Trinity windows - Index   .......................  Trinity Episcopal Church - Table of Contents

LaFARGE CHANCEL WINDOWS
Trinity Episcopal Church

389 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY
Trinity Episcopal Church - Official Home Page

Designer: John LaFarge
Date installed: 1886
Style: Opalescent

On this page, below:

LaFarge stained glass windws

Chancel windows

Ascension

Noli Me Tangere

Transfiguration

Epiphany

The Repose in Egypt

2009 Photos

John LaFarge designed five windows as a set for the chancel with scenes of Christ's life based on Flemish and Italian Renaissance paintings.

Trinity Church possesses some of the finest stained glass in America.

The five magnificent windows in the apse and the rose window are by John LaFarge who developed a new method of manufacturing semi-translucent glass that simulated painted effects.

Opalescent glass is a system of manipulating glass to alter its thickness and surface, giving it a milky appearance. The glass is colored chemically in process, eliminating the need for surface painting except for face and hand details. LaFarge's techniques developed a whole new industry of glassmaking.

Lafarge's great contemporary, Louis Comfort Tiffany, popularized the process.

Trinity Church is one of only two places in the world where the work of these two art-glass pioneers sit side by side. Altogether there are five Tiffany windows in addition to ten superb items of LaFarge.

Between 1886 and 1897, eighteen impressive memorial windows were installed in the sanctuary

Trinity's Church Furnishing Society raised $56,000 for refurbishing the building and contracted with the LaFarge Decorative Art Company to decorate the chancel.

After traveling to Buffalo to meet with the architect and Building and Furnishing committees, LaFarge received additional contracts for the Rose Window, 5 lancet windows, and for 14 temporary nave windows. When the church opened in 1886, all the glass was by LaFarge.

Over the course of the years most of the temporary windows were replaced with memorials done by some of the major glass studios and/ or designers of the nineteenth century.






Nave and chancel



Five chancel windows   ...   Stained Glass -Table of Contents





Ascension

.............
LEFTAscension, by John LaFarge    ...     Iconography in Art and Architecture: Ascension     ...    RIGHT:  LaFarge adapted Andrea Mantegna's ca. 1460 Ascension painting for his Ascension window.
Seven LaFarge Ascension details below:


Ascension detail #1 - Quatrefoil at top   ...   Paired trefoils with  mouchettes



Ascension detail #2 -  Opalescent glass



Ascension detail #1  - Apostles   ...   Faces and hands enamel painted and refired    ...   Rest of the glass is  opalescent



Ascension detail #4 -




Ascension detail #5 -



Ascension detail #6 -



Ascension detail #7  - Predella





Noli Me Tangere

...........
LEFT: John LaFarge,  Noli Me Tangere (Resurrection)     ...   Iconography in Art and Architecture: Resurrection    ...   Based on a painting by Florentine Renaissance artist Lorenzo di Credi, the window shows Mary Magdalene returning to the empty tomb and mistaking the risen Christ for a gardener. He holds a hoe in his right hand. When she then recognizes Him and reaches out, he tells her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the father," and sends her to tell the disciples. The landscape features a palm tree, a symbol of victory over death, and Jerusalem is suggested in the background.
Given by Charlotte Sherman Watson in memory of her husband, Stephen van Renssalaer Watson, a vestryman of the old Trinity church. (She also commissioned another LaFarge window, The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes, that is found in the side chapel of the church.)    ...   Three details below:


Noli Me Tangere (Resurrection)  detail #1 - The landscape features a palm tree, a symbol of victory over death, and Jerusalem is suggested in the background.    ...    Iconography in Art and Architecture: Palm tree



Noli Me Tangere (Resurrection) detail #2    ...   This window was given by Charlotte Sherman Watson in memory of her husband, Stephen van Renssalaer Watson, a vestryman of the old Trinity church.    ...   Charlotte Sherman Watson also commissioned another LaFarge window at Trinity, The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes




Noli Me Tangere (Resurrection) - Detail #3





Transfiguration
...
Transfiguration      ...    In the central Transfiguration window, Peter, James, and John accompany Jesus to a mountaintop where they see the transfigured Christ converse with Moses and Elijah.    ...    Iconography in Art and Architecture: Transfiguration    ...    Based on a painting by Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini    ...   Three details below:


Transfiguration  detail #1 -  Multifoil  wheel window    ...   Two mouchettes




Transfiguration  detail #2 - Moses holding the Ten Commandments




Transfiguration  detail #3 - Jesus




Epiphany

...........
Epiphany     ...    LaFarge reproduced part of the Bladelin Altarpiece of Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464) for the Epiphany window. The Magi, representing three ages and races, kneel in awe of the Christ Child. To quote John LaFarge, "The star is Christ, a guide for men lost in the world."    ...   Iconography in Art and Architecture: Epiphany       ...    Three details below:


Epiphany detail #1




Epiphany detail # 2




Epiphany detail # 3





The Repose in Egypt
..........
The Repose in Egypt   ...   The Repose in Egypt portrays the story of the angel's warning to Joseph and the flight to Egypt. Joseph gives the Rose of Jericho to Mary, which according to legend, grew wherever the Holy Family rested.    ...   LaFarge may have used Fra  Bartolomeo's Rest on the Flight into Egypt c. 1500  a starting point    ...      Iconography in Art and Architecture:  Flight Into Egypt    ...     Iconography in Art and Architecture: Saint Joseph    ...    Two details below:


  The Repose in Egypt  detail # 1    ...   James P. White and his wife Mary Anna Dobbins gave this window in memory of his adoptive parents Dr. James P. and Mary Elizabeth Penfield White.     ...   Dr. White was a co-founder of the University of Buffalo's medical school and a member of the Christ Church vestry.



The Repose in Egypt  detail #2






Special thanks to Trinity Episcopal Church Rector The Rev. R. Cameron Miller and Development Director Coleen Fahey for their cooperation and assistance


Photos and their arrangement © 2009 Chuck LaChiusa
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