Stained glass has long been a much loved feature of church interiors. Sunlight streaming in through stained-glass windows brings images of saints to life, bathing the inside of the church in an almost otherworldly, iridescent light. Until the Reformation, in fact, most stained glass was commissioned by the Church.

The 15th and early 16th centuries saw a late flowering of medieval glass painting and stained-glass work on the Upper Rhine. Switzerland, Basel, Freiburg im Breisgau and Strasbourg all produced artists of renown whose works are to be found far beyond their place of manufacture, as the windows from Constance and Bourguillon (Canton Fribourg) prove. The works on show here illustrate a change in style from the intricacy of the Late Gothic (Nos. 3001–3003) to the monumentality of the Early Renaissance, made of much larger pieces of glass (Nos. 3004–3011).

Heraldic panels made of stained glass also became popular in Switzerland in the late 15th century. Used to embellish churches, chambers and assembly rooms (Nos. 3012–3013) such stained-glass coats of arms were often exchanged as gifts between cantons, convents and civic authorities.