Figure 4 : Scenes from the legend of St Vincent of Saragossa and the history of his relics , from the Abbey of Saint- Germain-des-Prés ( New York , Metropolitan Museum of Art , 24.167a-k )
the Church of St Vincent and a relic of the Holy Cross , which the king had acquired from Spain in 542 . In the mid-eighth century , the body of Germain was translated to a stone coffin behind the high altar , and the church was rededicated in his name .
The subject of the windows — how the church ’ s relics arrived in Paris — is the same as that of the 1,113 stained glass scenes in Sainte-Chapelle in Paris , a royal chapel built between 1238 and 1248 . In telling these stories , the windows of both buildings present the events of mid-thirteenth century Paris as a continuation of significant moments in Christian history , establishing the city ’ s importance in religious terms and as a leading centre for glass production .
The Winchester window ( fig . 3 ) shows Germain ’ s body lying dead in a tomb as two angels swing censers ( incense burners ) over his body . While by itself it does not tell us much about the events of his life , it represents one of the most important moments in the programme , which was created to honour the saints at the centre of the Abbey ’ s rich history . As with the other examples of medieval glass in the college , the window ’ s content conveys the identity of the building that originally framed it .
Afterlife . Following the French Revolution , the Abbey was razed in 1802 . Fortunately some of the glass was extracted shortly beforehand when the well-known Parisian antiquarian , Alexandre Lenoir , purchased a selection of the windows for his new museum , the musée des Monuments français . Seventy-two scenes have been identified in collections around the world ( see fig . 4 ), with others still possibly in existence .
There is evidence to suggest that Lenoir facilitated the sale of some of the glass to an English dealer around the time the Abbey was destroyed . The Winchester scene made its way into the collection of the sixth Baron of Costessey ( 1736 – 1809 ), probably through the Norwich-based partnership of John Christopher Hampp and Seth William Stevenson . 1 Costessey ’ s collection was sold by his descendants in 1918 , and the glass now in Winchester was acquired by an Old Wykehamist , Sir Bruce Ingram ( Chernocke House , 1890 – 94 ), in the 1920s . He lent the scene to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge between 1945 and 1949 , before offering it as a gift to the college in memory of his father . It was not until 1983 that the glass was identified by Mary Shepard as belonging to the stained glass programme of Saint-Germain-des-Prés . It has moved around the school many times , being displayed in the upper room of Fromond ’ s Chantry , the porch of chapel , the Blackwell Room , and even back in the Fitzwilliam Museum .
4 Medieval Glass at Winchester College