Stained Glass Tours in France

There is a particular quality of light in French cathedrals that exists nowhere else on earth, and Charles Hitchcock Sherrill spent years chasing it. This early twentieth-century travelogue is his attempt to bottle that elusive phenomenon, to teach readers how to see what most people miss when they stand before a medieval window. Beginning with the incomparable Sainte Chapelle in Paris and the damaged remnants of Notre-Dame, Sherrill leads readers through the great cathedrals of France, revealing how thirteenth-century glassmakers transformed colored glass into something approaching divine illumination. But this is no dry academic treatise. Sherrill writes with the passion of a man who has stood in Chartres when the morning sun hit the west windows, who has traced the evolution of the craft from its medieval heights through Renaissance restraint and Baroque exuberance. He offers practical touring advice, which chapels to visit at which hour, which windows demand slow and careful viewing, which regional schools developed distinct personalities. Part love letter, part meticulous guide, this book will change how you look at light itself.