This blog post is by docent and guest contributor Randy Hans. Join us as he looks into the history of the vibrant, distinctive windows in the Music Room and their design, which spans the centuries.
Visitors to the Rosen House often ask about the beautiful stained glass clerestory windows in the Music Room. Round windows like these, also known as portholes, were originally inspired by “oculi” in Roman buildings, as well as rose windows in Gothic churches. On the exterior, our windows are trimmed in an unusual cast-stone “octofoil” (eight-leaf) pattern, perhaps influenced by similar windows in the Chapter House at Salisbury Cathedral, or the center of the north rose window at Notre Dame in Paris. On the interior, they are encased in simple round metal frames.
Since I talk about them with visitors on my tours, I was curious about the age of the glass roundels in the windows and who assembled them, so I visited the Rosen House archives with Jessa Krick, the Director of Interpretation, Collection, and Archives, to find out more about them. It turns out these windows are made up of both Renaissance and 20th-century glass elements.
Walter Rosen initially purchased nine Renaissance stained glass panels from Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Co., a prominent international art and antiques dealer, who billed Walter on February 8, 1938 for:
"A set of five (5) stained glasses, showing angels with different attributes, from the main church of Baden in Argovia, Switzerland; Swiss late 15th c.
Two (2) stained glasses; one showing a bird with a female head, the other one an angel with a trumpet; Strasbourg, 15th c….from a collection of Mr. F. Maussaire in Paris and were afterwards in the collection of Baron de St. Levee Daguerre.
Two (2) stained glasses, showing kneeling knights on a green background, after the designs of Lucas Cranach; German 16th c. from the collection of Count Einsiedel in Saxony".
To fit the squarish panels into the large round window openings designed by Caramoor’s architect Christian Rosborg, Walter Rosen engaged Henderson Brothers, a noted Manhattan firm in business from the late 19th- to the mid-20th-century that specialized in leaded, stained, and metal-set glass windows.
Steve Racine (RacineArtGlass.com) wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Henderson Brothers and apprenticed under Gorden Henderson, apparently one of the last family members in the business. Steve writes “Henderson Brothers worked with most of New York's prominent architects and did work at the Henry Clay Frick house on Fifth Avenue, Yale University, Princeton University, and hundreds of other locations.”
In his June 23, 1938 letter to Walter, William Henderson, president of Henderson Brothers, proposed a layout using roundels of “norman slab glass,” increasing in size from the center to the outer edge of each window. The roundels were to be decorated with “different grisaille patterns…[of]…stems, leaves and foliage.” Berries and fruit in the grisaille designs were highlighted with bright colors, and genuine silver and gold particles, suspended in a solution, were painted and fused with the glass during firing to create a metallic luster and an antique effect to complement the central Renaissance panels.
Stephen Clare in “Historic Leaded Lights” on buildingconservation.com explains “Norman slab glass…was blown into rectangular molds as a bottle before being cut into small panes when cold. The thickness of the glass, ranging from very thick at the centre of the pane, to very thin at the edges, transmits light in a particularly rich fashion.”
“Grisaille” (pronounced “grizzai” and literally “greyness” in French) is a painting technique that that uses grays or similar neutrals for outlines, shading, and depth. It was first used in late medieval stained glass. The round windows in the Music Room show 15th-, 16th-, and 20th-century examples of grisaille.
The windows in the north wall of the music room feature (left to right) a seraph (detail shown below; plural: seraphim), two knights (possibly donors) flanking the loggia above the Spanish Alcove, and an angel playing a trumpet.
Seraphim, the highest order of the angels, sing the praises of God and are often depicted with six wings and children’s faces. (Seligman’s description of this image as a bird with a female head seems improbable to me.) A seraph and trumpeter angel are apt images for the Music Room.
The five windows on the south wall of the music room (facing the Spanish Courtyard) portray angels holding symbols of the “Passion of the Christ” (Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion), specifically (left-to-right): nails, a spear or lance, a whip, a hammer (shown below), and pincers. The religious subject of the panels lends credence to Seligman’s provenance notes tracing them to the “main church of Baden” in the Swiss canton of Aargau.
To enable viewers to appreciate the richness of these windows from below, the portholes in the thick walls were designed with downward-sloping sills.
The story of how our round windows were created exemplifies how Walter Rosen collaborated with the architect, antiques dealers, designers, and craftspeople in various disciplines (and across centuries, in this case) to create the overall effect in the Music Room and the other period rooms in the Rosen House.
The next time you are in the Music Room -- whether for Afternoon Tea, a concert, or a tour -- take a closer look at the round windows. Which is your favorite? And what’s your favorite stained glass color? (I like the blue.) Let us know!