Rough-Hewn Green Wooden Crosses

Detail of Crucifixion at top of Jesse Tree window at Wells Cathedral.

This splendid window dating to about 1340 was restored 2011-2014.

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Detail of the south chancel window over the altar of Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, NC.  The stained glass windows are not signed but receipts in the church archives indicate that the windows were made in London by the Percy Bacon Brothers in 1925.

I find it hard to believe that it has taken me so long to get back to my blog.  There is still so much more to the written about the Jesse Tree in stained glass and manuscripts with occasional comments about Trees of Jesse that were sewn, carved and fabricated in other materials.

Before I pick up my writing about Jesse Trees, I found that I was waylaid three or more years ago when I came across the roughly lopped green cross behind the corpus of Jesus in the Jesse Tree window at the east end of Wells Cathedral in Great Britain.  Before that I started to wonder about a green wooden roughly cut tree-cross behind the body of Jesus in the Percy Bacon Brother’s rood window at Chapel of the Cross from 1925.  

I started to examine the meaning behind the green cross.  The cross of Jesus depicted as the source of life is clearly much older than Ubertino da Casale's Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu (1305) by perhaps 500 years.

Thus, I plan a further digression from writing about the Tree of Jesse per se and writing some posts about the depiction of usually rough-hewn green wooden Cross.