CAUTION, GLASS!
A dual exhibition in the Study Room and DAS Forum
15.02.–20.08.2023

Draiflessen Collection
Georgstraße 18 | 49497 Mettingen
info@draiflessen.com | www.draiflessen.com

For the first time the Draiflessen Collection presents a dual exhibition spanning multiple eras and dedicated to two aspects of the same artistic medium: the various facets of glass as a material for window design and the fragile and fascinating art of glass painting on unipartite panels. The exhibition brings together old and newer forms of painting on glass, presenting unipartite panels from the 15th and 16th centuries from the Liberna Collection in the Study Room, and leaded glass windows from 1939 in DAS Forum, the platform for work involving the museum’s own collection and archival material. These windows, created by the well-known stained glass artist Joep Nicolas of Roermond for the C&A building in Utrecht, only recently entered the collection.

The 15th- and 16th-century unipartite panels
The cabinet exhibition in the Study Room focuses on the play of light and the intense luminosity of silver yellow and grisaille painting on unipartite panels, an art form that flourished during the late Gothic and Renaissance periods, especially in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The 18 unipartite panels from the Liberna Collection will be shown here for the first time.

While stained glass windows, often several meters high, formed an integral part of public church interiors, and continue to do so today, the smaller circular, rectangular, or quatrefoil unipartite panels more commonly adorned secular, private spaces. Along with religious subjects, moralising allegories and Exemplata intended to guide viewers to a better, more virtuous life constituted the most popular subjects for such panels. What particularly fascinates us to this day, however, is the translucent material, which constantly changes in the light and breathes life into the figures and stories depicted.

Joep Nicolas’ lead-lights
In 1939 the Roermond glass painter and artist Joep Nicolas designed a total of ten leaded glass windows for the new C&A building in Utrecht. After the store closed, the richly painted windows were removed, restored, and found their way to the Draiflessen Collection in 2019. One fascinating aspect of these panels is the history of their creation, which took place during a turbulent period and can be reconstructed based on selected documents. Shortly after their completion, Joep Nicolas sold his stained glass business and emigrated to New York. The preliminary drawings on loan from the Gemeentearchief Roermond complement the stained glass windows on display and reveal the many individual steps in the artistic processes involved in creating such a work of art.

Like the unipartite panels on view in the Liberna study hall, Joep Nicolas’ large-format lead-lights form components of secular architecture, and feature religious and allegorical subjects. Thanks to their shared painting technique, the unipartite panels and the lead-lights also appear quite similar at first glance, even though they were created several centuries apart. For the first time, this presentation addresses the iconographic and technical features of these windows as well as the history of their creation.

The art of glass painting
The exhibition illustrates the rich, centuries-old tradition of stained glass art. The room introducing the dual exhibition presents the technique of glass production and painting. The use of silver stain and grisaille painting on glass has hardly changed over the centuries, forming a bridge between the late Gothic and Renaissance unipartite panels and Joep Nicolas’ 20th-century stained glass windows.

The importance of other art forms in the creative process, especially drawing, forms another consistent element in the long tradition of working with glass. Along with prints, drawings played an integral role in the production of decorated glass panels. Around 1500 a fascinating collaboration thus developed between painters and stained glass artists. The former provided the designs which the latter then transferred to the glass. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue vividly illustrate this process as well, through the presentation of design drawings and prints. Most of the works on paper in the Study Room are designs that we can no longer directly associate with specific unipartite panels, because all too often one or the other has not survived the ravages of time. An exemplary selection of sketches and preparatory drawings by Joep Nicolas in DAS Forum, by contrast, allows a direct comparison of the two genres, and vividly illustrates the transition from sketch to execution, and the changes that take place in the process.

A trilingual publication will accompany the exhibition.