Currently not on view

Martyrdom of Saint George,

13th century and ca. 1918-22

French
y71
Purchased by the museum in the early twentieth-century as an authentic, intact medieval stained-glass window, this object is actually a composite made up of modern inserts, old glass that has been repurposed, and old glass that has been altered or repainted. Several fragments, notably the head and torso of the figure do come from a window of the same subject-Saint George's martyrdom on a wheel-from the Choir of Chartres Cathedral. However, even these have been heavily retouched. The Chartres Choir window showing Saint George was removed in the eighteenth-century to allow more light into the church. The glass presumably was salvaged to use for repairs to other windows. Indeed, evidence suggests that by the nineteenth-century Saint George-still intact with his wheel-formed part of a window made up of mismatched glass in one of the cathedral's side chapels, which, in turn, had been destroyed in the French Revolution. During World War I, all the glass in the church was removed for safe keeping. After the war, the chapel received a new window and part of the Saint George-a piece of the wheel and one of the saint's arms-was moved to a transept window where it can still be seen today. Soon thereafter, the Princeton fragments found their way into this glass medallion and surfaced in a sale at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris as part of the collection of the dealer Raoul Heilbronner.

Information

Title
Martyrdom of Saint George
Dates

13th century and ca. 1918-22

Medium
Pot-metal glass
Dimensions
170 × 131 cm (66 15/16 × 51 9/16 in.) frame (exterior of armature): 172.2 × 133 × 7.6 cm (67 13/16 × 52 3/8 × 3 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Trumbull-Prime Fund, in 1924
Object Number
y71
Place Made

Europe, France, Eure-et-Loir, Chartres

Culture
Materials

Chartres Cathedral choir clerestory; removed 1773 or 1788 and stored (?); used to repair Vendome Chapel window partially destroyed in French Revolution and restored 1816, where upper left quadrant seen and described in 1858; stored in crypt during World War I; removed from Vendome Chapel window; sold Hotel Drouot, June 23, 1922 [Collection Raoul Heilbronner, d. 1941]; bought by E. Ruegg, Lausanne, who wrongly stated it was from the collection of Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc; sold to Frank Jewett Mather, 1924.