[Illustration: PLATE XL SMALL FIGURES IN WHITE AND STAIN, FROM ALL SAINTS', NORTH STREET, YORK Fifteenth Century]
Though, however, the English fifteenth century craftsmen did not abandon the canopy, they profoundly modified it and made it far more pliant and adaptable. Plates XXXIV. and XXXV. from York will give a better idea of the canopies of the early fifteenth century than any description. It will be seen that the single overpowering crocketted gable and wall-sided tower of the fourteenth century has disappeared, and in its place we have a froth of pinnacles, windows, buttresses and niches all in white and yellow stain, on a background of colour. The earlier attempt at modelling the canopies in the round, which is seen in the work of the Winchester school, had been abandoned, and although every little shaft has its light and dark side delicately distinguished, this counts for little except to diversify the surface, the forms being expressed principally in strong and simple outline. The extent to which this simplification of outline was carried may be seen in the little crocketted pinnacles, such as those at the bottom of Plate XXXIV., which are characteristic of all English work of the time. There is, as you may see, no attempt to draw or model the foliation of the crockets, which are simply knobs outlined in the flat with a thick black line. This method is the salvation of English Perpendicular work, and shows the thorough understanding on the part of our craftsmen of the technical problem. In French work later on in the century, and in much modern pseudo-Gothic work, the attempt is made to express the canopy work in fine lines and delicate modelling, which, in the result, appears confused and indistinct, and too weak for the leading and for the coloured figure work it encloses.
[Sidenote: The skilful use of silver stain.]
(2) _The Increased Amount of White used._--Not only is the canopy white, but there is also as a rule a good deal of white in the figures within it, which are generally relieved against a diapered flat background of colour. Just one figure at New College has the brown-pink flesh colour, and that is its last appearance. Everywhere else one finds white used, the hair, in the case of women and young men, being stained yellow. This large increase in the use of white glass was accompanied, and indeed made possible, by a most delicate and skilful use of the yellow silver stain. This operation, of all others in stained-glass work, calls for the greatest exercise of taste and judgment as well as skill on the part of the craftsman,--_experto crede_,--and in its use the English workers of the first three-quarters of the fifteenth century stand unrivalled.