Saint George

This imposing slab of glass set in concrete (dalle de verre technique) depicts Saint George in armour and nimbus, riding a white horse. With his spear, which he holds firmly in both hands, he pierces the mouth of a dragon lying at his feet, which turns its head to look at him with its dying eyes.

Dalle de verre, a technique invented in the 1930s, differs from stained glass both in the thickness of the glass, which can be up to several centimetres, and in the way it is held together, replacing the traditional lead came with cast concrete. The Romont-born artist Yoki understood the many technical and artistic possibilities of the concrete and glass technique from his first works in the late 1950s onwards. He worked closely with his friend Michel Eltschinger, a glassmaker from Fribourg, who developed this rather new technique like no other in the region.

This Saint George was commissioned from Yoki in 1981 by the Association “Semper Fidelis” to commemorate the entry of the Canton of Fribourg into the Swiss Confederation in 1481. For forty years, this association, which originated in the military, has promoted artistic creation with a view to enhancing the cultural heritage. Although officially presented as a gift to the Fribourg cantonal authorities, the work was specifically designed for the Swiss Stained Glass Museum, the future Vitromusée Romont, which opened that year.

And it was the same Yoki who, together with Dr. Pierre Fasel, was behind the creation of the Museum. With his idea of establishing a museum dedicated to the art of stained glass, he laid the foundation for the first Swiss museum institution specialising in glass art. This seemed appropriate to him for several reasons: Romont had been at the centre of a revival of Catholic religious art in French-speaking Switzerland for more than twenty years, through the work of the Groupe de Saint-Luc. The offices of its leading architect, Fernand Dumas, were in Romont. And Alexandre Cingria, the main driving force behind this revival, lived in the town for several months a year. Moreover, not far from there, the interior of the church of Mézières, built by Dumas in 1939, is entirely covered in glass. In addition to the stained glass windows created by Yoki, it has one of the largest sets of reverse-glass paintings in the world, created by Emilio Maria Beretta.