Charles Connick, visiting Chartres for the first time in August 1910, experienced a
profound epiphany. Of course he already knew that stained glass was an art form dependent
on light—but only now did he realize that the opaque glass which he and his
contemporaries favored fought against the light. It tried to look the same, no
matter what the conditions were outside.
But at
Chartres — specifically, in front of Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière —
Connick found “a stained glass window that is the color of the weather. It is at the
mercy of light and of all that happens in the path of its light.” The image of Our
Lady he saw on an autumn morning was quite different from the one he saw late in the
afternoon. The light had changed, and with it the colors and the whole mood of the window
mysteriously changed as well. “I had never been told of its bewildering
metamorphoses,” Connick later wrote: he called this window “la Belle
Verrière of Infinite Variety.”
The windows Connick created for St. James Cathedral in 1916-17 were among his earliest
full-scale “experiments” with what he had learned at Chartres. The window
depicting our patron James shows him dressed as a pilgrim, carrying his staff and gourd.
His hat is adorned with a scallop shell, and on his feet are sandals suited to this
travel-worn pilgrim.
In his use of color Connick boldly turns away from the gentle, painterly effects sought
after by his contemporaries. He juxtaposes deep greens, umbers, and blues in Saint
James’ robes with intense touches of red in his halo and book.
The James window receives the strongest sunlight in the afternoons of summer, an effect
Connick undoubtedly intended since we celebrate our patron’s feast in the month of
July. But this is above all a “James of Infinite Variety,” which to be
experienced fully must be experienced in many different lights.
Connick’s great insight into the art of stained glass is also a profound spiritual
insight. Just as the art of stained-glass does not live until it is lets itself be
“vulnerable to the light,” we also need to be (like our patron James) vulnerable
to grace, even when it threatens to transform us in dazzling and unexpected ways.
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