This standing, barefooted figure holds a partially obscured book in his left hand while he strokes his beard with his right. His gesture and his furrowed brow lend a sense of pensive melancholy to his face. The style and technical virtuosity of this fragment associate it with a series of impressive fragments of the same date that were produced for a church in Troyes and are now divided among museum collections in France, England, Canada, and the United States (including another panel at Glencairn: 03.SG.185). This figure may have come from a window surveying the public life of Christ. His expression may reflect his thoughts on the scene that he witnesses. (Michael Cothren, Consultative Curator of Medieval Stained Glass)
Sources:
- Elizabeth Carson Pastan, “J. Pierpont Morgan and the Collecting of the 12th-Century Stained-Glass Panels from Troyes.” In Tim Ayres, et al., ed. _Collections of Stained Glass and their Histories_. Transactions of the 25th International Colloquium of the Corpus Vitrearum in Saint Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, 2010. Bern, 2012. pp. 227–238.
- Elizabeth Carson Pastan, “Fit for a Count: The Twelfth-Century Stained-Glass Panels from Troyes.” _Speculum_ 64 (1989), pp. 338–372.
- Charles T. Little, “_Membra Disjecta_: More Early Sainted Glass from Troyes Cathedral.” _Gesta_ 20 (1981), pp. 119–127.
- Jane Hayward and Walter Cahn, et al., _Radiance and Reflection: Medieval Art from the Raymond Pitcairn Collection_, exhibition catalog, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982, pp. 108–109.
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