Typological Knowing in Northern Stained Glass Design

The typological formula belongs to an exegetical tradition that seeks to reveal a divine plan in the biblical text which understands history not at the literal level but in terms of its relation to the life of Christ.  This formula, pairing Old Testament types and New Testament antitypes, played a significant role in medieval stained glass programs, manuscript illumination, and other forms of visual imagery.  While scholars of the Renaissance have claimed that sixteenth-century artists abandoned the use of extensive typological  programs,such cycles remained of great interest to early sixteenth century stained glass designers in Northern Europe.  This paper will reconstruct several separate series of typological stained glass windows (circa 1520-1540) by the Flemish artist Dirk Vellert, the leading designer of stained glass in the Netherlands during the first half of the sixteenth century.  It will be shown how Vellert’s cycles adopt the subjects and meanings of medieval typological art and also how they adapt the typological tradition to the context of the early sixteenth century, a time of religious instability when reformist ideas were becoming increasingly widespread in the Netherlands.  This paper will explore how Renaissance artists such as Vellert continued to employ the medieval systems of typological thinking as a way of knowing the supernatural plan.