Composition

The window graces the wall opposite Emmanuel's main entrance, above where the altar once stood before the nave was reoriented in 1898. One of Crowninshield's largest works, the window is comprised of 15 panels of leaded glass with 17 smaller sections of tracery above, not including the tiny lights, or openings, filled with just a few pieces of glass. The larger panels are representative of the luxurious, painterly windows typical of the American Opalescent Style of John LaFarge, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Crowninshield. Many of the latter's windows reside in local sites, including Grace Episcopal Church in New Bedford and Memorial Hall at Harvard. The colors of the glass can rarely be matched today. Where faces, garments and hands are painted and shading is used, the style is very soft and realistic, much like the portraiture of the time. The paints used often were not fired into the glass as is common in standard windows, so special care must be taken in their cleaning and restoration. Our window exhibits a lot of "ripple" and spotted "cat's paw" glass. Another feature common to opalescent windows is its layering, which gives strong, dimensional shading and hazy effects.

Top-Center Panel before Restoration			Restored Top-Center Panel in Reflected Light		Detail of Its Oleander Foliage

Structure of the Window

The vertical stacks of panels within the window frame are called lancets. The panels are separated by iron T-shaped bars secured to the window frame. The panels themselves are reinforced further by round horizontal bars also secured to the window frame. The bars are held to the glass by myriad copper wire ties that are soldered to lead joints in the window panel. The glass in the window, which was cut from patterns created from full-size cartoons of the composition, is held together by lead ‘cames’, extruded typically in H-shaped sections to receive glass on both sides. These are wrapped around the glass, fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, and soldered at the joints. Stained glass is usually crafted with lead containing strengthening trace elements that make it strong enough when first completed.

References

• David Carlson, "Emmanuel's Land off the Bow", Voices, June 2005.
• Gertrude Wilmers, "An American Artist in Italy: Frederic Crowninshield and His "Seconda Patria", pp. 37-52, in Spellbound by Rome: The Anglo-American Community in Rome (1890-1914), ed. Peter Rockwell. Rome: Palombi Editori, 2005.