Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 33 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 3,554 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 14 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 14,167 items Explore
  • 211 items Explore
  • 1,230 items Explore
  • 8,899 items Explore
  • 5,034 items Explore
  • 62 items Explore
  • 165 items Explore
  • 13,201 items Explore
  • 13,620 items Explore
  • 4,802 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,002 items Explore
  • 4,759 items Explore
  • 438 items Explore
  • 267 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 19,992 items Explore
  • 36 items Explore
  • 1,921 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,248 items Explore
  • 456 items Explore
  • 918 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,491 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 792 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 320 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 53 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 7 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 925 items Explore
  • 724 items
  • 95 items
  • 38,168 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,880 items Explore
  • 1,533 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,772 items Explore
  • 9,683 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,781 items Explore
  • 7,364 items Explore
  • 5,217 items Explore
  • 2,005 items Explore
  • 1,195 items Explore
  • 24,695 items Explore
  • 3,547 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 107 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,329 items Explore
  • 24 items Explore
  • 374 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,088 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,821 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,953 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 108 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 128 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,931 items Explore
  • 1,489 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,318 items Explore
  • 1,347 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 849 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 16 items
  • 252 items
  • 314 items
  • 688 items Explore
  • 344 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,535 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,395 items Explore
  • 40,362 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,292 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,897 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 777 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 24,440 items Explore
  • 916 items
  • 65 items
  • 22,850 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,338 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,029 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 515 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,308 items Explore
  • 180 items
  • 59 items
  • 455 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 133 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 283 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 276 items Explore
  • 511 items
  • 11,300 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,024 items Explore
  • 8,517 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,986 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,883 items Explore
  • 182 items
  • 19 items
  • 152 items
  • 7 items
  • 855 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 270 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,250 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,543 items Explore
  • 694 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,739 items Explore
  • 95 items
  • 18,932 items Explore
  • 3,137 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 11,005 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,475 items Explore
  • 35 items
  • 13,325 items Explore
  • 3,459 items Explore
  • 5,644 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 52,542 items Explore
  • 41 items
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,949 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 445 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 217 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,765 items Explore
  • 1,395 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,542 items Explore
  • 913 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 316 items
  • 504 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 2,289 items Explore
  • 1,671 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,877 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 80 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,089 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,670 items Explore
  • 23,808 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,379 items
  • 177 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 92 items
  • 2 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,587 items Explore
  • 3,748 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,537 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 30 items
  • 6,910 items Explore
  • 4,842 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,818 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,899 items Explore
  • 191 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 421 items Explore
  • 6,113 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,837 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,943 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,122 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 86 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,517 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,148 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 75 items
  • 17 items
  • 155 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 458 items
  • 2 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,613 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 10,564 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,808 items Explore
  • 1,167 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,568 items Explore
  • 1,921 items
  • 18 items
  • 6,073 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,948 items Explore
  • 1,418 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,185 items Explore
  • 14,897 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 16 items
  • 5,681 items Explore
  • 12,285 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,194 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 688 items Explore
  • 8,409 items Explore
  • 63 items
  • 1 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 5,034 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,713 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 3,687 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,245 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 1,626 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,139 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 225 items Explore
  • 80,502 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,139 items Explore
  • 2,820 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 5,352 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,513 items Explore
  • 4,931 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,175 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 13,224 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,709 items Explore
  • 217 items
  • 17,039 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 632 items Explore
  • 1,592 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,129 items Explore
  • 389 items
  • 2 items
  • 354 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

Stained glass windows

possibly Bernaert van Orley (Brussels c.1488 - Brussels c.1541)

Category

Stained glass

Date

1522 - 1530

Materials

Stained Glass

Order this image

Collection

Vyne Estate, Hampshire

NT 719818

Caption

This exceptional scheme of early 16th-century stained glass was commissioned sometime before 1533 by William, 1st Baron Sandys (c.1470–1540), who served as Lord Chamberlain to King Henry VIII (1491–1547). It was probably designed for the chapel of The Vyne, his house in Hampshire, where it can be seen to this day. The scheme included scenes from the life of Christ and (unusually) three royal portraits – a young Henry VIII, his first wife Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), and his sister Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489–1541), together with their patron saints. Sandys could never have known how quickly the design would become outdated: following the annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine, the monarch famously went on to have five further marriages. The quality and craftsmanship of the glass panels are among the best in Europe, and for a long time they were thought to have been designed by a talented émigré artist. However, recent research has indicated that they were, in fact, crafted by numerous different glaziers, a common practice when a large commission had to be fulfilled.

Summary

Three early sixteenth century stained glass windows, each having six panels. The upper panels show scenes from the passion of Christ; the lower contain portraits of King Henry VIII, his first wife Catherine of Aragon, and his sister Margaret, Queen of Scotland. These windows are considered the most important stained glass in possession of the National Trust, and are amongst the most important glass in the country.

Full description

The early sixteenth century stained glass now in the east windows rivals that commissioned by Henry VIII for King's College Chapel, Cambridge, made in 1515-17 and 1526-47. For brilliance of colour and jewel-like clarity, it has no match in England. The commission of the stained glass, either for The Vyne or initially for the chapel of the Holy Ghost, Basingstoke, together with the tiles for the Tudor house, now also in the Chapel, reveal Sandys as an important patron of foreign craftsmen at a time when a new mercantile élite in the great ports of northern Europe was encouraging a growing trade in luxury goods and ideas between England, Flanders, Germany and Italy. David Joris, a glazier from Bruges who was trained in Antwerp, was one of a group of ten glaziers who were taken into Sandys's service at Calais early in 1522 and came with him to England. They stayed at The Vyne for only a few weeks, probably making preparatory drawings, before Sandys had to return to Calais to prepare for the Emperor Charles V's visit to England. Bernard van Orley (c.1491/2 – 1541), court painter to the Regents of the Netherlands, may have been the chief designer of the Chapel glass, although he is unlikely to have actually painted it. At Brussels he supervised the weaving of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel in Rome from Raphael's famous cartoons (now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum). Certainly, the monumental figure of St Margaret of Antioch and the delicate blue-green landscapes in the upper windows suggest a close scrutiny of the cartoons, and a departure from the stylistic conventions of fifteenth-century Flemish panel painting, in which van Orley had been trained. The rich abundance of ornament on the fantastical, open loggia structure in the lower scenes remains traditionally Flemish, although indebted to north Italian prints, while the architecture itself is Italian in inspiration. At first sight, the glass seems to be an exact fit, but closer inspection reveals it to have been cut down at the top of some of the lights; it is certainly not in its original state. Although the presence of royal figures sometimes prevented glass from being destroyed during the Reformation, it is unlikely that the windows would have remained untouched through the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most recent research by Hilary Wayment suggests that the windows were originally part of a larger cycle commissioned by Sandys for the Holy Ghost Chapel, Basingstoke, in the 1520s, when he was refounding the chantry and building the Holy Trinity Chapel there. In 1524 Sandys shipped glass direct from Flanders for the Holy Ghost Chapel, which included more scenes than are now at The Vyne, possibly making a complete cycle of the lives of Christ and the Virgin. Other fragments from the cycle survive in the churches of St Michael, Basingstoke, and Woolbeding, West Sussex. Portraits of Sandys and his wife as donor figures would probably have been included, as these fragments include parts of their personal arms. The glass may have been removed from the Holy Ghost Chapel during the Civil War, when lead was stripped from its roof. It could have been placed in the Chapel by Edward Chute, who owned The Vyne from 1685 to 1722, as the arms of Chute impaled by Keck, marking the union of Edward Chute and Katherine Keck, appear in the top left-hand window. However, in the early seventeenth century some restoration took place, which suggests that it may have been installed here in the 1630s during the last years of Sandys ownership. At this period Archbishop Laud was encouraging the enrichment of churches, and new vestments and other chapel textiles incorporating the Sandys arms from this period survive (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum). The glass was last releaded by Sir Charles Chute in the 1940s. If the glass is a later introduction, what was here originally? Sandys may have had areas of clear glass, including a less ambitious cycle of small-scale biblical scenes and much scattered heraldry. Some of the heraldic fragments now in the Ante-Chapel and those given to St Michael's church, Basingstoke, by Sir Charles Chute, may have been part of this scheme.

Credit line

The Vyne, Chute collection (National Trust)

Makers and roles

possibly Bernaert van Orley (Brussels c.1488 - Brussels c.1541), designer

References

Howard and Wilson 2003: Maurice Howard and Edward Wilson, The Vyne: A Tudor House Revealed, The National Trust, London, 2003, p. 55 Wayment 1980: Hilary Wayment, ‘The Stained Glass in the Chapel at The Vyne’, National Trust Studies (London, 1980), 35-48 Wayment 1982: H. G. Wayment, 'The Stained Glass of the Chapel of the Vyne and the Chapel of the Holy Ghost, Basingstoke', Archaeologia 107 (1982): 141-52 Bolland 2024: Charlotte Boland et al, Six Lives, The Stories of Henry VIII's Queens, exh.cat., National Portrait Gallery, London 2024, p. 53, fig. 13.

View more details