Details

Object type

stained glass panel

Title

King David

Place Associated

Germany, Cologne, probably (place of manufacture)

Date

circa 1470

Materials

white, coloured, stained and painted glass, lead

Dimensions

overall: 358 mm x 300 mm x 10 mm

Description

King David (45.385) wears a red conical hat, gold crown, and a red buttoned coat with ermine collar. The curling scroll beneath him bears the words 'David excitato e […] dormies crapulato a dio' (source text unidentified to date).

Zechariah (45.386) wears an ermine-lined blue hat with upturned brim and a yellow cloak with ermine collar over blue tunic. Beneath him a scroll inscribed 'Zacarias dicite filiae Sion: Ecce rex tuus venit tibi' (Matthew 21:5 – [Zacharius] Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, [meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.])

Panels like this are thought to have come from typological windows: windows where scenes and sayings from the New Testament are juxtaposed with scenes or sayings from the Old Testament. The Old Testament figures predict, or prefigure, happenings in the New. Models were provided by early printed pictorial bibles (Biblia Pauperum). These little panels were probably inset in the small openings in the upper traceried parts of windows. A good number of similar pieces in the same style and of the same size survive (in London (V&A), in Wiesbaden, in Virginia and in Detroit) and it has been argued that these are likely to have come from the same decorative programme, perhaps laid out around a cloister which was disbanded during secularisation in the early 19th century.

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. This is clearly shown in the similarities between Burrell’s panel of Zacharias (45.386) and the Detroit prophe’s Osee and David. These appear to share a cartoon, or preparatory drawing, but to have been executed by completely different craftspeople.

Burrell’s two pieces (along with 45.384) were bought with the help of the dealers Thomas and Drake at Christie's in 1940 (13.6.1940, lot 54). Prior to this they had been in the collection of the Marquis of Abergavenny, Eridge Castle, Kent, the 3rd Marquess having died in 1938. The 12 panels in Detroit, six of which also show David, were bought in 1949 Switzerland, but were, said the dealer in the collection of F. E. Sidney of Moreton, Holly Place, Hampstead, until 1937. The V&A panels were given in 1928, by Ernest Edward Cook (1865-1955). Further research is required, but this context points towards the glass having been in England by the first decades of the 20th century. A further little discussed panel in the Church of St Nicholas Overstone showing the prophet Isaiah may have been there since its construction and consecration at the beginning of the 19th century.

Published:

William Wells, Stained and Painted Glass, Burrell Collection, 1965, no. 54.

Paul Williamson, Medieval and Renaissance Stained Glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2003, cf. no.45.

Credit Line/Donor

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

Collection

Burrell Collection: Stained Glass

ID Number

45.385

Location

Burrell Collection