Stucco and glass window with a flower stem

Iconography

Description

The design of this stucco and glass window consists of a flower stem with lilies, carnations, and other coloured flowers; it is arranged symmetrically along a central axis and enclosed within a curved medallion-like frame in red. Yellow carnations adorn the lower left and right corners. The central motif is surrounded by a semicircular arch, decorated with two symmetrically arranged flowers on its inner side. Two four-petalled flowers are set in the spandrels above the arch. The flowers, the frame, and arch are all worked out in relief against a perforated background that lies c.10mm below the surface.

The latticework is painted with a brown colour (see Research).

The window has been restored and is preserved without its original wooden frame (see Technique and Research).

Iconclass Code

25G41(+32) · flowers (+ flowers, blossom, blossoming)
25G41(CARNATION) · flowers: carnation
25G41(LILY) · flowers: lily
48A9877(+2) · ornament ~ medallion (+ framing decorations)

Iconclass Keywords

blossom · blossoming · carnation · flower · flowering · frame · lily · medallion

Materials, Technique and State of Preservation

Materials

Gypsum plaster; colourless glass; coloured glass (green, blue, two shades of yellow, and two shades of red flashed glass); brown paint, wood.

Technique

Stucco panels are produced according to the traditional production technique described by several authors (for example, Foy 2005, pp. 152–154), by pouring gypsum plaster into a frame, which is usually made of wood and has a hollow profile. The design is usually transferred to the stucco panel using stencils and then carved as an openwork relief using various tools (gouge, serrated knife, chisel, file, etc.). Depending on the height and position of the window in the room, the openings are tapered and oriented in such a way that they direct light towards the viewer. The individual openings are then covered with pieces of transparent colourless or coloured sheet glass on the flat, rear of the panel; sometimes one glass piece covers several smaller holes. The pieces are fixed to the stucco panel by being embedded in a thin layer of gypsum plaster. Stucco and glass windows are usually mounted in window openings in their wooden frames, with the sculpted side facing the inside of the room.

The object described here is not framed. According to a detailed examination (Bailly et al., 2008), all but one of the stucco and glass windows (OA 7466/39, IG 168) in the Delort de Gléon Collection were removed from their wooden frames at an unknown date. The lack of round profiles to the now straight edges of the c.20-mm-thick stucco lattice corroborates this hypothesis.

The plaster layer fixing the pieces of glass to the back of the panel is 2–3mm thick. There are two types of plaster, a greyish one (probably original) and a white one (probably repair material). Underneath the pieces of glass, in the area around the openings, there are traces of a brown, shiny substance exhibiting a craquelure; we assume that these are the remains of an animal or vegetable glue that was used to fix the pieces of glass and prevent them from being displaced while pouring the embedding stucco.

The latticework is laid out on two levels: the main design (level 0) was carved out of the stucco panel using a sharp, knife-like tool and following the lines of a preliminary drawing incised in the surface of the panel. The second level (level –1), which lies c.10mm below level 0, shows irregularly spaced, conical perforations with diameters of c.5mm. The holes seem to have been pierced – rather than drilled – into the still soft (not fully set) stucco using a metal or wooden nail or pin. They are slightly tapered towards the back. The distances between the holes range between 1 and 8mm. The main design and the perforations have been worked in such a way that the incident light is directed downwards, indicating that the window was made to be positioned in the upper part of the wall. At an unknown date, the front of the latticework was painted with an ochre-coloured paint and subsequently with a brown varnish.

The pieces of glass are of both colourless and coloured glass. The colourless glass sometimes has a greenish or greyish tint. Flashed glass, that is, glass composed of a thicker layer of transparent glass and a thinner layer of strongly coloured material, has been used for the red pieces, and maybe also for the dark-blue ones (see Bailly et al., 2008, p. 10). Some of the pieces of glass show small, elongated bubbles characteristic of mouth-blown sheet glass, probably produced using the broad-sheet method. The pieces of glass were cut according to the design of the latticework using a diamond cutter, which left scratch marks on some of them. The coloured pieces of glass are slightly thicker (1–1.5mm) than the colourless ones (0.5–1mm). The coloured glass has been used for the floral design at level 0; the small round holes at level –1 are backed with both colourless and yellow glass (the latter along the borders of the panel).

State of Preservations and Restorations

The stucco and glass window is in good condition: the plaster lattice is intact, and the glass does not show any losses or defects.

According to the results of an in-depth examination of the stucco and glass windows of the Delort de Gléon Collection carried out in 2008, this, as well as the other windows from the collection, have been restored five times since their acquisition in Cairo (Bailly et al., 2008, pp. 16–25).

The most recent restoration was carried out after this detailed examination, in 2009–2010 (Fellinger et al., 2022). During restoration, defects and losses in the stucco lattice were filled with white stucco plaster and missing glass was replaced. The new pieces of glass are embedded in a thin layer of off-white plaster on the back of the stucco grille. There are remains of the original grey embedding layer, which is more grainy and less pure than the repair plaster.

History

Research

From a technical and iconographic point of view, this stucco and glass window corresponds to one of the standard types of qamariyya widespread in Egypt during the Ottoman period. However, the motif is much less frequent in the collections studied than, for example, the flowers in a vase or the cypress-tree motif. The special feature of the window’s design is that the central motif is set in a medallion-like frame. This frame is reminiscent of the curved designs characteristic of the Ottoman Baroque style. The Musée du Louvre holds a comparable window (OA 7466/39, IG_168), in which the central motif is also set in a medallion-like frame.

The quality of the execution of the stucco lattice and the precise depiction of the flowers demonstrate remarkable skill and craftsmanship. The colours and material properties of the glass and the latticework – although heavily restored – suggest that the window dates to the late 19th century. This assumption is supported by the results of an analytical study of glass from two stucco and glass windows from the Louvre collection (OA 7466/7, OA 7466/25) conducted by a team from the Musée du Louvre (Fellinger et al., 2022).

As to its origin, the window is one of 39 qamariyyāt supposedly bought in Cairo by the architect Ambroise Baudry (1883–1906) for the French civil mining engineer and art collector Baron Alphonse Delort de Gléon (1843–1899) (Bailly et al., 2008, pp. 16–24). They adorned the Ottoman salon of Delort de Gléon’s hôtel particulier, purchased in 1883, at rue Vézelay 18 in Paris (Volait, 2005, pp. 131–134; Volait, 2009, pp. 99–104, 130–135). This is confirmed by several historical photographs preserved at the Département des Arts de l’Islam (DAI) of the Musée du Louvre, which show the windows inserted in the upper parts of wooden mashrabiyyāt (see Linked Objects and Images). The salon was designed by the baron himself in collaboration with the French architect Jules Bourgoin (1838–1908). The creation of orientalizing interiors, composed of original architectural elements and furnishings as well as replicas of the same, was a widespread practice among Western art collectors at the time (Giese, 2016; Volait, 2016; Giese, 2019).

Based on these photographs and the presumed date of the windows, one may assume that the windows were created especially for Delort de Gléon’s Arab-style interior and had never been part of a historical building in Cairo. The complete history of these windows however, including possibly multiple reuses and several restorations, is difficult to reconstruct. Based on the unpublished study by Bailly et al. (2008) and our own observations, it seems that most of the windows have been cut from their wooden frames. Extensive repairs to the stucco grille, as well as the partial or complete replacement of the thin plaster layer for embedding the pieces of glass at the backs of the panels, are proof of several restoration campaigns. It is likely that the brown paint on the stucco lattice is not original, but was applied during restoration, with the intention of adapting the windows to new surroundings. It may be the result of a restoration campaign before the Louvre exhibition in 1977, and may have been applied to match the colour of the wooden mashrabiyya in which the windows were displayed.

After the death of Delort de Gléon, the stucco and glass windows passed into the possession of his wife, Marie Augustine Angélina Delort de Gléon, who bequeathed them – as part of Delort de Gléon’s collection of Islamic art – to the Musée du Louvre in 1912 (Delort de Gléon, 1914).

Mentioned in:

Anglade et al., 1978, p. 49.
Saule et al., 1999, pp. 217–218.

Dating

Late 13th–early 14th centuries AH / late 19th century CE

Period

1880 – 1899

Previous Locations

unknown

Place of Manufacture

Egypt

Provenance

Owner

Since 1912: Museum of the Louvre, Inventory Number: OA 7466/3, Paris (France), Donation ^L1

Previous Owner

From 1899 until 1912: Delort de Gléon, born Grandcolas, Marie Augustine Angélina, Paris (France)

From 1883 (ca.) until 1899: Delort de Gléon, Alphonse, Paris (France)

Provenance Footnotes

L1 Delort de Gléon, 1914

Bibliography and Sources

Literature

Anglade, E., Bernus-Taylor, M., Desroches-Noblecourt, C. (eds)(1978). L'Egypte et l'expédition française de 1798 à 1801. Mont-de-Marsan, Donjon Lacataye, 1978 /1979. Mont-de-Marsan: Imprimerie Lacoste.

Bailly, M., Frenkel, N., Gaymay, S., Hamadène, F., Liégey, A., Picur, V., Setton, J. M., & Tréluyer, V. (2008). Rapport d’etude concernant la collection des vitraux [unpublished research report]. Musée du Louvre, Département des arts de l’Islam.

Delort de Gléon, M. A. A. (1914, March 9). Legs de la collection de M. Delort de Gléon (Cote 20144787/17), Archives de musées nationaux (AMN), Archives nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France.

Fellinger, G., Juvin, C., Bouquillon, A., Dallel, M., Loisel, C., Trichereau, B. & Groupement solidaire Setto (2022). Éclats de lumière : étude et restauration de vitraux égyptiennes du musée du Louvre. Technè 54, 114–125.

Giese, F. (2016). From Style Room to Period Room: Henri Moser’s fumoir in Charlottenfels Castle. In: S. Costa, D. Poulot, & M. Volait (Eds.), Period rooms. Allestimenti storici tra arte, gusto e collezionismo: Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Bologna, 18-19 aprile 2016 (pp. 153–160). Bologna: Bolonia University Press.

Giese, F. (2019). International Fashion and Personal Taste. Neo-Islamic Style Rooms and Orientalizing Scenographies in Private Museums. In Giese, F., Volait, M. and Varela Braga, A. (eds.), À l’orientale. Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World, 14), Leiden: Brill, pp. 92–110.

Saule, B., Bernus-Taylor, M., Desroches, J.-P. (Eds.) (1999). Topkapi à Versailles: Trésors de la Cour ottomane [Exhibition catalogue]. Paris, Association Française d'action Artistique, RMN.

Volait, M. (2005). La rue du Caire. In Bacha, M. (ed.). Les Expositions Universelles à Paris, de 1855 à 1937 (pp.131-134). Paris : Action artistique de la Ville de Paris.

Volait, M. (2009). Fous du Caire. Excentriques, architectes & amateurs d’art en égypte 1863–1914. L’Archange Minotaure.

Volait, M. (2016). Les intérieurs orientalistes du comte de Saint-Maurice et d’Albert Goupil: des ‘Cluny arabes’ au Caire et à Paris à la fin du XIXe siècle. In S. Costa, D. Poulot & M. Volait (Eds.), The Period Rooms: Allestimenti storici tra arte, collezionismo e museologia (pp. 103–114). Bononia University Press.

Exhibitions

1978–1979: L'Egypte et l'expédition française de 1798 à 1801, Mont-de-Marsan, Donjon Lacataye 14.5.–15.8.1999: Topkapi à Versailles: Trésors de la Cour ottomane, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon

Image Information

Name of Image

FRA_Paris_MuseeDuLouvre_IG_3

Credits

Date

2012

Linked Objects and Images

Additional Images

Paris, Hôtel particulier Delort de Gléon, Ottoman salon

Citation suggestion

Giese, F., & Wolf, S. (2025). Stucco and glass window with a flower stem. In Vitrosearch. Retrieved December 5, 2025 from https://vitrosearch.ch/objects/2712847.

Record Information

Reference Number

IG_3

Image Ordered

Contact Details

For what purpose do you require this image?