Stained glass commemorating the 50th birthday of Fernand Dumas
Alexandre Cingria (1879 – 1945), Atelier Herbert Fleckner, Fribourg, 1942
Stained glass without lead came, pot-melted coloured glass, lined acid-etched glass, attached to glass plates painted with grisaille and silver stain. 39 x 64.5 cm
Vitromusée Romont, gift of Colette and Pierre Bisenz-Dumas, VMR 682
This triptych, created by Alexandre Cingria for the birthday of the architect and co-founder of the Groupe de Saint-Luc, Fernand Dumas, features the dedication “To Fernand Dumas / his friends in memory / of 4 January 1942” in the centre, below which is the silhouette of the hill at Romont, where Dumas had his office. Two angels and a helmet complete the lower part of the composition. The upper register shows church steeples and pediments that celebrate the architect’s intense productivity and the 20 years of collaboration between the two men (recognizable among them are the churches of Orsonnens, Notre-Dame dite du Valentin in Lausanne, Saint-Pierre in Fribourg and Semsales).
A T-square, a protractor and an architect’s plan also symbolise the profession of the recipient. The side panels are dedicated to Saint Andrew (left) and Saint Ferdinand III of Castile (right), an allusion to the architect’s name; at their feet are two long inscriptions that mention the names of his friends, testifying to the important network surrounding him. The Herbert Fleckner studio, which produced this stained glass in close collaboration with Cingria, used a special technique developed in the early 1940s that dispensed with the traditional lead came by inserting the coloured glass between two sheets of transparent glass, to which it adhered when fired. This process not only solved the problem of lead shortages during the war, but also gave the stained glass an extra luminosity, which is the effect the artist was aiming for.