Stained glass painting techniques

The communication focuses on the figure and activity of Cesare Picchiarini (Rome 1871-1943) called "Mastro Picchio" who, at the beginning of '900, in his Roman workshop, revolutionized the art of artistic glazing. As you know, in the late nineteenth century Rome there was no art of glass and production was exclusively reserved for everyday objects. The Picchiarini, thanks also to a rich bourgeois commission in the Rome capital of Italy and the affirmation of Liberty, introduced technical innovations in the staining of the glass. This meant that his workshop became a true thruster center of the glazing, a place of interest and learning for young artists, architects and decorators of the thickness of Paolo Paschetto, Duilio Cambellotti, Umberto Bottazzi, Vittorio Grassi and many others who long They collaborated with him. The interest in the revival of this art form was such that the Picchiarini, in 1924, founded the School of Art Glass at S. Michele a Ripa.

Research on the c.15 stained glass windows in the choir of Berne Minster (Switzerland) brought evidence of traces of preparatory drawings on the back side of the glass. All the glass paintings are supposed to have been made in this way. One window was created by artists in Ulm (South Germany), the others in Berne. The tracings can be compared with underdrawings of contemporary wall- and panel-paintings. Their analysis highly suggests that painting techniques, creative procedures and workshop practice of stained glass artists were similar to the ones of other painters, with particularities due to technical issues of stained glass. Painting on glass was a fully valid art form, in the same sense than other pictorial expressions.

We also found evidence that cold paint had originally been applied on the stained glass, in a surprising extent. In one whole window all yellow details which usually are colored with fired silver stain were made with yellow cold paint. Green and brownish paint was largely used as well. The findings, together with other similar observations on small panels as well as monumental stained glass confirms what is known from contemporary written sources. Such techniques seem to have been part of the repertoire of glass painters of that time. They could have led to the use of enamels when it became clear that unfired paint was not stable on windows. We have to assume that late medieval stained glass sometimes looked quite different than we see it today. And there seems again to be evidence for exchanges between different art forms and multi-media artists.

Gotrand Auriane, « De l’esquisse au vitrail : Les processus de création dans l’atelier de Claudius Lavergne », communication à l'occasion du 30e colloque international du Corpus Vitrearum, The concept and fabrication of Stained Glass from the middle age to Art Nouveau, Barcelone, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, juillet 2022.

The article focuses on the presentation of the legacy of a cut and painted glass factory called “B. Škarda” in Brno, on the personage
of the founder and his followers. The topic has not been dealt with much in publications so far. The workshop was active
from 1863 to the inter-war period; therefore, the situation of Czech glass development and production is briefly presented after
a short introduction, and it is put into context with the social-political-cultural background of the turn of 19th and 20th centuries.
Furthermore, the text gives an account of the products and technical output of the company, which underwent a transformation
from a little family handicraft workshop to a company with great international reputation and a wide range of artistic products.
The personage of the founder, Benedikt Škarda, who ran the factory himself until his death in 1912, was an integral part of the
company history. Not only him, but also members of his family are introduced in the paper, primarily his sons Eugen and Metoděj.
The last part of the summary describes shortly the activity and the history of the company “B. Škarda” after the founder’s death.
The information regarding the workshop and its owners, the chronology and typology of its products and further information
were gained through research and analysis of written, drawn and photographic archival materials, unpublished sources as well as
published expert texts, literature, restoration reports and conservation surveys. The company has been ascribed to over a hundred
objects, but the number has been still rising. The artworks of high artistic value can be found in Bohemia, Moravia and abroad.

ALUKSI 1920-luku oli suomalaisen kirkollisen lasimaalauksen kultaaikaa. Silloin niitä hankittiin kirkkoihin enemmän kuin yhtenäkään vuosikymmenenä sitä aikaisemmin tai sen jälkeen. Tämän esityksen perustana on pro gradu -tutkielma Kirkollisen lasimaalauksen kulta-aika Suomessa -Suosion taustan tarkastelua. Tutkielman tavoitteena oli kartoittaa niitä syitä, jotka nostivat lasimaalauksen suosituksi kirkkotaiteen muodoksi juuri tuona ajankohtana. Lasimaalauksia on tarkasteltu osana laajaa kontekstia, jossa tärkeimpinä toimijoina olivat taidekenttä ja evankelis-luterilainen kirkko. Lasimaalausten asema muodostui näiden sekä historiallisten, yhteiskunnallisten ja kulttuuristen muutosten leikkauspisteessä mielenkiintoiseksi ja monisäikeiseksi, mutta myös ristiriitaiseksi.

For centuries, the only painting materials used in stained-glass production were grisaille and yellow (silver) stain. At the end of the fifteenth century, stained-glass painters began to use a new material, sanguine. This paint is mainly produced with iron oxide particles, usually haematite, and allowed to obtain a colour that can vary from yellowish to brownish-red due to the nature and particle size of the iron oxide. A translucent sanguine was mostly applied as flesh and hair colour, with an opaque sanguine used for drapery, architectural motifs, and heraldry. The main goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between historical sources on the preparation and use of sanguine from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and the evolution evidenced in the recipes regarding the production method. Representative recipes from several centuries (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries) were selected and reproduced for this study. These reconstructions were thoroughly characterized using X-ray powder diffraction, optical microscopy (OM), and fibre optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS). The OM and FORS data were correlated with historic sanguine paints applied on historic stained-glass. The similarities and differences between historic and reconstructed paints are presented. The study of reconstructed sanguine’s adhesion to glass using cross-cut testing was also performed, revealing that the adhesion is strongly influenced, not only by the binder but also by the composition and morphology of the sanguine paint.