Featured Stained Glass Fragment

Hi all,
how would you date this stained glass fragment, please? Height is about 19 cm.

 

Painted glass !!!
maybe a piece off a broken door window..

 

With the halo and wings Id guess religious. Its hard to accurately date because the made glass like that for a very long time. Its rather unique,Id hang it !

 

I love that, wherever it's from.

 

Get a really good set of micrometers (the ones shaped like the letter G) and measure the top and then the bottom of the image, if as I suspect this has come from a medieval church the top of the glass will be thinner than the bottom as glass is liquid. BTW that's fantastic, love it.

 

Ok I've just looked it up and it seems it's a myth, it doesn't move at all.

 

Thank you all for your replies! I think it's quite old, but maybe a bit later than medieval, maybe 16th/17th c looking at the style? What do you think?

 

I'd say mid 1800's.....

 

It looks to me as a late 19th or early 20th century baroque revival style. Very nice!

 

Thank you very much, @komokwa and @Ex Libris , 19th c it may well be, even if the glass itself looks older...

 

Welcome back Mat. Beautiful stained glass fragment.

I agree. The overly realistic baby face, with emphasis on sweet and endearing features, indicates later rather than earlier.
That said, it is a beauty, and it could have been part of a church window. In Europe many churches were demolished after ca 1965. Unfortunately.

 

I’d say 1880-1910. Such depictions were found in the U.S. in churches with windows by the likes of LaFarge and Tiffany.

 

Maybe asking these guys would be a good idea?
https://www.vitraux.co.uk/home/

 

Why after 1965? I think I'm missing a bit of history here...

 

That was when the second Vatican council ended (1962-1965), which led to upheaval in RC churches in some European countries, and resulted in fewer people attending services in those countries.

 

Was that the switch from Latin to English, etc., services?

 

Thank you @Any Jewelry, happy to be here again!

And yes, I see the point you all make, the little guy does fit better to 19th - early 20th c. I like him very much, too, Im glad I found him...

 

A late vote for late nineteenth. As aj says, that face is typical.

 

Pope John XXIII and the so-called "Tramontana theologians" (Tramontana means over the mountains = north of the Alps) intended to modernize the Church and bring back the ethics of early Christianity as well as reach out to other faiths.
Pope John XXIII called it the "Aggiornamento", bringing the Church up to date. This also meant abolishing celibacy, ordination of women, and acceptance of divorce, among others.
The switch from Latin to the vernacular (most vernacular languages are non-English), so people could understand what was actually being said, thereby giving them the opportunity for a more profound experience of the faith, was to be one of the other changes. Another important change was a greater input of the then "Third World", which had the majority of Roman Catholics.

The Southern European catholics objected strongly to this 'novel' Northern European theological approach. They were joined by most cardinals and bishops from North America and the British Isles.
As a result only a few of the initial ideas made it to the final declaration. This disappointed the Tramontana (Northern Continental) catholics and other modern catholics, which led to many leaving the institute of the church and seeking other, more grass-roots forms of experiencing and living according to the teachings of Christ. Many Tramontana priests left the priesthood, but remained involved in pastoral work.

As an aside:
One of my professors at the theology faculty I studied at, Walter Goddijn, was an advisor during the Second Vatican Council.
The Dutch cardinal, bishops and theologians joined Pope John XXIII at the forefront of the Aggiornamento movement, and in many Southern European churches faithful prayed for our heretic Dutch souls to be saved. Very sweet of them, but I don't think it was necessary.

 

Great info, thanks AJ! Vernacular was the word that just wasn't coming to me when I was writing! Thanks, senior brain! Ah so it was much more than the switch from the Latin mass. Sounds to me like Pope John XXIII was way ahead of his time and it was too much for the traditionalists. Gee, there's a lot of change that the RC church still hasn't adopted. The Anglican church around the same time came up with the BAS -- Book of Alternate Services -- which puts the service and eucharist in plain language. I get the idea, but the traditional services are still used today (if there's a church with a congregation in it!) and the prose is so much more beautiful. The Anglican church has tried to widen its appeal to attract more congregants, so services are quite different from when I attended church. Sadly, I think the day is not far off when the Anglican church (at least here in Canada) will fade away or be subsumed into another Protestant church.