)

Date

circa 1465

Materials

white, coloured, pot metal, silver stain, stained and painted glass, lead

Dimensions

upper: 445 mm x 584 mm x 10 mm; lower: 603 mm x 584 mm x 10 mm

Description

This panel depicts the Carrying of the Cross. Jesus Christ is in the centre foreground. His head, crowned with thorns, stands out against blue nimbus. He struggles onwards, bearing a yellow T-shaped cross. A man beats and kicks him from behind, while another leads him forwards by a rope fastened around his waist. They are followed by a dense throng of people with various weapons and two banners, one charged with a black scorpion, the other with a wyvern. In the background are the walls of the city with turrets against a cloudy sky and a fenced field on the right. Just visible are the figures of the Virgin Mary, St John and other saintly figures with yellow haloes. The window is characterised by its balance of uncoloured glass with smaller jewel-like areas of colour.

Burrell acquired this panel in 1945, via Wilfred Drake from a sale at Sotheby’s (11.5.1945, lot 35. Inv. No. 412). The panel had been in the collection of George Eumorfopoulos (d. 1939), and prior to that in the collection at Costessey Hall (1809). Before this the panels were probably in Germany, and brought here to Britain by Johann Christoph Hampp, a German living in Norwich. Hampp purchased continental glass from religious institutions being secularised, and sold it to British clients. There were also other panels from what was probably the same Passion series in Costessey Hall and these can now be found in Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio (an Entombment, and a Nailing of Christ to the Cross) and in the Toledo Museum of Art (Crucifixion).

Published: William Wells, Stained and Painted Glass, Burrell Collection, 1965, no. 146.

The panels have been linked to the prolific St Cecilia Workshop in Cologne. To meet demand for the enormous glazing programmes being undertaken in that city between circa 1450-1525, this and other workshops rationalised their production by repeating and reusing scenes, figures and inscriptions. Three versions of Christ Carrying the Cross are known (Glasgow; Great Bookham, Surrey; Sacraments Chapel of Cologne Cathedral), and likewise three versions of the Entombment are known (Cleveland; Great Bookham; Cologne Cathedral). The composition, figures, dress, and facial expressions are so similar that these appear to share an initial reference cartoon, multiplied and modified by copying. Thus, each one is similar, but also subtly different. Equally, similarities can be found across the different scenes. The Burrell Carrying of the Cross has been compared with a Derobing of Christ in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn.

Three versions suggest three different cycles, necessarily installed in three different locations. The panels still in Cologne originated in the cloister of the abbey of St Cecilia (where there was a series of 50 panels until 1803), but the prior locations of the pieces in the UK and USA are not known.

Published:

Aymer Vallance, Burlington Magazine, XXXV, July, 1919, p. 31.

Maurice Drake, The Costessey Collection of Stained Glass, 1920, No. 43.

William Wells, Stained and Painted Glass, Burrell Collection, 1965, no. 146.

Elisabeth von Witzleben, E. ‘Kölner Bibelfenster des 15. Jahrhunderts in Schottland, England und Amerika’, in Aachener Kunstblätter, 43, 1972, pp.227-48.

Herbert Rode, Die mittelalterlich en Glasmälereien des Kölner Dom es [Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi: Germany IV, part l] , 1974.

Linda Cannon, Stained Glass in the Burrell Collection, 1991, p. 61-63.

Debra Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews – Making Monsters in Medieval Art, 2003, fig. 85, pl. 12, p. 177

Credit Line/Donor

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

Collection

Burrell Collection: Stained Glass

ID Number

45.431

Location

Burrell Collection