Rondel Depicting Holofernes's Army Crossing the Euphrates River, from the Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 1246-48 (stained &...

This panel is one of three at the Museum from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, the spectacular Gothic church built by King Louis IX (later Saint Louis) in 1243-48 to house sacred relics. The building is illuminated by windows fifteen feet high with stained-glass scenes from the Bible. The Museum's roundel is an element from the window devoted to the Apocryphal Book of Judith. Its subject is derived from a mere phrase in the biblical text, which the unknown artist has made into a sophisticated asymmetrical composition with two conversing horsemen, one seen from the back, and a contrasting group of mounted knights. Strong lead lines and brilliant colors contribute to its easy legibility. The Museum's glass was removed in the early nineteenth-century when the chapel was turned into an archive. On a trip to France, Philadelphian William Poyntell bought the three panels, one of the first important acquisitions of medieval stained glass by an American, although the Sainte-Chapelle provenance was not established until l967. Dean Walker, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 110.