Composite Window - Stoning of St Stephen and Martyrdom of St Catherine

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SS Stephen Catherine

 

This window is a composite assembly combining fragments of sixteenth-century stained glass with nineteenth-century architectural structures and extensive twentieth-century restoration. The present arrangement consists of five tall lancets surmounted by a unified canopy system reconstructed in 1852, with bases and pedestals also installed at that time.

Reading the lancets from left to right, the composition includes:
— a landscape panel (restored and repainted c.1980);
— the stoning of St Stephen, shown across two lancets, with six executioners hurling stones at the deacon (heavily restored; sixteenth-century fragments from Saint-Godard incorporated);
— a scene of the martyrdom of St Catherine and her companions, here shown being torn from the wheel or attacked by soldiers (restored and recomposed using surviving fragments);
— a second landscape panel (c.1980).

The upper lights contain a composite Gothic canopy, largely nineteenth-century in origin but reworked in the twentieth century. Decorative grisaille and ornamental glazing, inserted during the 1980 restoration campaign, fill the spandrels and tympanum, including modern fermaillets. The abbey’s coat of arms is also incorporated into the decorative scheme.

The sixteenth-century elements come from the former church of Saint-Godard in Rouen. These fragments were in poor condition when transferred and have been significantly retouched, completed, or recomposed, first within the 1852 framing and again during the major restoration carried out by Durand around 1980. Only isolated figures and portions of drapery retain original painting.

Photographic documentation survives in the form of archival photomontages and survey images in the Archives Photographiques and the Monuments historiques series, recording the state of the window before and after the 1980 restoration.

Despite its heavily reconstructed nature, the window preserves rare remnants of mid-sixteenth-century Rouen glass painting, set within a later architectural and decorative framework that reflects the long and complex conservation history of Saint-Ouen’s glazing programme.