L.C. Tiffany Company
Adoration of the Magi (detail), 1912, opalescent glass
Trinity Episcopal Church, corner of Temple and Chapel Sts.
In the darkness along the aisles of the Trinity Episcopal Church – as if Pip had been tearing the curtains from Miss Havisham’s windows – there are calliopes built of light. Between 1897 and 1912, four works of stained glass from the Louis Comfort Tiffany studios were installed here. Time’s dirt has been busy erasing them, but a recent restoration of one, and the sheltered placement of another, give the colors back. In one, a memorial to a “faithful vestryman and warden,” St. Paul preaches in Athens, where the stark Mondrian temples stand against a mimicry of twilight that was perfected by the late afternoon of my visit. In another, the Magi assemble, scarfed and cloaked and slightly ashamed of gifts that pale before God’s flowers. Stand close, and it is as if looking up at the surface of the water, somehow saved from drowning, while the sun paints.
