Grace Mildmay and the painted glass window in the Mildmay chapel at St Leonard’s church, Apethorpe, Northamptonshire

Abstract

ABSTRACT​​​​​The 1621 painted glass window in the Mildmay chapel of St Leonard’s church, Apethorpe, Northamptonshire, belongs to the revival of figurative glass in churches during the first half of the seventeenth century. Its four subjects, the Fall of Adam and Eve, Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and the Last Judgement, express orthodox reformed belief in original sin and salvation only through faith in Christ’s saving grace. But the window’s design and unusual iconographic details are atypical of the period. Theme and imagery closely parallel sixteenth-century bible illustrations and both can be understood in relation to the volume of meditations compiled over her lifetime by Grace, Lady Mildmay, who was the patron of the chapel. The paper argues for her close involvement in the evolution of the imagery; the window can be seen as a visual equivalent of her meditations, and expresses her preoccupation with sinfulness, redemption, resurrection, and the afterlife.