Design of a Stained-Glass Panel

The design represents the Coat of Arms of the Canton of Bern.

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.