Painting with glass: Olafur Eliasson's church windows

Artist Olafur Eliasson has redesigned the east choir window in Greifswald Cathedral. The city is the birthplace of German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose work the Dane has long admired. The glass panes are reminiscent of the color gradients in Friedrich's works and mirrors ensure that sunlight shines through the windows throughout the day.

Gerhard Richter has designed three of the windows of Germany's oldest abbey. To come up with the pattern, the artist divided an abstract picture from 1990 into small pieces and used the kaleidoscopic pattern that emerged as a motif. The monks of Germany's oldest abbey have welcomed art-loving pilgrims following the inauguration of the stained glass works in September 2020.

Since August 23, 2007, Cologne's cathedral has not only been one of the most popular pilgrimage sites for Catholics and tourists, but also a temple of modern art. That's when the window of the south transept of the cathedral, also designed by Gerhard Richter, was unveiled. The work consists of around 11,500 squares of glass in 72 colors.

Painter Markus Lüpertz designed stained glass windows for the Romanesque church of St. Andrew in 2005. The 12 windows are located around a golden shrine. As in many other churches, the original windows were destroyed during World War II.

Imi Knoebel, one of the best-known German representatives of Minimal Art, created a "reconciliation window" in the French cathedral which had been damaged by the Germans at the end of the First World War. Knoebel designed new stained glass windows that were inaugurated in 2015. Colorful geometric shapes are playfully arranged, in contrast with the strict structure of the lead frame.

The Leipzig artist Michael Triegel (picture) designed stained glass windows for the first time in 2015 for the Catholic Church in Köthen, a small town in Saxony-Anhalt. Depicting the story of Adam and Eve, the imagery is a reference to Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam." Just like in the famous ceiling painting in Rome, in Triegel's design, the baby Jesus also sits in Maria's lap.

Neo Rauch, the best-known artist of the New Leipzig School, portrayed three moments in the life of Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia in his windows. The first window shows the young woman saying goodbye to Ludwig IV, her husband. In the second, the saint gives her coat to a beggar and in the third window she appears in the Marburg Hospital, which she founded in 1228.

In 2018, pop art star David Hockney designed this window for Westminster Abbey on an iPad. It shows blooming hawthorn trees in bright blue, red, orange and yellow. Created in honor of the reign of Elizabeth II, the stained glass window "reflects The Queen as a countrywoman and her widespread delight in, and yearning for, the countryside," said a spokesperson for Westminster Abbey.

The Grossmünster is a Protestant Reformed church in Zürich. Painter Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) created five "prefigurations" of Christ from the Old Testament: the Son of Man, Elijah's Ascension, King David, the Scapegoat and the Sacrifice of Isaac. He also created seven other windows using thinly-sliced agate.

According to Christian tradition, it's where an angel told Mary that she would be bearing the Son of God, Jesus. The Annunciation Basilica in Nazareth is one of the most important Christian sites in the Middle East. Russian-Jewish-French artist Marc Chagall designed the windows of the church. He also created many more large-scale stained glass windows all over the world up until his death in 1985.