Bust of a Saint

This stained glass represents the bust of a saint with a halo, dressed in antique style, with her head covered by a veil. Her left arm is slightly raised, her index finger extended upwards. She is at the centre of a frieze made of colourless glass pearls, the four spandrels of which are missing. The identity of the saint has not been established, although this type of hieratic representation is generally reserved for the Virgin Mary. This stained glass, which has been added to and repainted numerous times, was heavily modified in the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. The face of the Saint, which is very expressive, is nevertheless representative of the style of the 1200s, a European trend straddling the Romanesque and Gothic periods, characterised by traces of the Antique and Byzantine.

The provenance of this stained glass has not been established. It was donated to the Vitromusée Romont at the time of its foundation. An unsigned and undated note, kept in the archival documentation of the Vitromusée Romont, attributes a French origin to the glass. This hypothesis, which has not been substantiated, can be neither confirmed or refuted.

The panel from Romont can be compared to the Virgin and Child from Flums (SG). The Flums Madonna comes from the chapel of St. James in Gräpplang, where it adorned the only window in the choir. It is not only the oldest figurative stained glass window in the Old Swiss Confederation, dated to between 1180 and 1200, but also one of the only surviving example of Romanesque glass production in Switzerland. As a hypothesis, it is not impossible that the Virgin and Child of Flums, which has been reproduced many times both in colour and in black and white since its discovery in 1884, may have had some influence on the restoration of the panel now preserved in the Vitromusée Romont: the two stained-glass windows have some affinities not only stylistically but also formally.