EGERI, Carl von

(b. ~1510 ?, d. 1562 Zürich)

Swiss glass-painter and designer. In 1536 he settled in Zurich, where he later represented his guild on the Greater Council and held other civic honours. In 1542 and 1555 he was commissioned to make stained-glass windows for the Rathaus. These constructed a powerful new civic iconography for post-Reformation Zurich. Banner-bearing citizens, with finely detailed armour and portrait heads, are set against abstract patterned grounds, the whole framed in elaborate arches. Appropriate biblical scenes of loyalty to the state (e.g. Judith and Holofernes) fill the corners. Two impressively drawn lions occupy a roundel (1542) surrounded by the arms of the Zurich domains. In a 1557 window (Zurich, Geshaus Schneggen) of similar design, the lions are instead fully Mannerist, with elongated bodies and twisted mouths. Von Egeri evidently adapted his style to the job; in his Muri Abbey windows (1557) St Martin and St George ride tranquil Paolo Uccello horses, while the large figures are set against blue skies surmounting perfectly rendered landscapes.

Many watercolour designs for windows emanated from von Egeri’s prolific workshop in the 1540s; typically, variations on the theme of two figures (usually men) flanking a piece of heraldry. These are fine examples of a strand of late Renaissance international decoration; the elaborate costumes show a debt to Lucas Cranach, while the classicized grotesquerie is adapted from Italian engraved models.

Stained-Glass Panel

The stained-glass panel depicts a standard-bearer from Lavental.

Glass painting began as a national art in Switzerland in the middle of the 15th century, and flourished for 200 years; it then declined in the middle of the 17th century. Glass painting, or more properly glazing, has always been a Northern art and an ecclesiastical art. It was rooted in the Gothic cathedral and blossomed there and flourished as long as the Gothic style endured, languishing when this style gave away to the Italian Renaissance and baroque. The soil which produced Gothic art was that of France, Burgundy, and the Rhine country, and the great ateliers, or glass furnaces, were in these countries. With the rise of the Swiss Confederacy, and the growing wealth and importance of the Swiss states, glaziers from France, Swabia and Burgundy were drawn to the Swiss Cantons, and settled there, forming schools and founding a new national art.

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Stained-Glass Panel

This stained-glass panel represents coats of arms.

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