God Son

Stylistically the window is sometimes placed in a transitional phase between mature Art Nouveau and early Art Déco — this is, however, a stylistic-comparative judgement, requiring an argument drawn from the literature and not decidable from the glass alone. The Art Nouveau line still works in the drapery of Christ’s mantle (the organic undulation of reds and purples, the rhythm of the ribbons) and in the ornament of the crowning zone; but the composition as a whole is organised axially, with the geometric discipline of symmetry, classicising lettering and an ‘architectural’ rhythm of registers. It is the style of the chancel, differing from the Art Nouveau of the side-aisle windows.

The most characteristic formal element of the window is the dense lead network deliberately conducted like a musical score. Mehoffer breaks up the coloured surfaces (especially in the drapery of Christ’s mantle and in the ‘cloud of glory’ of the upper zone) into hundreds of small fields, which makes the window a rhythmically vibrating composition — the window reads like a score. This virtuoso ‘musicality’ of the mosaic is one of the highest forms of what Mehoffer had striven for from the early windows (The Apostles 1896, The Blessed Sacrament 1900/1901) — a fullness achieved only in the chancel.

The window’s palette is composed of six dominants: ruby (#B0002A) and carmine (#C1121F) in the mantle of the Risen Christ — colours expressing triumph over death; luminous white (#F2F2F2) in Christ’s body and in the Eucharistic chalice; gold (silver stain) in the halo, the host, the attributes of the tetramorph; purple (#4B2E83) in the solemn accents; sapphire and blue (#0F2F8F / #2F6FD6) in the grounds and the sky; accents of emerald green (#2E8B57) in the vegetal ornaments. Together the palette builds an impression of fiery triumph — a triumph that is at the same time a sacrifice.

In the side lancets, on either side of the Risen Christ, run rows of haloed figures — the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Covenant, each nimbus bearing a Latin inscription of the name. Among them ABRAHAM is legible, traditionally associated with the sacrificial lamb (elusive in the available frame) — an allusion to the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22), an Old Testament figure of sacrifice and resurrection. The figures are shown in attitudes of prayer and expectation, their gaze turned towards the centre. Together they form a choir of witnesses of the Old Covenant who foretold the Resurrection — the prophetic counterpart of the four Evangelists of the tetramorph in the base of the window. The Roman guards of the tomb, by contrast, Mehoffer moves into the garden zone below the empty tomb, where they appear as small, felled and dazed figures in armour.

The strongest iconographic decision of the window is to place, in the sacramental band (between the empty tomb and the scene of the Resurrection), two angels holding a chalice and host. This solution deliberately joins the Resurrection to the Eucharist — it indicates that the historical event (the empty tomb at Easter) is not a separate scene from the past but is made present here and now in the liturgical sacrament. The cathedral shepherd celebrating Mass at the high altar has this window directly above him, as a permanent visual Eucharistic sermon. Here Mehoffer gives form to the theology of the Council of Trent (Session XIII, 1551: Decretum de SS. Eucharistia) in a single iconographic gesture.

Beneath Christ stretches the empty tomb / sarcophagus — a narrative attribute of the Resurrection (sarcophagus vacuus). Mehoffer builds the materiality of the tomb out of mosaic fields of colour — the stone of the sepulchre is a mosaic, not a monolithic plane, which deliberately inscribes the motif in the Art Nouveau aesthetic of ‘musical’ colour. The stone rolled aside (Lk 24:2: lapidem revolutum) signals the act of resurrection.

The lowest zone of the window holds a deliberate ‘textual base’: a monumental open book — the Gospels — with inscriptional fragments, surrounded by the four attributes of the Evangelists (the tetramorph, an iconographic canon since the 2nd century, established by Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses III,11,8, canonically confirmed by Jerome): the lion (Mark — the voice of one crying in the wilderness; Mk 1:3); the ox (Luke — the priestly sacrifice of Zechariah in the temple; Lk 1:9); the eagle (John — the contemplative gaze towards the Logos; Jn 1:1); the human figure / angel (Matthew — the beginning of Christ’s human genealogy; Mt 1:1). Together the tetramorph closes the window as a full, canonical representation of the entire New Testament tradition of witness.

The highest zone of the window holds the motif of the heart entwined with a ribbon — a symbol of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, a cult developed in post-Tridentine theology (from the 17th century, the visions of St Margaret Mary Alacoque, 1673–1675) and reinforced in the 19th century by Leo XIII’s encyclical Annum sacrum (1899). The heart entwined with a ribbon is a Christological attribute pointing to love-as-sacrifice: Christ conquers death through an act of love whose centre is the heart pierced on the cross (Jn 19:34).

Surrounding the Risen Christ with the named patriarchs and prophets of the Old Covenant, while at the same time placing the Evangelists (the tetramorph) in the base, builds a programme of promise and fulfilment: the Old Covenant that foretold, and the New that bears witness. The central Resurrection is the hinge between them — the fulfilment of the prophecies to which the raised hands and prayerful gestures of the figures in the side lancets point. In this way Mehoffer inscribes the paschal scene within the full economy of salvation, from Abraham to the witness of the four Gospels.

The tetramorph of the four Evangelists — an unchanging element of Catholic iconography since the 2nd century (Irenaeus) — functions in Mehoffer’s window as a deliberate ‘textual base’: a guarantee that the history shown above (the Resurrection, the Eucharist) is a history confirmed by four independent witnesses. It is an iconological gesture of particular weight in 1918 — in an age when biblical criticism (Bultmann, Schweitzer, the form-geschichtliche school) was undermining the historical reliability of the Gospels. Into the cathedral chancel Mehoffer inscribes a visual affirmation of the canonicity and reliability of the fourfold Gospel tradition.

The introduction of the Most Sacred Heart motif into the crowning zone is the deliberate theological point of the window. Mehoffer says: the ultimate argument for the truth of the Resurrection is neither historical nor philosophical — it is one of love. The heart entwined with a ribbon (a motif of the cult of the Sacred Heart developed after the visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque, Leo XIII’s encyclical Annum sacrum of 1899 consecrating the world to the Sacred Heart) is a sign that God reveals himself ultimately not through proof but through an act of love. It is a theological position close to the French school, at once Neo-Thomist and Augustinian.

Within the Fribourg cycle as a whole ‘God the Son’ performs the function of a Christological clasp, drawing together all the earlier Christological motifs — The Blessed Sacrament 1900/1901 (the Eucharist as the making-present of the sacrifice), Adoration of the Magi 1905 (the Epiphany of Christ), Deacons and Bishops 1917 (the witness of ministry). In ‘God the Son’ all these threads culminate in the act central to Christology — the Resurrection.

Mehoffer’s ‘God the Son’ is a monument of European rank, one of the most original resurrection windows of the 20th century. It combines a masterful iconographic solution (the Eucharist at the centre of the Resurrection scene, the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Covenant as a prophetic base of witness, the tetramorph as a textual base) with stained-glass craftsmanship of the highest standard (the dense ‘musical’ mosaic of lead, the virtuoso Schwarzlot in the modelling of Christ’s body, the masterly silver stain). The gigapixel digital documentation, carried out by the Foundation for the Virtualisation of National Cultural Heritage in 2025, makes possible for the first time a detailed analysis of the modelling of the Risen Christ’s face and of the inscriptions of the names in the prophets’ haloes — data critical for the study of Western European paschal iconography of the interwar period.