Inside the Window: Medieval Stained Glass before the Romanesque Period (c. 850–1130)

Alberto Virdis, Ph.D.

Long regarded as a quintessential art form of the High Middle Ages and closely tied to the development of Gothic architecture, stained glass in fact originated centuries earlier, already in Late Antiquity, by the fifth century. All surviving evidence consists of archaeological fragments, which recent research has begun to recover and reassess, making it possible to outline a preliminary – yet still highly incomplete – history of stained glass in its earliest phases.
Building on the previous project Fragmented Images (2023–2025, CEMS, Brno), devoted to the fifth through ninth centuries, Inside the Window: Medieval Stained Glass before the Romanesque Period (c. 850–1130) seeks to bridge the gap between the late Carolingian age and the first preserved windows of the twelfth century. The project integrates archaeological evidence with written sources and situates fragmentary material remains within their broader aesthetic and art-historical contexts.
Several unresolved questions will be addressed: the transition from geometric to figurative glazing; the emergence of narrative stained glass; the development of glass-painting techniques (grisaille, silver stain); the diffusion of stained glass on a European scale; the shift from early medieval small-scale windows to the monumental Romanesque stained glass programs; and the chronology of the transition from early medieval cylinder-blown glass to Romanesque crown-blown glass.