Passavant le Meilleur. Champagne in the time of the counts

The title of the Cité du Vitrail exhibition calls for an explanation: « Passavant le meilleur » is the rallying cry to the banner of the counts of Champagne. This is how it is defined in the catalogue, whose richness must be emphasised: no fewer than 574 pages, with essays and entries in abundance. It is, without question, a considerable undertaking that must be acknowledged.
It should be noted, which is clearly not a criticism but a simple clarification for our review, that this is above all a historical exhibition in which many highly evocative documents and objects are presented, but which, for the most part, do not belong to the artistic field. One nevertheless finds important works of art, such as a stone statue of Isabelle of France (ill. 1) from the collegiate church of Notre-Dame de Poissy, a reliquary of the Holy Sepulchre preserved in Pamplona Cathedral, a sculpture of Jeanne of Navarre (ill. 2) belonging to the Berlin museums, or a few illuminated manuscripts.

But what makes this exhibition of immense interest for art historians, and which alone justifies the journey to Troyes (a splendid city, moreover, with churches full to overflowing with works of art), is the first-ever gathering of all the surviving stained-glass fragments (eighteen in total) very probably originating from the axial chapel of the cathedral, dated to the end of the 12th century (ill. 3). After the disappearance of this Romanesque chapel, these windows were partly reused in other openings and eventually dispersed. It is to Louis Grodecki, who first identified their origin, that we owe their…