Sacred Stained Glass before 1603
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 300 stained glass panels from medieval and Renaissance Europe that depict sacred scenes and religious figures. The majority are part of the Burrell Collection, donated to Glasgow in 1944 by Sir William and Lady Burrell. This world class collection contains examples from some of northern Europes’ most important ecclesiastical glazing schemes. There are few items of such age and quality in museum collections as the panel of The Prophet Jeremiah. Originating from the mid twelfth century glazing scheme of the Abbey Church of St-Denis, this panel is the most ancient piece in the collection and a rare example of the very earliest Gothic glass. Executed on a much larger scale are the imposing and majestic mid-fifteenth century windows from the Carmelite Church, Boppard-on-Rhine. Secured from the outstanding collections of the American businessmen William Randolph Hearst and Robert Goelet in 1939, these beautifully executed windows are amongst the largest and most imposing pieces in the collection. Another important series in the collection depicts the lives of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. Made in Rouen, one of the great French centres of stained glass, these panels represent some of the finest glass of the period. As a major patron for much of the stained glass of the age there is little doubt that much of the religious glass was commissioned for ecclesiastical buildings. However, the collection also includes a number of smaller painted panels, known as roundels, that were produced for the expanding merchant classes. Although made to decorate secular and domestic spaces, these roundels often incorporated the traditional religious themes that still appealed to an overwhelmingly religious society.
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