Chartres Appollinare Window

The brilliant blue and red glass in one window in the south transept stunned me. This was my favorite window and I stared at it for 15 minutes, trying to figure out the story without success. Also, there is an inscription at the bottom that I couldn’t read.

At home, I found a great website that describes the windows and statues at Chartres from Alison Stones, a Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh with a detailed discussion of this window. From the website, this window is Apollinare and the Choirs of Angels depicting the life of Apollinare. Saint Apollonaris (Apollinare in Italian), a native of Antioch became the first bishop of Ravenna and Classe and who was martyred for his faith. On the left side, fourth full square from the top shows Apollinare being beaten and the next square depicts the funeral. The panels above represent the Choirs of Angels. Christ in Majesty is the very top center panel. The website provides a photo of each of the panels along with rich detail.

I made several exposures from -2 to 2 stops, ranging from 0.8 seconds to 10 seconds, f7.1, 100 ISO. For the walls, the image that best captured the dirt and grime from 800 years was the property exposed image. The best image of the window came from the photo that was one stop underexposed. I cut and pasted the window from that version onto the other image. I then used PTLens to pull the top of the image forward, eliminating barrel distortion.

churchcathedralphotoAppollinare windowAppollinarestained glassstained glass windowChartresLady of ChartresKent Beckernot my day job photographyFrance