“The Cloisters’ collection of stained glass consists of around three hundred panels, generally French and Germanic and mostly from the 13th to early 16th centuries. A number were formed from handmade opalescent glass. Works in the collection are characterized by vivid colors and often abstract designs and patterns; many have a devotional image as a centerpiece. The majority of these works are in the museum’s Boppard room, named after the Carmelite church of Saint Severinus in Boppard, near Koblenz, Germany. The collection’s pot-metal works (from the High Gothic period) highlight the effects of light, especially the transitions between darkness, shadow and illumination. The Met’s collection grew in the early 20th century when Raymond Picairn made acquisitions at a time when medieval glass was not highly regarded by connoisseurs, and was difficult to extract and transport.

Jane Hayward, a curator at the museum from 1969 who began the museum’s second phase of acquisition, describes stained glass as “unquestioningly the preeminent form of Gothic medieval monumental painting”. She bought c. 1500 heraldic windows from the Rhineland, now in the Campin room with the Mérode Altarpiece. Hayward’s addition in 1980 led to a redesign of the room so that the installed pieces would echo the domestic setting of the altarpiece. She wrote that the Campin room is the only gallery in the Met “where domestic rather than religious art predominates…a conscious effort has been made to create a fifteenth-century domestic interior similar to the one shown in [Campin’s] Annunciation panel.”

Other significant acquisitions include late 13th-century grisaille panels from the Château-de-Bouvreuil in Rouen, glass work from the Cathedral of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais at Sées, and panels from the Acezat collection, now in the Heroes Tapestry Hall.” (Wikipedia)

Taken with a Fuji X-E1 and Fuji XF 35mm f1.4 R