Heraldic Stained Glass before 1603
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of over 300 examples of heraldic stained glass from medieval and Renaissance Europe. Forming part of the Burrell Collection, the majority of the armorial glass is reflective of Sir William Burrell’s particular interest in sixteenth century pieces of English origin. Two major ‘sets’ of English armorial panels form the basis of the collection – 37 panels purchased in 1947 from Vale Royal in Cheshire, and 39 panels purchased in 1950 from Fawsley Hall in Northamptonshire. The collection includes some royal subjects, notably several examples of the Arms of King Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour, but they predominantly relate to members of the aristocracy and landed gentry. One of the earliest English armorial panels, dated to the late thirteenth century, depicts Beatrix van Valkenburg, wife of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, surrounded by roundels charged with Imperial Eagles. The Beatrix panel was commissioned for a church, likely the Franciscan Church in Norwich, but from the fifteenth and sixteenth century commissions for public and private secular spaces were increasingly common. Many of the heraldic panels in the collection are likely to have been commissioned as decorative additions to the homes and town-houses of the elite and middle-classes.
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