By the 1620s, interest in elaborate decoration had revived in Anglican England, with most large-scale church window commissions being carried out by foreign artists. The van Linge brothers, originally from East Frisia, brought innovative techniques with them when they emigrated to London after working in Paris. In the newly rebuilt Chapel of Lincoln’s Inn, completed by 1623, Abraham van Linge (floruit 1625–41) and his brother Bernard van Linge (1598 – c. 1644) created six striking painted glass windows. These 17th-century windows are distinctive for their simpler technique of painting vitreous enamels onto transparent glass, which was then kiln-fired. Unlike traditional stained glass, white glass was cut into panes and painted like a translucent canvas, with lead strips reduced to a basic grid to hold the design together.
The windows in the Chapel depict apostles against landscape backgrounds. On the south side, they include scenes of Lincoln’s Inn itself, showing the Treasurer and the City of London receiving the keys to the Chapel in 1623.
