Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Albertus Church

City: Detroit

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Stylized Tree of Knowledge with Serpent

Brief Description of Subject: Maker: most likely Detroit Stained Glass Works

One of four windows designed to let light into the stairwell leading up to the choir loft.

In the Garden of Eden, God forbade Adam from eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After being tempted by a serpent, Eve convinced Adam to eat from the tree.

This window depicts the Tree of Knowledge with a two headed snake coiled around it -- note that there is a head on each end of the snake. This kind of two headed snake from mythology is called an "amphisbaena." It shows up as a beastie in medieval drawings and appears in John Milton's "Paradise Lost."

Height: ~5'

Width: 1'

The MSGC is a constantly evolving database. Not all the data that has been collected by volunteers has been sorted and entered. Not every building has been completely documented.

All images in the Index are either born-digital photographs of windows or buildings or are scans of slides, prints, or other published sources. These images have been provided by volunteers and the quality of the material varies widely.

If you have any questions, additions or corrections, or think you can provide better images and are willing to share them, please contact donald20@msu.edu