Foliate Border Section
Unknown Artist
ca. 1140–44
Medium
Pot-metal glass, vitreous paint, and lead
Dimensions
12 1/16 × 7 1/2 × 3/8 in. (30.7 × 19 × 0.9 cm)
Classification
Glass-Stained
Culture
French
Department
Medieval Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of George D. Pratt, 1926
Accession Number
26.218.5
Art Historical Context
This delicate foliate border section, created in France around 1140–44, represents an early example of medieval stained glass artistry. Crafted from pot-metal glass, vitreous paint, and lead, it likely formed part of a larger window in a church or cathedral during the transition from Romanesque to Gothic styles. Such decorative borders, featuring stylized leaves and vines, framed narrative scenes and added rhythmic elegance to sacred spaces, where light filtering through colored glass was seen as a metaphor for divine illumination. The use of pot-metal glass—molten glass colored with metallic...