Royal Bavarian Art Institute Munich Glass
King Ludwig I, opened the glassworks in 1827 which continued production of high quality glass until the early 20th. Franz Xavier Zettler established his stained glass company in 1870, during a time when the rebirth of "gothic revival" in church art in Europe and the United States. Zettler's company achieved its first success with award--winning windows displayed at the 1873 international exhibition at Vienna. In the early 1880's,
Zettler's glass studio employed 150 artisans. In 1882 the company was appointed as the "Royal Bavarian Art institute for stained glass" by King Ludwig. Zettler studios eventually perfected what became known as the "Munich style," which was a method where religious scenes were painted on larger sheets of glass and then fused to the glass through firing in intense heat. This process allowed for a blending of colors not attainable by the old "medieval style," in which any change of color in a scene required a sepaprate piece of colored glass that had to be cut to size and fitted in tis own leaded framework. Munich style glass windows contained leaded seams that did not interrupt upon the intricate and heavily detailed scenes portrayed, insteas, they were incorporated into the design that made them substantially less noticeable. The Munich style allowed for extremely detailed depictions of their subjects. The scenes depicted were heavily influenced by a combination of 19th century European romantic style of painting, along with German baroque style.
Zettler is widely recognized as the master of perspective and is credited with being the first to use three-point perspective in stained glass windows. Zettler's scenes looked more like the landscaped paintings where background objects are portrayed at different scales than those in the foreground, thus giving the scene a very realistic sense of depth. The Munich style and three-point perspective were later adapted and modified by the great American designer, Louis Comfort Tiffany. While the latter's name may be more known to people today, in their own era it was apparent who was the master and who was the student: at the 1893 World's Columbian exposition in Chicago, a Zettle window won top prizse over a Tiffany.