The Franz
Mayer Company of Munich, Germany was one of the most
prominent producers of 19th century religious stained
glass and remains active in the craft today. Commissioned
during the Gothic revivalist architect P.C. Keeley’s
1877 rebuilding of Boston’s St. Mary’s Church,
the “Nativity” panels would have been situated
within a double lancet window in the church’s nave
walls. Mayer used its signature mouth blown glass for the
piece. In the scene, enclosed within an architectural
border, the Virgin, Joseph, an angel, a shepherd, and an
unidentifiable figure encircle the Christ Child. The
Virgin wears an under layer in blue, symbolizing her
purity, and an outer cloak of several layers adorned with
a pattern of stars. The drapery throughout the piece is
stippled in order to create large folds of light and
dark. Two angels, the left one looking at the viewer and
the right one glancing down, rest atop billowing clouds
and hold a banner proclaiming "Gloria in Excelsis
Deo.” The obvious interest here is in figural,
rather than architectural or landscape, renderings. In
the center background stands a crudely suggested masonry
wall surrounded with stippled foliage and, further back,
the city of Bethlehem is represented through several
buildings outlined in thick black trace lines. The expert
Mayer painting technique is most apparent in the older
man’s sensitively rendered wrinkles and locks of
hair. Silver stain, a glaze made of silver and copper
salts which would have been applied to the back of the
glass and then fired, is evident in the gold detailing of
the architectural motifs, the halos, and the yellow stars
on the Virgin’s cloak. In the upper two angel
panels, the technique explodes into a brilliant display
of celestial light. Historically, these windows mark St.
Mary’s Church’s transition from a poor Irish
immigrant parish to a parish of assimilated and
prospering Irish Americans. Artistically, the panels mark
a conservative style focused on pictorial glass painting.
