proportion as the building is contemplated: and the more fully the gloominess of the architecture is perceived, the less striking does the cold colouring of the Antechapel windows appear, until at last it seems more appropriate to the place than the warmer and gayer colouring of the windows of the Choir.
I now proceed to give a short account of the glass in the Choir windows, beginning with the first window from the East, on the south side.
The tradition is, that all the glass in the south windows is Flemish, and the work of Ruben's scholars.[1] But this does not appear to be altogether correct. A great many of the figures in the lower fights are, it is true, the work of foreign artists, and, in the absence of any certain information, I am inclined to think of the Flemish school, in the latter part of the sixteenth or early part of the seventeenth century. But the whole of the canopy-work, which is evidently copied from glass of similar design to that in the Antechapel is, except those portions of it that actually are of Wykeham's time, of comparatively a recent date; at which period the rest of the large figures appear to have been painted, some of the old ones supplied with heads, and almost the whole of the old glass, not only the Flemish, but the remains of the original glazing in the tracery lights as well as in the lower lights, retouched. Coupling these facts with the inscription at the bottom of the last window from the East, which records the fact that W. Price repaired these windows in 1740, I can come to no other conclusion than that the greater part of the glazing is the work of Price, who adapted the Flemish figures to the lights.
THE FIRST SOUTH WINDOW PROM THE EAST.
All the figures in the lower lights of this window appear to have been painted by Price. Some represent Bishops, Archbishops, and a Pope, but no names are given. Some are canonised saints. Five of the crozier heads, and a
- ↑ Gutch, in a note to Wood's History of the Colleges and Halls of Oxford, p. 199, says the windows on the south side of the chapel were originally Flemish, done, as is reported, from designs given by some scholars of Rubens, and were purchased by the society, of Wm. Price, who repaired them in 1740.
