Zettler Stained Glass Window
This late 19th-century stained-glass depiction of the crucifixion traveled across continents, cities, and the Notre Dame campus, before finding a home in Badin Hall’s St. Stephen Chapel.
The window is one of a set of seven produced for a Chicago convent by the firm of Franz Xaver Zettler in Munich, Germany. Notre Dame alumni Charles Hayes and Jon Ritten donated them to the University, and from 1978 onward they were in the collections of the Snite Museum of Art. In 2018, when Badin Hall underwent a renovation, architects incorporated these contemporaneous windows into the 1897 building’s new design. '
Zettler founded his own stained-glass company in 1870, after working in his father-in-law’s religious art firm. In 1873, Bavarian King Ludwig II became a patron of Zettler’s studio, the Bayerische Hofglasmalerei, carrying on the role of German royalty in the 19th-century revival of stained glass arts.'
Stained glass had served as a central feature of German churches in the Middle Ages, teaching biblical narratives to a mostly-illiterate audience. The faithful of the 1800s idealized the medieval period as a time of religious and societal unity, and they revitalized the stained glass industry in their effort to instill these values in a modernizing population.
While proponents of 19th-century stained glass romanticized a bygone era, manufacturers like Zettler employed new and innovative techniques in windows like this one. Unlike medieval stained glass, in which a lead frame separates every colored panel, modern German windows consisted of larger, multicolored sheets with fewer interruptions, as shown by the women’s garments in this crucifixion scene. A team of specialized employees at Zettler produced windows in a two-step process, melting the glass at high heat and then painting the finished sheets with advanced techniques like stippling, smear painting, and line drawing, apparent in the details on Christ’s body.
These artistic practices comprise a central part of the “Munich Style,” characteristic of Zettler and his rival firms. German windows looked more like paintings than architectural features, inspired by the Nazarene movement. Zettler’s own studio even brought three-point perspective into stained-glass art.
German manufacturers shipped Munich-style windows across the Atlantic in individual panes, and local craftsmen assembled them upon arrival. Despite a 45% tariff imposed on imported stained glass in the United States after 1894, churches kept enthusiastically purchasing German glass until World War II for its quality craftsmanship and distinctive imagery.
At the turn of the 20th century, both Badin Hall and Zettler windows were constructed to spiritually inspire and educate their communities. In this way, Badin’s stained-glass crucifixion reflects the history of its new home today.