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Windows painted as one watercolor
A Catalan glass artist
Vila-Grau was a Catalan painter and stained glass artist who had spent decades restoring medieval windows across Catalonia. That experience is why the board of construction chose him for the commission in 1999.
East and west
Gaudí had oriented the church with the Nativity facade facing east and the Passion facade facing west, birth on one side and death on the other. Vila-Grau followed that logic, giving the east blues and aquamarines and the west reds and ambers, so the mood of the whole interior shifts with the sun.
Watercolor into glass
He never thought in individual windows. Each design began as a watercolor, with colors flowing across the paper, and when the glass was cut, the lead lines followed the natural divisions the painting had already made. The watercolor was scaled up and translated into glass piece by piece, each panel part of the same vast composition.
How does stained glass get its colors?
Glassmakers add metal compounds to the molten glass. Cobalt gives a deep blue, while tiny particles of gold or copper give red. Glass colored all the way through this way is called pot-metal glass.
How does a church's orientation shape its light?
Churches were traditionally aligned with the altar toward the east, toward the sunrise that symbolized the resurrection. At the Sagrada Família, the Nativity facade faces the rising sun in the northeast. The Passion facade faces the setting sun in the southwest.
Why do windows sit in lead strips?
Panes of stained glass sit in H-shaped lead channels called cames, which are soldered at the joints. Lead is soft enough to bend around curves, so it can follow almost any outline. A putty-like cement pressed under the lead seals the gaps against water. Medieval glaziers used the same method.
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