[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII DETAILS, FROM ST. OUEN, ROUEN Fourteenth Century]
The same qualities may be observed in the great central west window of the nave, also the work of the glazier Robert. Here, too, the canopies over the various rows of figures which form the design meet the feet of the row above, and in the top row shoot up to the head of the light. Their stiff awkwardness is in curious contrast to the wonderful flowing grace of the actual tracery of the window which contains them. The treatment of the figures, too, is dull. For the eight archbishops who form the bottom row, only two different patterns have been used, and in the row above the eleven apostles have been got into eight lights by making six of them squeeze, most uncomfortably, two in a niche.
The St. Stephen (Plate XX.) is from the sixth window in the south aisle, which seems to be of about the same date as the west windows and probably by the same glazier Robert. Instead of conforming to the design of the other windows in the aisle, he has filled it with three figures larger than life under tall canopies. It has likewise suffered much from eighteenth century restoration (the head, I think, is new), and has, besides, the same faults as the west windows. To me its chief interest is in the ornamentation of the saints' dalmatic, which affords the earliest example I know of the use of silver stain on blue glass, which may be seen in the ring-like ornaments on the blue stripes.
[Sidenote: All Saints', North Street, and St. Martin's, Micklegate.]
The parish churches of York contain a good deal of fourteenth as well as fifteenth century glass. The windows in the west end of the north aisle of All Saints', North Street, and the south aisle of St. Martin's, Micklegate, Plates XXI. and XXII., are not very easy to place with regard to the Cathedral work. My own opinion is that they are rather later and show a recovery in quality. The canopies are as big as ever, but there is more taste and refinement in the drawing, both of the figures and ornaments, and more experience as well as taste in the use of the silver stain. At the same time, they contain later features, such as the attempt at perspective in the battlements above the canopy in Plate XXI., and in the brackets of a sort of balcony (not shown in the illustration) below. The curious device above the canopy in the window at St. Martin's (Plate XXII.) is, I imagine, the "merchant's mark" of the donor.