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Saint John the Baptist
Saint John the Baptist

Saint John the Baptist

CultureFrench
Dateca. 1500
MediumStained and painted glass
DimensionsOverall: 105 7/8 × 29 5/16 inches (268.92 × 74.45 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number44-49/7
On View
On view
Gallery Location
  • 105
Collections
DescriptionWindow with imagery depicting St. John.Gallery Label
Innovations in Gothic architecture, mainly the flying buttress, significantly reduced the weight borne by a building's walls and permitted the use of dramatically larger windows.  As church architecture evolved in the 12th and 13th centuries, stained glass played an important role in bringing color and light into Gothic interiors.  Abbot Suger of the Abbey of Saint-Denis, just outside of Paris, described an addition to the abbey as shining "with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the [church's] interior beauty."  The left panel depicts John the Baptist holding his traditional attribute, the Lamb of God.  The right panel depicts a man, dressed in contemporary clothing, who may be a religious figure or the patron of the stained-glass windows.
Provenance

De Galea collection, Paris;

 

With Raoul Heilbronner, Paris, by June 23, 1921;

 

Purchased at his sale, Objets d’art et de haute curiosité du Moyen-Age et de la Renaissance…composant les Collections de M. Raoul Heilbronner, Ayant fait l’objet d’une mesure de séquestre de guerre, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June 23, 1921, lot 211-216, by the dealer François Haussaire, Paris, 1921;

 

With Demotte, Inc., Paris, by May 10, 1929 [1];

 

Purchased from Demotte by William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), New York and San Simeon, CA, May 10, 1929-July 28, 1944 [2];

 

Purchased from Hearst by Brummer Gallery, New York, stock no. N6096, July 28, 1944-December 1, 1944 [3];

 

Purchased from Brummer, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1944.

 

NOTES:


[1] Galerie Demotte Photographic Archive, Musée du Louvre, Paris, available digitally online: https://corpus.louvre.fr/s/galeries-demotte/item/36722, accessed June 2, 2023.


[2] William Randolph Hearst Archive, Long Island University Post (S/B lot 459, art. 20, Album 104, p. 22).

 

[3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Cloisters Library and Archive, Brummer Gallery Records, Glass, stained glass, and crystal, Object inventory card number N6096.

Published References

Galerie Georges Petit., Catalogue des objets d'art et de haute curiosité du Moyen-Age de de la Renaissance ..: composant les collections de M. Raoul Heilbronner... (Paris: Petit, 1921), 64.

Demotte, Inc. Catalogue of exhibition of stained glass from the XIth to the XVIIIth cent. (New York City: Demotte, Inc., 1927), unpaginated (repro.).

Madeline Harrison Caviness. Stained Glass before 1700 in American Collections: Corpus Vitrearum Checklist III. (Washington, D.C.: Hanover [N.H.]: National Gallery of Art; Distributed by the University Press of New England, 1985), 200 (repro.).

Virginia Chieffo Raguin, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, and Helen Jackson Zakin. Stained glass before 1700 in the collections of the Midwest states. (London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2001) 77-79 (repro.).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.