Final words

The project has been completed and it has achieved its main aims: we have documented and recorded the condition of the monumental stained glass windows from the Carmelite Church at Boppard, photographed them, conserved them and they have been returned to display in much improved condition.

45.487.2.c-d Left: Before conservation 2012 – Right: After conservation 2014

 With careful resource planning and prioritising treatment we have been able to achieve more than was originally anticipated and all three windows are back on display. Two of them have a new frame system which will keep them safe and in good condition for the years to come.

I was able to see almost all of the stained glass from the Carmelite Church that is distributed among Museums and historic buildings in the US and in Germany and to compare the condition of this glass with the glass held at the Burrell. This research has helped inform our conservation decisions and significantly contributed to the understanding of the restorations undertaken in the 19^th and early 20^th century. The project has enabled us to connect with conservators, archivists and historians in these other institutions and helped to further our knowledge and understanding of this important part of European heritage.

The scientific analysis undertaken by Cardiff University was very useful as we were able to prove the presence of a copper based resinate paint. This use of unfired paint was perhaps not so unusual in early stained glass but it rarely survives. The analysis of fired paints, cold retouching and other surface accretions was less conclusive, either because the samples were too contaminated by lead or because the results could not be matched to existing databases with absolute certainty. It confirmed that more research needs to be undertaken in this field.

While Megan and I carried out most of the treatment, we were much helped by Katie Harrison for the last weeks of the project. In total we cleaned about 60 m² of glass, we secured torn lead and replaced putty, and worked on improving support structures.

Megan and Katie cleaning 45.487.x

 John Rattenbury, was a huge support during the project. He helped us with digital media and made a massive contribution to the blog. As a volunteer guide, his help was a donation to the project and to thank him we presented him with a donor panel that Megan and I made ourselves – albeit not during working hours.

John’s donor panel

While clearly not strictly an exercise in conservation, this was a great opportunity for us to try out some of the technology that would have gone into making the Boppard stained glass and it made us really appreciate the skill and cost of these windows made by two workshops between 1443 and 1446.

The last 2 years have been a real highlight in my career giving me the opportunity to focus on a conservation project in the discipline that I originally trained in and I am very grateful to the Clothworkers’ Foundation for making that possible.

Marie Stumpff

Examples of Writing in Stained Glass

Shown below is a selection of panels showing details of the writing, placed in date order. Looking at examples in our collection, it seems that early inscriptions on glass are commonly white writing on a black background. The area would have been completely painted with black enamel, then the writing would have been scraped out using something like a sharp stick.

By the early 1300s, the writing is black on a white background. The skill of working with black enamels has improved greatly, and shading and stippling techniques make the images far more painterly. The writing continues to become more refined and ornamental.

Beatrix van Valkenburg panel and a detail of the writing.

Beatrix van Valkenburg

English, late 13^th century

Sacrifice of Isaac panel and a detail of the writing.

Sacrifice of lsaac

German, 1278, from the church of St.Thomas, Strasburgh

The Visitation panel and a detail of the writing.

The Visitation

German, late 14^th century

Annunciation panel and a detail of the writing.

Annunciation of the Virgin

English, Hampton Court, 1400-1430

Judgement of Solomon panel and a detail of the writing.

Judgement of Solomon

German, Cologne, early 15^th century

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba panel and a detail of the writing.

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

German, Cologne, early 15^th century

St Barbara panel and a detail of the writing.

St Barbara

German, Rhineland, early 15^th Century

Arms within Garter of Sir Henry Fitzhugh panel and a detail of the writing.

Arms within Garter of Sir Henry Fitzhugh

English, early 15^th century

Crucifixion panel and a detail of the writing.

Crucifixion

English, 1450-1500

St John the Evangelist and a kneeling Soldier panel and a detail of the writing.

St John the Evangelist and a kneeling Soldier

Probably from the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, England, 15^th century

St Mary Magdalen panel and a detail of the writing.

St Mary Magdalen

English, 15^th century

St Nicholas Preventing an Execution panel and a detail of the writing.

St Nicholas Preventing an Execution

South Netherlandish, 1509-1513

St Francis panel and a detail of the writing.

St Francis

Swiss, 1671

The decoration on Greek vases from Athens between the 6^th and 4^th centuries BC show a parallel to the white on black then black on white writing in stained glass, but in reverse. The decoration begins with black figure decoration, where the leather hard pot has the images painted on with a slip (runny clay mix) which, when fired in a reducing kiln, causes the slipped areas to turn black – black figures on a red background. Around 530BC, the technique changes with the whole pot being coated with slip, then the images are picked out by scrapping away the slip resulting in red figures on a black background. More sutle details could then be added with lines or dilute washes of glaze applied with a brush.

Red and Black Figure Greek Vases

Other famous writing on glass includes Robert Burn’s verse written on a pane in the globe Tavern, Dumfries:

Robert Burn’s verse written on a pane in the Globe Tavern, Dumfries

Gin a body meet a body

Coming through the grain.

Gin a body kiss a body

The thing’s a body’s ain.

[Image from: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56181000/jpg/_56181517_burns_window_etching.jpg}

Reinstallation of the Boppard Panels

Empty frames and a new lifting platform system at the ready	Megan checking the panel is secure
Kenny fixing the angle supports in place	Marie and Kenny – The Virgin and Child and Ten commandments panels safely installed!
Now the Scenes from the Life of Christ panels	Half way there
Inserting the holding screws	A job well done!
The completed reinstallation including the two Bishop Saints. The small top panels have been omitted as they are c;lose to the high humidity in the ceiling.	The panels look beautiful and bright after a good (and very painstaking) clean. The colours are clearer and you are aware of details missed before. Come and see them!

A Digital Restoration of the Birth of the Virgin Panel

window before conservation

The Digitally Restored Window

Our approach to the conservation treatment of the stained glass panels from Boppard is one of minimum intervention. There are many reasons for this:

• As conservators we adhere to international guidelines provided by the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, the Institute of Conservation (Icon), E.C.C.O. professional guidelines and ICOMOS Venice Charter.
• Because we are dealing with three monumental windows with a total of 34 individual panels we have to apply the same level of treatment to every one of them: some may be in a condition where restoration would be appropriate, others may not be.
• We have to consider time and cost.

Very early on in our blog we discussed the panels depicting the Birth of the Virgin and the issues surrounding restoration and authenticity. So we decided that our best option was to not interfere with the actual stained glass panel (other than cleaning it) and to try out a virtual restoration instead. This would allow us to recreate an image of how the scene might have looked without being limited by professional guidelines and time factors and most importantly we would not be interfering with the authenticity of the artwork.
With a virtual restoration using digital technology you can explore different levels of intervention and present different restoration options depending on and directed by the condition that the original glass is in.
Our approach with this panel was to virtually restore the glass to a level that could – in theory – be achieved in reality. So we removed all repair leads, re-bonded broken glass, retouched lost paint, removed some of the unsightly restorations where we could identify with a degree of certainty what would have been there before, but left restorations that have replaced original glass with no trace of what was there before.

The most obvious area of virtual repair was the extensive damage to the magnificent red bed cover. John took some detailed photos of the area and digitally enhanced them so that the almost invisible floral pattern came to light. The outlines of these were traced onto transparent paper which was scanned back onto the computer and used as a guide layer to recreate the pattern.
The virtual restoration allows us to recreate the detailed patterns in the fabric of the bed spread as it might have originally been seen. This is immensely exciting as it gives us a sense of how much detail the Boppard panels must have once contained!

Bed Sheet Pre-Restoration

The damaged area “virtually” restored

Trace of the Bed sheet

Trace of the bed sheet folds

The image on the left is the trace created of the fabric pattern painted on the back of the glass. The image on the right shows the folds of the cloth painted on the front of the glass. (Mary’s foot was included to allow accurate positioning as an overlay!)
One of the most amazing outcomes of all of this work trying to recreate an image of what the original stained glass scene would have looked like is that we have to conclude that the bed spread was cut from one piece of glass!

Detail of the Bed Sheet

The possible shape of the bed sheet in the original window

This is a very daring shape to cut, requires great skill and would have been predestined to break at the narrow point in the centre. We almost cannot believe that they would have done this, using the most expensive red glass, decorated front and back, but there is no evidence of an original lead line to separate the two sections.

Another key area we looked at is the head of baby Mary and the section of blue curtain just above her head.

Mary’s Head Before Restoration

virtual restoration of Mary’s Head

This area must have been severely damaged – both the head as well as the light blue insertion above Mary’s head are restorations from 1871.
There is nothing original left of the head and if we replaced it, we would be guessing wildly, so in some ways the 1871 restoration is as authentic as it will ever be. So we decided to give Mary a virtual face clean and leave it at that! (This, by the way, is something we cannot do on the original because the paint is not fired and will come off very easily…)
The restoration insertion in the blue patterned curtain above her head is different: so much original glass with curtain pattern remains in the surrounding area and it allows us to make a pretty accurate guess about how this would have originally appeared. We therefore decided to carry out a more sympathetic repair in our virtual restoration.
John reconstructed the area by copying and pasting sections of the original curtain area and blending it into the background along with some digital painting.

So much for a virtual restoration.

This is what the real stained glass panel looks like after careful cleaning and stabilisation.

The Cleaned Birth of Mary Window

Facts about glass: Assembling a stained-glass panel

Once all the pieces of glass have been cut to shape, painted according to the design, and fired, they are finally ready to be assembled using lead.

Megan assembling a panel

The method used to assemble a stained-glass panel nowadays has changed remarkably little from mediaeval times. According to Theophilus, a 12^th century monk, in his treatise “The Divers Arts”; a flat smooth wooden board large enough to take the window panel would have been whitewashed (using powdered chalk and water) onto which the design for the window would be drawn.

When paper first started to be produced it was very expensive and so it was much cheaper, if it was a one-off, to lay out the design for the panel on an assembly table, build the panel on top of it, then, just whitewash the table ready for the next panel. This also made it easier if there were repeated design elements in the panels, such as borders or canopies, for example, as these could be left and only the sections that were different needed to be whitewashed and redrawn. By the 14^th century, in Italy at least, there is documentary evidence that paper was being used as standard, as Cennino Cennini writes in his manuscript Il Libro dell’ Arte:

“you will take as many sheets of paper glued together as you need for your windows; and you will draw your figure first with charcoal, then fix it with ink, with your figure completely shaded, exactly as you draw on panel. Then your glass master takes this drawing, and spreads it out on a large flat bench or table; and proceeds to cut his glasses”

Profile of a lead came

The lead strips used to connect the separate pieces of glass in the panel are called “cames”. The same process of using H-shaped rods of lead has been used since Roman times, and the Latin name for the rods of lead was calamus, so this is probably where the term “cames” is derived from.

In mediaeval times lead was cast in a mould made either from wood or iron. Theophilus describes the process of making an iron mould, which consisted of two parts, hinged at one end, which, when closed created a hollow ‘H’ shaped channel down the centre. Molten lead would be poured into one end then removed once cool. If you didn’t have suitable iron available you could create a mould using wood. Inevitably, this casting process resulted in large variations in the shape of the cames, which were then cut by hand to the desired size, and so are quite uneven and irregular. It was around the 16th century that the use of a lead mill for shaping the leads into a more regular profile was introduced.

The lead used in mediaeval times, although up to 99% pure, still retained a small number of impurities such as silver, tin, copper and antimony, which considerably increased the tensile strength and hardness of the lead at ambient temperatures, making the lead network stiffer and less elastic, and also more resistant to corrosion. During the nineteenth century it became possible to produce lead without all of the other naturally occurring metals which resulted in softer and less durable cames. As a result of this, it quickly became necessary to replace these softer lead cames on a regular basis, which – ironically – lead to the myth that cames would have to be replaced every 100 years or so and to the routine re-leading of medieval windows. This is actually very rarely true, especially with medieval lead which is remarkably strong, and more modern lead which deliberately contains some additional trace metals that give a stained glass panel strength as well as flexibility.  The nature of the lead used, the standard of craftsmanship in the construction of the window, and the weathering the window has been exposed to are all key factors which determine the amount of maintenance a window will need. It might need to be re-leaded just a few years after the original panel was made, or it might last for centuries.

A panel during assembly – note the design attached to the board below the glass, and the nails holding the pieces in place.

Assembly of a window usually starts at one corner of the panel and gradually works outwards and upwards. Lead strips are cut to length using a lead knife and carefully shaped around each glass section. Horse shoe nails are tapped into the assembly table and added or removed as required to hold the sections together. This process today is almost exactly as Theophilus described back in the 12^th century!

A panel during restoration being re-leaded

Once all of the pieces of glass have been brought together using lead, the joints where the leads meet then need to be soldered on both sides to secure all the pieces in position. Theophilus explains that the solder (a mixture of lead and tin) was cast in a similar way to the lead cames, using wooden or iron moulds.  Each joint would be lightly scraped and wax would be used as a flux during the soldering The soldering iron was long and thin with one end round and shaped to a point. This would be heated with care and much experience because soldering at the right temperature greatly affected the stability of the final window. Not enough heat and the solder will not run and join the cames together securely, too hot and the underlying lead will melt and distort or even burn, potentially damaging the glass beneath.

Marie soldering using an electric iron

The final step nowadays, is to cement the panels. This process, in which a putty-like mix of a calcium carbonate and boiled linseed oil is worked between the leaves of the lead cames and the glass pieces, adds greatly to the stability of the panel as well as making it more wind and waterproof. There is however, no mention of this process in any of the treatises before the 15th century which suggests that no cementing took place at this time.

Facts about glass – Cutting and shaping glass

Once a design for a window has been finalised the coloured glass is then chosen and cut to shape ready to be painted. When the Boppard windows were made glass cutting techniques were different to those we use today. Some medieval treatises survive which shed light on these early techniques.

The earliest surviving reference to the medieval process of glass cutting is found in the 12^th century treatise “On Divers Arts”, written by a Benedictine monk known as Theophilus Presbyter. He very clearly explains in detail the techniques involved in painting, glassmaking and metalwork. Theophilus is believed to have been shown how to make stained glass windows by practicing craftsmen.  He tells us to:

“heat on the fire an iron cutting tool, which should be thin everywhere except at the end, where it should be thicker. When the thicker part is red hot, apply it to the glass you want to cut, and soon there will appear the beginning of a crack. If the glass is hard, [and does not crack at once], wet it with saliva on your finger in the place where you had applied the tool. It will immediately split and, as soon as it has, draw the tool along the line you want to cut and the split will follow.”

People have tried to recreate the medieval glass cutting  techniques described by Theophilus – below are some examples of this using slightly different shaped tools:

Using a red hot iron to cut glass. Image courtesy of Katie Harrison

Cutting glass with a hot iron

“When all the pieces have been cut like this, take a grozing iron, a span long and bent back at each end, and trim and fit together all the pieces with it, each in its proper place”. The grozing iron removes chips of glass from the edges to shape the glass, leaving a very distinctive chamfered edge.

Using a grozing iron

You can see, in the photos below of the Boppard glass during restoration, the textured edges of the shaped glass pieces where they have been nibbled with a grozing iron.

Grozed edges on Boppard glass pieces

Grozed edges on Boppard glass pieces

Another treatise, dating from the late 14^th century, also describes the use of a hot iron to cut glass. In contrast to Theophilus, this manuscript was written by an experienced glazier, known as Antonio da Pisa. An example of one of his windows, which was commissioned in 1395, survives in the nave of Florence Cathedral.

It is interesting to note that in addition to the use of a red hot iron to cut glass, he describes two other techniques; the application of a thread soaked in sulphur, wrapped around the glass and set alight (probably only used for very thick glasses) and the use of a hard stone, such as diamond or flint. This is the earliest known reference to diamond cutting of glass, which developed into the modern diamond wheel cutters we use today.

It is not known which was the preferred method at this time, it may well have varied from studio to studio. It is most likely that the change in techniques was gradual, and either the hot iron or a hard stone, such as a diamond, was used based on personal preference, before grozing the glass where necessary. The setting alight of threads dipped in sulphur would have been quite hard to control and therefore imprecise and so is unlikely to have been common practice.

Once all of the pieces of glass had been cut, they were then ready to be painted, fired and leaded together.

Faces in the Boppard Panels – Identification and results of the survey

In this blog, we are identifying the faces and showing the percentage of the forms completed that selected faces as good or bad, and more specifically, God, Jesus, Mary and the Devil. Our next faces blog will be a more general discussion of the faces in the Boppard panels.

Many thanks to all who took part in our survey!

Faces from Agony in the Garden and Christ Before Pilate panels:
Face #	Good or Bad?	% correct	Identity	% correct
1	Good	11%	Angel
2	Bad	15%	Judas Iscariot
3	Good	6%	Disciple
4	Good	6%	Disciple
5	Good	16%	Disciple
6	Good	5%	Jesus	33%
7	Debatable!	9%	Pilate
8	Bad	23%	Calling for death of Jesus
9	Bad	17%	Calling for death of Jesus
10	Good	2%	Jesus	53%
11	Bad	63%	Calling for death of Jesus
12	Bad	28%	Calling for death of Jesus
13	Bad	12%	Calling for death of Jesus

 

Faces from Annunciation, Birth of Mary and top of the Christ Before Pilate panels:
Face #	Good or Bad?	% correct	Identity	% correct
14	Good	20%	God	25%
15	Good	2%	Angel Gabriel
16	Good	7%	Virgin Mary	57%
17	Bad	59%	Calling for death of Jesus
18	Good	2%	St Ann
19	Good	15%	Baby Mary	8%
20	Good	12%	Nurse
21	Good	9%	Nurse

 

Faces from Annunciation, Birth of Mary and top of the Christ Before Pilate panels:
Face #	Good or Bad?	% correct	Identity
22	Good	6%	Jesus	27%
23	Good	12%	St Peter
24	Good	0%	Angel
25	Good	5%	Jesus	45%
26	Good	4%	Angel

Faces from Ninth Commandment and Virgin & Child panels:
Face #	Good or Bad?	% correct	Identity	% correct
27	Good	2%	God	1%
28	Bad	76%	Devil	56%
29	Bad	6%	People coveting their neighbour’s house
30	Bad	32%	People coveting their neighbour’s house
31	Bad	51%	People coveting their neighbour’s house
32	Bad	62%	People coveting their neighbour’s house
33	Good	4%	People looking to heaven
34	Good	6%	People looking to heaven
35	Good	4%	People looking to heaven
36	Good	4%	People looking to heaven
37	Good	0%	Angel
38	Good	33%	Baby Jesus
39	Good	4%	Virgin Mary	61%

Faces from a canopy and the Siegfried von Gelnhausen panels:
Face #	Good or Bad?	% correct	Identity	% correct
41	Good	11%	Praying man
42	Good	4%	Praying man
43	Good	24%	Siegfried
44	Good	4%	Siegfried’s wife

 

 

Armour in the Boppard Panels

Men in armour are a frequent sight in medieval art, including stained glass, and provide an invaluable source of information to those studying arms and armour. Since it is made of steel that rusts or can be recycled or reused, relatively little of the original plate armour remains, and even rarer are the leather straps and pins that held the pieces together. Images of armour found in stained glass, paintings, tombs and brasses, give vital insight into the the details of the armour and the way in which it was worn.

There are three main images of armed men in the Burrell Collection Boppard windows, appearing in the Agony in the Garden, Christ before Pilate and Resurrection panels, as shown below.

Detail from Agony in the Garden

Detail from Christ before Pilate

Detail from Resurrection Panel

At the time the Boppard windows were painted (early 15^th century), the two most important areas of fine armour production were Germany and Italy (mainly Milan). It is also an important period in armour design, with the transition into full body armour and plate armour.

The detail from Agony in the Garden shows a man wearing a sallet (a war helmet) and a kind of bevor or aventail. The bevor worn with a sallet, protected the throat and neck and was made of solid plate or lames (overlapping strips of steel held together with leather straps to which they were riveted). Interestingly, in this case it would appear that the chin area is in solid plate, but the throat and neck protection are in mail. This would require the bevor to be held in position by attachment to the sallet with straps. In battle, he would pull the sallet down to protect his face, looking through the two slits in the helmet. A selection of German sallets is shown in the image below  by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, a 19^th century French architect and theorist.

German sallets is shown in the image below by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

St. Quirinus, carved on a German oak stall end from the Lower Rhine late 15th-early 16th century, shown below and on display in the Burrell, is wearing a very similar sallet. This stall end was possibly made by the woodcarver Heinrich Bernts of Kalkar (d.1509).

 

Burrell Collection German oak stall end with St. Quirinus – Lower Rhine late 15th-early 16th century

The man in the detail below from Christ before Pilate is wearing a great bassinet, where the helmet, visor, chin and neck protection are all made of plate steel (replacing the mail aventail).

The rounded visor became popular in Germany, as shown in the detail below from a German painting of 1435, by Konrad Witz.

the detail from a German painting of 1435, by Konrad Witz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Konrad_Witz_Sabobai_And_Benaiah_(1435)_fragment.jpg

The small circular metal shield (or Besague) worn by our Boppard knight detailed below, just beneath his left shoulder, differs from the leaf shaped protection on the right side as he would have carried a lance under his right arm.

Detail from Christ before Pilate

The soldier on the right in the Resurrection panel detailed below, wears a Kastenburst breastplate, with flat surfaces and a sharp angular design. German armour had a more angular design than the more rounded Italian armour, as can be seen in the fabulous Avant Armour in Glasgow’s collection, made in Milan about 1445.

 

Detail from Resurrection Panel

Avant Armour made in the Corio Workshop in Milan, Italy around 1445
(Glasgow Museums Collection)

All our soldiers wear a mail skirt to protect the lower body. The armour of the soldier on the right is richly decorated with gilding.

 

The Boppard Faces

We need your help! Please take part in the experiment at the bottom of this blog.

There are over 44 faces in the Burrell Collection Boppard panels, and all display a uniformly consistent style of painting, suggesting that all the panels were painted by the same artist. In the context of the stories displayed in the panels it is easy to discern who is who and the baddies from the goodies. But can you do it from the character of the face alone?

We have cut out 44 of the faces (some are in armour so little of their face is visible) and reoriented them to a standard format. Here they are:

We have setup a webpage to allow you to pick out who are the baddies. You can also have a go at identifying the faces representing God (2 images), Jesus (3 images), Mary (3 images) and the devil (1 image). You can then submit your choices so we can analyse the results in the first blog in June.

Please take part as the more results the better! The button will load a page from my own website (Ayrshire Members’ Centre for the National Trust for Scotland – it has nothing to do with the NTS)

Halos in the Boppard Panels

The Oxford dictionary describes a halo as “A circle of light shown around or above the head of a saint or holy person to represent their holiness” or as “A circle of white or coloured light around the sun, moon, or other luminous body caused by refraction through ice crystals in the atmosphere”. The words Aura and Nimbus also refer to a halo. It is thought that halos may have originated in or even before Egyptian times. The goddess Sekhmet bears theSolar disk to indicate she is the daughter of the sun god Ra. The beautiful head of the lioness Goddess on display in the Burrell Collection has lost her Solar Disk, although you can see the socket where it would have fitted on the top of her head. The Sekhmet below is from the British Museum.

Sekhmet, from the British Museum
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Sekhmet_%28British_Museum%29.jpg

Many religions have adopted halos to indicated people of very special importance, such as in the standing Budda below, and in the Islamic painting later in the blog.

Standing Budda, with halo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhara_Buddha_(tnm).jpeg

Halos have risen and fallen in popularity over time, but are well featured in the Boppard stained glass. There are four different types of halo used in the Boppard glass from the Burrell Collection. The simplest halo of all was used for the angels, and consists of a simple yellow disk around the angel’s head, as shown in the example below.

Boppard Angel from the Resurrection panel

The saints in the Boppard panels have an enhanced halo with radiant lines emanating outwards. A range of colours are used to enhance the designs.

Boppard St Peter from the Christ Appearing To Peter panel

The aureole, sometimes called a mandorla, is a full body halo, and is often used in depictions of the Virgin Mary to symbolise glory. The mandorla is seen in the Virgin and Child panel detailed below.

Boppard Virgin And Child from the Ten Commandments Window

An alternative style of halo can be seen in the images of the Prophet Muhammad, such as the one on the left below showing the arrival of the Prophet in Jerusalem, from Mir-Heidar’s “Miraj Nameh”, a 15^th century  illustrated book from Turkey. Here, the halo is in the form of flames, common in Asian art, completely surrounding the Prophet, and around the heads of the other earlier Prophets. In the middle is a small brass statue of Budda in the Metropolitan Museum dating to the late 6th century and made in the ancient region of Gandhara, an ancient kingdom in the Swat and Kabul river valleys and the Pothohar Plateau, in modern-day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. In this statue, Budda has both a radiant halo and a mandorla. On the right is a statue of Shiva, (or Siva), one of the most important Hindu gods, completely surrounded by a flaming circular halo.

Three examples of mandorla

The Boppard Virgin and Child panel, Mary also has a green halo around her crown, a colour associated with life, referring to her status as the mother of Christ.

Boppard Virgin And Child from the Ten Commandments Window

Jesus usually wears a cruciform halo, a radiant halo with a celtic shaped cross on it to emphasise his sacrifice on the cross and to symbolise the Holy Trinity.

Boppard Jesus from the Resurrection panel

Other halos not used in the Boppard panels include the less common triangular halo and the square halo.

Photo of Saint Peter Church, in Saint Charles, Missouri
http://www.romeofthewest.com/2008/02/photos-of-saint-peter-church-in-saint.html

In this image behind the altar at Saint Peter Church, in Saint Charles, Missouri, God wears a triangular halo to symbolize the Trinity and the dove (symbol of the Holy Spirit) wears the cruciform halo.

Mosaic from the chapel of St. Zeno at the church of St. Praessede, Rome
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/sterk/women/women.html

In this magnificent mosaic from in the Chapel of Bishop Zeno of Verona located within the church of St. Praessede, in Rome, the Virgin Mary is second from the right, between Saints Praxedes and Pudentiana, and the woman on the left is identified in the Greek inscription as “Theodora, Bishop” (“Episcopa”). Theodora is depicted with a square halo, indicating that the image was made when she was alive. Theodora was widely known to be a devout Christian in the early Church, and was notable for her acts of piety and sanctity.