rooms, I should give the preference to carpets in flat tints, because it is possible to have a very beautiful effective work, without the price being too high, while in paying much dearer for a carpet of another kind, resembling pictures, we shall be far from having the best in this sort. Carpets in flat tints are most favourable to the brilliancy of colours; in fact, the straight or undulating bands of the dessins points of Hungary, the palms, where Yellow is opposed to Violet, Orange to Blue, Green to Red, &c., produce the most brilliant contrasts. But I only recommend the employment of these carpets for places where their brilliant colours can injure neither the furniture nor the hangings; for instance, in rooms where the hangings, the stuffs of the chairs, are grey, white, black, or selected so as to accord harmoniously with the carpet by their colours and patterns. (427.) The most effective carpets are also those which present detached flowers upon a brown ground, with a garland in the centre, in flat tints, and perfectly assorted according to the law of contrast. ARTICLE 3. Carpets on a System intermediate between Chiar'oscuro and Flat Tints. (428.) I have no special remarks to add to the preceding on this kind of carpet; I shall only observe that those which approach the nearest to carpets in flat tints, appear to me preferable to those in which the designer has endeavoured to imitate Savonnerie carpets. 175 SECTION V. MOSAICS. (429.) THE name Mosaics, as is well known, is given to the coloured imitations of a painted pattern, by employing fragments of marble, stones, different coloured enamels, suitably cut, which are united together side by side, and also fastened together by means of a fine mortar or cement. If it were possible to make a mosaic with elements as fine and as compact as the threads of tapestry, the work would appear to occupy a place between an oil-painting and a Gobelins tapestry: it resembles the latter, because it is the result of the juxtaposition of coloured elements of an appreciable size and it approaches to the nature of a picture by a uniform surface rendered brilliant by means of the polish it has received; besides, the contrast of opaque and vitreous elements resembles that of opaque and glazing colours in oilpainting. But, in having regard to the preceding considerations relative to the special qualities of each kind of imitation, mosaic being made to serve for pavement, or at least to be exposed to the changes of weather, the humidity of ground floors, &c., resistance to these destructive agents must be its essential quality on the other hand, the place it generally occupies in edifices does not permit the eye to seize all the details we look for in a picture; we wander from our object when we pretend to give to works of this nature the finish of painting: we then confound two arts entirely distinct in aim, and also in the nature of the coloured elements which each of them makes use of. 177 SECTION VI. WINDOWS OF COLOURED GLASS IN LARGE GOTHIC CHURCHES. (430.) I Now proceed to examine, according to the preceding views, the coloured glass windows which combine so powerfully with architecture in giving to vast gothic churches that harmony which we cannot fail to recognise whenever we enter them, after having admired the variety and boldness of their exterior details, and which place these structures among objects of art, in the rank of those which impress most by their size, the subordination of their various parts, and, lastly, by their complete fitness for the purposes to which they are applied. The stained glass of gothic churches, by intercepting the white light which gives too vivid and unsuitable a glare for meditation (as they only transmit coloured light), have always the most beautiful effect. If we seek the cause, we shall find it not only in the contrast of their colours so favourably opposed, but also in the contrast of their transparency with the opacity of the walls which surround them and of the lead which binds them together. The impression produced on the eye, in virtue of this twofold cause, is the more vivid the more frequently and the longer they are viewed each time. (431.) The windows of a gothic church are generally either circular, or pointed at the tops in ogive, with vertical sides. The stained glass of the first usually represent great rose-windows, where yellow, blue, violet, orange, red, and green, appear like jewels of the most precious stones. The windows of the second almost always represent, amid a border or a ground analogous to the rose-windows, a figure of a saint in perfect harmony with those which stand in relief about the portals of the edifice; and these latter figures, to be appreciated at their true value, must be judged as parts of a whole, and not as a Greek statue, which is intended to be seen isolated on all sides. N (432.) The glass composing the different parts of a human figure is of two kinds: the one has been painted on its surface with pigments, afterwards vitrified (glass painting); the other is melted with the material that colours it (glass staining); generally the first enters into the composition of the nude parts of the figure, as the face, hands, and feet; and the second enters into that of the drapery: all the pieces of glass are united by strips of lead. What has struck me as being most effective in windows with human figures is the exact observance of the relations of size of the figures and of the intensity of the light which renders them visible, with the distance at which the spectator is placed; a distance at which the strips of lead which surround each piece of glass appear only as a line, or as a smail black band. (433.) It is not necessary for an effective whole that the painted glass, viewed closely, should exhibit fine hatchings, careful stippling, or blended tints; for, with the coloured stained glass for draperies, they must compose a system which compares with painting in flat tints; and certainly we cannot doubt that a painting on glass, executed entirely according to the system of chiar'oscuro, will have this disadvantage over the other, without speaking of the cost of execution, that the finish in the details will entirely disappear at the distance at which the spectator must be placed, and that the view of the whole will be less distinct; for the first condition which must be fulfilled by every work of art intended to attract the eye is, that it be presented without confusion and as distinctly as possible. Let us add that paintings on glass executed on the method of chiar'oscuro cannot receive the borders and grounds of rose-windows (431.) which present so fine an effect of colour, as they have less brilliancy and transparency than the glass in which the colouring material has been incorporated by fusion (432.), and, lastly, they are less capable of resisting the injuries of time. (434.) Variety of colours in these windows is so necessary for them to attain the best possible effect (as those which represent figures entirely nude, edifices, in a word, large objects of a single colour, or slightly tinted), that, whatever may be the perfection of their execution under the relation of finish and truth of imitation, they will have an inferior |