As with Duccio’s window and altarpiece in Siena’s Cathedral, the stained glass win-dows designed by Simone Martini for his chapel dedicated to Saint Martin in the Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi (Figure 2.4) illustrate another case of a famous Italian painter designing stained glass windows in conversation with his surrounding commissions. And also like Duccio’s window, which Simone certainly saw, Simone’s composition strives for clarity of form and composition within the stained glass medium.39 Simone’s color choice for the windows almost declares his desire for legibility within the stained glass medium; the alternating red and blue backgrounds and yellow frames contribute to a sense of simplicity and organization.
Because of the more intimate relationship between Simone’s windows and frescoes, it is possible to analyze them together as a coherent unit. Not only were both the windows and paintings designed by the same artist as part of a coherent program but they were also confined to a small chapel rather than spread across the interior of a large church. This enabled Simone to create a sense of unified space by integrating the light from the windows into his pictorial worlds in two
Figure 2.4: Simone Martini, Stained Glass Windows in Saint Martin Chapel, ca. 1317, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi. Source: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore © Manage-ment Fratelli Alinari.
ways. The first of these ways was by illuminating the frescoes to either side of the window as if they were lit by the window’s light. The second way was by incor-porating the symbolism of light into the narratives. The scenes to the right of the windows, namely, Saint Martin and the Miraculous Mass and The Knighting of Saint Martin, both feature Martin praying while he gestures up and to the left.
In other words, in both scenes Martin prominently gazes in the direction of the stained glass window as he looks for divine inspiration.
The scenes to the left portray Saint Martin in Meditation on the top and The Dream of Saint Martin on the bottom and represent moments when Martin is about to receive divine insight. In the upper register Simone painted Martin enwrapped in
a meditation so deep that his acolyte must physically interrupt it so the bishop can perform mass. In the lower register Christ, wearing the cloak that Martin had earlier given to a beggar, visited Martin in a dream and confirmed that Martin’s charitable gesture had not gone unnoticed. These scenes feature Martin in an altered state ready to receive divine insight. By situating Martin towards the left of each com-position, Simone again made the connection between the windows’ light and the saint’s divine inspiration explicit. In the scenes to the left, Simone showed Martin praying to God and asking for inspiration, while the frescoes to the right depicted him receiving divine wisdom. The program as a whole illustrates Saint Martin’s deep connection to the divine through his ability to see beyond his painted reality to the colorful light of the windows and the symbolic presence of God they represent.
To make the connections between his painted realities and the stained glass unmistakable, Simone referenced the shape of the chapel’s physical windows in his painted illustrations of windows, as seen in the lancet windows in the back-ground of Saint Martin in Meditation. Another prominent use of the lancet shape is found on the underside of the entry arch leading into the chapel, where stand-ing saints seem to almost converse with the viewers enterstand-ing the chapel. These painted saints in the entry serve as pendants to the saints depicted in the windows;
in each case both the painted and stained glass, individual saints stand within a decorative frame and gesture to each other or the visitor below.
However, an important difference may suggest there were two different concep-tions behind the painted saints versus the stained glass ones. The saints in the win-dows do not look out at the viewer; their gazes are kept firmly within the confines of the window’s space. It is as if their attitude and the glowing, supernatural light of the windows signaled that these figures were not as accessible as the painted saints in the archway. The physical location of the saints in the chapel reinforced this; the viewer would have had the opportunity to stand directly under the painted saints but the stained glass ones were set behind the altarpiece and out of reach. However, not all the figures depicted in the windows face inward. In fact, the angels at the top of the two lancets stare straight out into the chapel’s space, but these militant angels do not engage with the viewers in order to offer comfort or their services as intercessors like the painted saints. Rather, these figures hold swords and shields indicating their role as guardians of the divine realm. Their bright yellow shields glow in the dark chapel, evoking the sense of glaring reflections bouncing off their polished metal.
Thus, it should be noted that, for all the ways Simone forged a connection between the windows and the surrounding space, he also created the sense that the imagery in the windows occupied a different realm from the painted reality.
As in the case of Duccio, Simone’s decorative complex at Assisi was part of a larger network of glass and one should contextualize Simone’s stained glass
windows within the artist’s other uses of or references to glass objects. Prior to his work on the Chapel of Saint Martin, Simone had completed his fresco of the Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. As will be discussed in the next chapter and was previously mentioned in Chapter 1, Simone set twenty-five pieces of gilded glass into the frescoed wall to enhance the lighting effects of his painting (Figure 1.2). He also used a glass roundel to embellish his panel of Saint Louis of Toulouse, which was roughly contemporary with the chapel.
Simone would have also been witness to a particularly striking use of gilded glass each time he went to work in the Chapel of Saint Martin because set into the ceiling of the Lower Church were pieces of glass backed with silver that were meant to resemble stars in the night sky (Figure 2.5). Though Simone was not responsible for making or designing these panels of glass, it is possible that he took note of them because he reproduced the appearance of the Lower Church’s ceiling in the depiction of The Funeral of Saint Martin and Saint Martin and the Miraculous Mass.
Figure 2.5: Ceiling of Lower Church with light reflecting off silver-backed glass insets, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi. Source: Author.