Design by an Upper Rhenish (Basel?) Master for stained glass, about 1465-1470.

Drawing of a woman, dressed in a fifteenth-century gown, with a veil over her braided hair holding a shield in which there is a faint drawing of a cockerel of the family of Sinner of Basle. At either side the border is formed by a tree trunk expanding into an archway of naturalistic plant forms.

This panel is for a town or guild hall and fits in with the particularly Swiss tradition of commissioning such panels for secular buildings. It shows the donor's heraldic 'achievement', a complete heraldic composition with a a coat of arms in the centre.

Attribution note: According to one German treatise on the art of painting on glass, it was usual practice to place the glass directly onto a tracing of the design on transparent paper. No mention was made of the glass being placed directly onto the design itself. See References tab. These impressions of the frames correspond to the design being used again at a later date when the outline, drawn in black chalk, of an early sixteenth-century headdress of the type seen in Durer's woodcut of 'Christ Taking Leave of His Mother', about 1504-05, (Bartsch 92) was made. In contrast, the earlier frame is formed by the arch and thus the lead lines must have been in different places. This evidence suggests that the design was modified probably in the early sixteenth century.

The elaborate technique of reed pen and ink, red chalk, and wash on the cartoon guided the fifteenth-century glass painter who would have used a technique that the writer of the above treatise termed peinture par enlevage or painting by taking off. The outline was drawn in an oil colour and painting over the whole with watercolour, which after it was dry was removed with a hard paint brush. Portions of different degrees of thickness were removed to form shadows, half-tints, or lights as necessary. Wherever the glass was left bare by the complete removal of colour produced the highlights.

Individual pieces of glass are painted with vitreous paints and then fired in a kiln at around 650C so the paint fuses to the glass surface, becoming permanent, before being leaded into a panel.

Design for a stained glass panel attributed to an Upper Rhenish (Basel?) Master, made about 1465-1470, showing a woman, dressed in a late 15th century gown, with a headdress over her hair and holding a shield on which is a later ink sketch of a cock. The panel made from this design would most likely have been located in a window of a town hall or in a guild hall, along with other panels depicting the arms of prominent citizens. Stained glass workshops had stock designs, which customers could then personalise with their own coats of arms or devices. In this example, there are various amendments to the drawing. The right-angled lines in black chalk above the woman’s headdress as well as down the right side and the scored lines through the bottom of the design were probably made to show how the design would look for a smaller glass panel. The scored lines are just visible through the bottom and to the right of the shield in the digital image. Additionally, the woman’s headdress has been modified to show an alternative form. The cock added to the shield may represent the arms of the Sinner family of Basle.

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