The near-identical Annunciation windows at Cheverny and Pontlevoy stand as eloquent witnesses to the working methods of the Atelier Fournier (Julien Fournier & Fils) of Tours, one of the most prolific provincial glass studios of late-nineteenth-century France. Executed within the same year, both windows reproduce the same composition with only minimal adjustment to framing and border, revealing how Fournier’s craftsmen adapted standardised cartoons to differing architectural settings while preserving compositional integrity and devotional coherence.

Each scene presents the familiar narrative with graceful precision: the Archangel Gabriel kneeling upon clouds at the left, the Virgin Mary bowing before her lectern at the right, and a shaft of divine light bearing the Dove of the Holy Spirit descending between them. The richly patterned interior, the tiled floor, and the halo of architectural ornament situate the encounter within the opulent domestic idiom of late-Gothic revivalism. The palette—deep cobalt, ruby, and emerald moderated by pale opal flesh tones—is characteristic of the Tours workshops, whose glazing united vibrant colour with refined linework and delicate modelling.

Serial Production and Circulating Cartoons in the Tours Workshops

The exact correspondence between the two Annunciations illuminates the organised, almost industrial nature of glass production in Tours during the second half of the nineteenth century. Fournier, like neighbouring firms Lobin, Lusson, and Clément, maintained a repertoire of full-scale cartoons from which windows could be replicated for parishes across the Loire Valley. Designs were preserved as intellectual property within the atelier but often circulated through networks of craftsmen who moved between studios, or through printed pattern catalogues available to clerical patrons. In this way, imagery passed fluidly between workshops, creating a recognisable Touraine style distinguished by balanced design, architectural framing, and luminous harmony of colour.

Fournier’s reuse of the Annunciation cartoon exemplifies the dual nature of nineteenth-century stained-glass art—at once devotional and systematic. Repetition permitted efficiency and affordability without abandoning artistry: every commission was individually hand-painted, fired, and assembled, so that even identical designs acquired subtle variations in tone and expression. Such practice reflected the theology as much as the commerce of the age; churches sought visual and doctrinal continuity, and recurring imagery reinforced shared belief. The Annunciation thus became not merely a reproduced picture but a familiar, reproducible emblem of faith, linking rural parishes across the Loir-et-Cher in a single visual language of revelation.

Comparative Context: The English Parallel

This reliance on serial design was by no means confined to France. In England, Edward Burne-Jones, working with William Morris & Co., developed an analogous system in which key cartoons—of saints, angels, and biblical figures—were repeatedly adapted for churches throughout Britain and abroad. His Annunciation of St Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham (1885–1886), reappears with slight variation at Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford, among others. The Virgin’s bowed head, the sweeping drapery of Gabriel’s robe, and the descending beam of light are constants; only the scale, palette, and tracery shift to meet new architectural demands. Burne-Jones’s repetition of types—the serene angels, elongated prophets, and standing apostles that populate his ecclesiastical work—demonstrates the same atelier principle observed at Tours: the use of archetypal designs as vehicles for renewal rather than duplication.

For both Burne-Jones and Fournier, repetition was not mechanical copying but a creative discipline. Each new installation re-interpreted an existing ideal, allowing spiritual constancy to coexist with artistic individuality. In both cases, the craft workshop operated as a living organism, balancing authorship and collaboration, invention and tradition. The repeated cartoon became a means by which sacred imagery could be standardised without losing expressive power—an embodiment of collective devotion expressed through recurrent form.

Synthesis: Craft, Faith, and the Moral Logic of Repetition

Though separated by geography and ideology, the French industrial ateliers and the English Arts-and-Crafts workshops shared a fundamental conviction: that repetition could sanctify both craftsmanship and faith. In France, Fournier’s practice arose from the pragmatic needs of post-Revolutionary church restoration, where efficient production ensured that even the smallest parish could be adorned with stained glass of dignity and splendour. In England, the repetition of Burne-Jones’s designs was underpinned by the moral philosophy of John Ruskin and William Morris, who saw the reuse of cartoons as continuity of hand-craftsmanship and a rejection of industrial anonymity.

Yet the outcome in both traditions was the same: the reaffirmation of stained glass as a medium of permanence. Through the recurrence of sacred figures—the Virgin, the Angel, the Prophet—the image became an emblem of endurance, carrying belief from one generation and one setting to the next. Each repetition renewed the archetype; each hand that traced the same design reaffirmed its sanctity. In this light, the near-identical Annunciations of Cheverny and Pontlevoy, and the echoing Annunciations of Burne-Jones, emerge not as products of formula but as acts of faith in form itself: a testament to the enduring power of repetition to reconcile craftsmanship, devotion, and the divine constancy of beauty.