Chichester Cathedral – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Here’s a window to cheer on a Monday morning. You’ll find it in Chichester Cathedral, and it’s designed by Marc Chagall the Jewish Modernist painter, who enjoyed working with stained glass too. You’ll find his windows in churches in France, Germany, England and the USA, as well as in Jewish settings. Essentially, this window illustates Psalm 150, a hymn of praise to God suggesting He be praised – noisily – with every instrument to be found, as well as by singing and dancing. That’s what this window illustrates.

Chichester Cathedral came with surprises. This quintessentially English place of worship was built, as so many English cathedrals were, between the 11th and 14th centuries. So it was unexpected to find so many works of art from recent years there: a startlingly bright tapestry designed by John Piper; ‘Noli me tangere’ by Graham Sutherland; murals by Hans Feibusch, exiled from Nazi Germany in 1933; the ‘Reconciliation Tapestry’ designed by German artist Ursula Benker-Schirmer and woven partly in Germany, partly in England tells the story of Saint Richard and is a symbol of reconciliation between Britain and Germany after WWII.