Stucco panels are produced according to the traditional production technique described by several authors (for example, Foy 2005, pp. 152–154), by pouring gypsum plaster into a frame, which is usually made of wood and has a hollow profile. The design is usually transferred to the stucco panel using stencils and then carved as an openwork relief using various tools (gouge, serrated knife, chisel, file, etc.). Depending on the height and position of the window in the room, the openings are tapered and oriented in such a way that they direct light towards the viewer. The individual openings are then covered with pieces of transparent colourless or coloured sheet glass on the flat, rear of the panel; sometimes one glass piece covers several smaller holes. The pieces are fixed to the stucco panel by being embedded in a thin layer of gypsum plaster. Stucco and glass windows are usually mounted in window openings in their wooden frames, with the sculpted side facing the inside of the room.

The object described here is not framed. According to a detailed examination (Bailly et al., 2008), all but one of the stucco and glass windows (OA 7466/39, IG 168) in the Delort de Gléon Collection were removed from their wooden frames at an unknown date. The lack of round profiles to the now straight edges of the c.18-mm-thick stucco lattice corroborates this hypothesis.

The plaster layer fixing the pieces of glass to the back of the panel has been completely replaced with an off-white plaster. Traces of a shiny, brown glue-like substance around the openings underneath the glass indicate that the pieces of glass were fixed with an adhesive before pouring the embedding plaster layer. There are no remains of the original plaster layer.

The latticework is laid out on two levels: the main design (level 0) was carved out of the stucco panel using a sharp, knife-like tool, following the lines of a preparatory drawing incised on the panel’s surface. The second level (level –1), which lies 4mm below level 0, shows irregularly spaced, conical perforations with diameters of c.4–5mm. The distances between the holes range between 4 and 8mm. The holes seem to have been pierced – rather than drilled – into the still soft (not fully set) stucco using a metal or wooden nail or pin. They are slightly tapered towards the back. The main design and the perforations have been worked in such a way that the incident light is directed downwards, indicating that the window was made to be positioned in the upper part of the wall. At an unknown date, the front of the latticework was painted brown. The back of the panel has been dressed with a sharp tool for better adhesion of the thin plaster layer that holds the pieces of glass in place.

The pieces of glass are of both colourless and coloured glass. The colourless glass sometimes has a greenish or greyish tint. Flashed glass, that is, glass composed of a thicker layer of transparent glass and a thinner layer of strongly coloured material, has been used for the red pieces, and maybe also for the dark-blue ones (see Bailly et al., 2008, p. 10). Some of the pieces of glass show small, elongated and parallel bubbles characteristic of mouth-blown sheet glass, probably produced using the broad-sheet method. The pieces of glass were cut according to the design of the latticework using a diamond cutter, which left scratch marks on some of them. The (colourless) glass has a thickness of 2mm. The coloured glass has been used for the main design at level 0; the small round holes at level –1 are backed with both colourless glass.

Bailly, M., Frenkel, N., Gaymay, S., Hamadène, F., Liégey, A., Picur, V., Setton, J. M., & Tréluyer, V. (2008). Rapport d’etude concernant la collection des vitraux [unpublished research report]. Musée du Louvre, Département des arts de l’Islam.

Delort de Gléon, M. A. A. (1914, March 9). Legs de la collection de M. Delort de Gléon (Cote 20144787/17), Archives de musées nationaux (AMN), Archives nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France.

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