The Ascension
Designer: Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
Firm: Morris & Co.
Stained glass
1885
St. Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham
Burne-Jones's Other Windows in the Cathedral
J(ulius) A(lfred) Chatwin (1830-1907) enlarged this early eighteenth-century church in 1883-84, extending it to the east and producing a full chancel for it. The chancel was always meant to have large-scale stained-glass windows, and the patron of the new work, the wealthy heiress Emma Villiers-Wilkes, was willing to pay most of the cost of them. Locally-born Burne-Jones, who had been baptised in the church, agreed to make the designs. This is the central light of these three east windows.
Photographs, text and formatting 2012 by Jacqueline Banerjee
The commission was carried out in two phases. After the first window was installed, the artist himself explained, he was "so struck with admiration at one of my works ... (a naïve confession which all artists will condone) I undertook in a moment of enthusiasm to fill the windows on either side with compositions which I hoped, and perhaps not unreasonably hoped, to make worthy of my former achievement." He remembered being "carried out of myself with a sort of rapture" when he made the offer (qtd. in Georgiana Burne-Jones, Vol. 2: 172). He goes on to complain of the paltry monetary recompense that he received for the work that followed. But however disappointed he was in the reward, he was clearly much inspired by the original design shown here, and worked on the other two with some ardor. [Commentary continues below.]
In this close-up of the Ascension, the disciples are shown raising their eyes yearningly towards Christ, who extends his hand towards them. Unlike the saints in the upper part of the window, the disciples look very much of this world — highly individualised, deeply human, and not at all serene.
As Simon Bradley writes generally of these windows, "Colours are vibrant and exciting, with reds and blues predominant; designs are simple and dramatic, with a strong division between upper and lower zones, and with figures of exceptional scale" (45). The division of zones here is between the earthly and the heavenly, but the other two chancel windows are different in this respect: as well as angels, the shepherds and their sheep appear in the upper part of the Nativity window on the left; and the suffering Christ, among the centurions' standards and spears, fills the upper part of the Crucifixion scene on the right.
References
Bradley, Simon. "The Stained Glass." Birmingham, by Andy Foster. Pevsner Architectural Guides. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2005. 45. Print.
Burne-Jones, Georgiana. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones. New York: Macmillan, 1906. Internet Archive. Web. 3 September 2012.
Last modified 3 September 2012