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c. 1905-06
Louis Koch, Beauvais, France
Saint Joseph’s University Collection
(formerly in St. Edward the Confessor Church, 1865-1993)
This French window, designed in the Bavarian pictorial style
that so displeased architect Audsley, was placed directly
above the main altar.
The pastor, Fr. Vandegrift defended his choice of windows
in a 1903 brief history of the parish: “The chief aim
of the artist has been to retrace, according to the best traditions
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries... This has been
done, however, without any attempt at copying the archaicism
[sic] or the stiff, angular forms of the period. At the same
time the traditional Catholic spirit, with the genuine devotional
feeling of the past, has been admirably preserved and combined
with the approved requirements of modern taste, which, especially
for a country whose people have not daily before their eyes
the magnificent cathedrals of the ages of Faith and whose
art history reaches back only a few decades of years, was
felt to be all the more necessary...”
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