The Apostles

Each apostle is assigned a distinct ‘colour temperature’ that builds the figure’s psychology no less effectively than gesture or facial expression.

• Piotr — ‘nocturnal’ palettes: navies (#1A2B5E), dark blues, muted violets; a state of contemplation and inward absorption, matching the gesture of covering the face with the hands.
• Jan, the youngest of the apostles — a ‘luminous’ palette: whites of antique glass, blues of the open sky, accents of vivid red; his figure is the brightest in the whole window.
• Jakub, the pilgrim — a ‘solar’ palette: golden yellows, browns, ochres, evoking the sun of the road and the effort of the journey.
• Andrzej — fiery reds (#B0002A) and bright highlights; the most dramatic in colour, his zone radiates, contrasting with the cool background of the sky.

In this window — the first Mehoffer made in the medium of stained glass — his personal philosophy of lead as an autonomous drawing medium crystallises. The lead line is not confined to a structural role, but leads the drawing: it traces the gestures of the hands, models the folds of the robes, sets the rhythm of the wings of the accompanying figures, and defines the fields of colour as autonomous graphic elements.

This approach — which was to become the hallmark of the entire cycle — Mehoffer developed from studying medieval stained glass (Chartres, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which he studied during his stay in France in 1891–1896) and under the influence of the drawing principles of the Arts & Crafts movement.

The apostles’ faces are modelled in Schwarzlot (grisaille / Schwarzlot) fired in layers. Each is given a distinct, individual psychology: Piotr has the face of a mature man, careworn, almost elderly, his head bowed; Jan — a youthful, open face, raised upwards; Jakub — the face of a wanderer, intent, almost anguished; Andrzej — the face of a man who has accepted his sentence and lifts it towards the light of the cross.

This individualisation is fundamental to the Young Poland, symbolist vision of apostleship — the apostles are not symmetrical ‘saints from a gallery’, but particular persons with their own histories.

The border band, running along the edges of the lancets and between the registers, is built of Art Nouveau plant scrollwork in turquoise (#1FB7A6), emerald green (#2E8B57) and cool blues. In the tracery crownings the scrollwork ornament interweaves with small rosettes and antique-inspired motifs (palmettes).

The border reveals the Parisian heritage characteristic of Mehoffer around 1895: the rhythm of the scrollwork recalls solutions from the studio of Luc-Olivier Merson and the graphic art of Eugène Grasset, whose work Mehoffer knew well from the circle of Samuel Bing’s gallery (L’Art Nouveau).

St John, second from the left, is shown as youthful (the type Iohannes adolescens), beardless, with an open bodily stance and a gesture of the arm directed upwards — towards the luminous vision of Christ in the above-lancet zone. Mehoffer sets him within the typology Iohannes-visionarius: the one who sees (the Gospel, the Apocalypse).

Jego atrybut, the eagle, appears in a medallion at the foot of the lancet as the symbol of the Evangelist (from the tetramorph of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4). The white robe, enlivened by accents of vivid red, signals the purity of a contemplation kindled by the ardour of revelation.

St James, third from the left, is iconographically the type Iacobus peregrinus — James the Pilgrim, patron of the road and of mission (with reference to Santiago de Compostela, the most important medieval shrine after Rome and Jerusalem). Mehoffer shows him in the posture of a wanderer: one foot advanced as if to take a step, a hand raised in a gesture of blessing or address.

The attribute of the pilgrim’s shell (of James the Greater) or of the pilgrim’s flask appears in the base-register medallion or in the details of the robes. The golden yellows and ochres of the palette refer to the pilgrim’s sun.

St Andrew, the fourth (on the right), is shown with a gesture of open arms accepting the sentence of martyrdom. Above him looms the monumental St Andrew’s cross in the form of the letter X (crux decussata), radiating light.

Iconographically Mehoffer draws on the apocryphal legend from the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine (13th c.): on seeing the cross of his execution, Andrew is said to have cried out O bona crux, diu desiderata… (‘O good cross, long desired…’) — receiving the cross not as a defeat but as a gateway to glory. In Mehoffer the X-shaped cross shines rather than darkens — a deliberate reversal of the traditional association of the cross with suffering in favour of the cross as a sign of ultimate victory.

The upper zone of the lancets contains a series of symbolic theological ‘headings’ that extend the psychology of the portraits to the level of a programme of the universal Church.

• The sailing ship above Peter — a traditional symbol Ecclesia militans, the Church militant, sailing across the sea of this world under Peter’s helm (a motif developed from the 2nd c., formulated by Hippolytus of Rome).
• The luminous vision of Christ above John — an apocalyptic moment Iohannes in Patmo.
• The X-shaped cross above Andrew — an enlargement of his individual attribute.
• The scene of the angel battling the demon in the right-hand sector of the crowning lancet — depicts an episode from the legend of St James (the Golden Legend): an angel drives off a black demon summoned by the magician Hermogenes, whom James subdues.

The base register is treated by Mehoffer like a heraldic seal signing each of the lancets. Beneath each apostle sits a medallion with an attribute (keys, eagle, branch / shell, X-shaped cross) and an inscription with the name — S. Pierre, S. Jean, S. Jacques, S. André (French lettering, in keeping with the linguistic context of the canton of Fribourg).

The medallions are framed by a decorative band of plant scrollwork in turquoise and greens — a typically Art Nouveau treatment of the decorative base.

The window’s deepest iconological gesture lies in its deliberate departure from the majestic style typical of nineteenth-century devotional sacred art (Beuron, the Nazarenes, the Munich Mayer school). Mehoffer rejects gallery-apostles in favour of apostles-as-persons: individualised, psychologically complex, marked by their own histories of falling, contemplation, wandering and martyrdom.

This solution places the Fribourg cycle at the very heart of the Young Poland revolution in religious iconography, whose most outstanding representatives besides Mehoffer are Stanisław Wyspiański (the Franciscan stained glass, 1897–1902) and Jacek Malczewski (his symbolist cycles). The same striving for psychological truth is present in Maurice Denis (Atelier d’Art Sacré) in France and Christopher Whall (the Whall School) in England — in 1895 Mehoffer achieves a synthesis of the European sacred avant-garde in a single, monumental window.

The deliberate decision to depict St Andrew’s cross as luminous — rather than dark — is one of the strongest theological gestures of the entire cycle. Mehoffer says here: apostolic martyrdom is not a historical defeat but an entry into glory.

This position is theologically consonant with Leo XIII’s encyclicals on the martyrs (Quod multum 1886, Annum sacrum 1899) and with the movement for the renewal of the cult of the martyrs, culminating in the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius X. ‘The Apostles’ is thus a manifesto of the theology of sacrifice — and a manifesto that almost immediately enters into dialogue with the windows surrounding it, ‘The Martyrs’ (1899/1900) and ‘The Blessed Sacrament’ (1901), forming an iconographic trio in the cathedral’s chapels.

‘The Apostles’ is not only Mehoffer’s first window for the Fribourg cathedral but also his debut in stained glass on a monumental scale. The Fribourg competition of 1895 — announced by the cathedral parish, with the participation of a cantonal commission and of Polish, Swiss, German and French artists — chose the 26-year-old Mehoffer from among a field of established candidates.

The jury’s decision, recognised today as a turning point for twentieth-century European stained-glass art, was in 1895 an act of courage: trust placed in an as yet inexperienced artist. The execution of ‘The Apostles’ confirmed that trust and opened the way for Mehoffer to more than forty years of collaboration with the cathedral.

‘The Apostles’ is followed by the further windows of the cycle:

• ‘Our Lady of Victory’ (FWNDK-WIT-FRI-002, 1897/1898),
• ‘The Martyrs’ (FWNDK-WIT-FRI-003, 1899/1900),
• ‘The Blessed Sacrament’ (FWNDK-WIT-FRI-004, 1900/1901) — closing the early phase of the ensemble;
• then ‘Adoration of the Magi’ (1902/1905), the windows of the mature and expressive phase;
• and finally — in the synthetic phase (1932–1936) — the culmination in the chancel triptych ‘God the Father / God the Son / The Holy Spirit’ and in the monumental historical windows of Fribourg.

The whole ensemble — thirteen windows carried out, more than 280 m² of coloured glass, made over the course of forty years — remains the largest single-authored stained-glass undertaking in twentieth-century European art.

‘The Apostles’ is a monument of European standing for three interlocking reasons:

• Po pierwsze — as historically Mehoffer’s first work on a monumental scale, it is a record of the birth of one of the foremost stained-glass artists of the twentieth century;
• Po drugie — as a manifestation of the Young Poland, psychologising religious iconography, it is a key link joining the sacred art of Wyspiański, Malczewski and Mehoffer to European symbolism (Denis, Whall, Thorn-Prikker);
• Po trzecie — as a monumental display of four apostles-as-persons, it is a theologically profound work, the equal of the finest iconographic programmes of turn-of-the-century sacred art.

The digital gigapixel documentation, produced by the Foundation for the Virtualisation of National Cultural Heritage in 2025, makes possible for the first time a detailed analysis of the micro-textures of the antique glass, the Schwarzlot modelling of the apostles’ faces and the micro-details of the base-register medallions — data crucial for the study of the Kirsch & Fleckner workshop on the threshold of its collaboration with Mehoffer.