Cambridge is filled with stained glass. From the glass sculptures in Newnham to the Pugin lancets in Jesus, from the medieval panes of the Round Church to the nineteenth-century German windows in Peterhouse, we live and work in a glass museum. King’s College Chapel alone is a gift for glass-lovers; aside from the mammoth Renaissance windows, new roundels and shards are always being bought and placed into the side-chapel windows.

The earliest mention of Robinson College’s addition to this corpus was in 1977. The context was complicated; there was much debate as to whether the college should even have a chapel. John Piper had gained accolades as an official war artist; after the war he became well known for his stained glass, most notably at Coventry Cathedral, which work alone is said to have inspired Robinson to hire him. Piper was introduced to the glass-maker Patrick Reyntiens in the 50s by John Betjeman, a life-long friend (the poem Myfanwy is about Piper’s wife). Reyntians was an expert and an experimentalist, and one of his extraordinary, self-designed panels is on show at the Stained Glass Museum in Ely Cathedral.

Piper would make large designs (cartoons) in watercolours, inks, collage and pencil, which Reyntiens would then transform into the windows. For Robinson this required huge quantities of flashed glass from Germany. Reyntiens went himself, taking with him strips from Piper’s original cartoon. Then there was the leading, the thick black lines between the panes, which entirely transforms the aesthetic. After collaborating for thirty years on glass (with Piper having received all the credit), the Robinson commission proved to be the last Piper-Reyntiens grand projet.

Staring up at the glass from the floor of Isi Metzstein’s awkwardly shaped Chapel, you can just about glimpse the cracked yellow light of God, surrounded by the blue of the sky. At eye level, twisting green leaves and small, bright orange roundels intermingle, while the deep green at the centre washes over the red chapel bricks. Based on William Holman Hunt’s painting of the same name (a glass version of which can be seen in the Round Church), the Robinson window shows Piper exploring his faith and fascination with ‘pleasing decay’. But contrasted with this are the dramatic, traumatic lines of Reyntiens’ metal, glaring through the glass darkly.

Richard Braude