A Darkened Tribute to Generosity is Revived with New Life!
A stained-glass window that has long intrigued us, in its edgy difference from others at the church, recently returned to life when one of St. Stephen’s new friends figured out how to repair the lamp that originally backlit it. We could tell the fixture was the window’s primary light source to compensate for its interior placement. Daylight had been virtually cut off to the church’s northwest wall, where the window resides, by the addition of the Parish House to the north in 1888. Though we could always sense the window’s complexity, light even from an antiquated lamp changed everything. The result is the powerful presence you see here, with a distinctive story and updated role within St. Stephen’s.
This memorial window, the last of St. Stephen’s stained-glass windows, honors the church’s most generous benefactor of the twentieth century, Miss Anna J. Magee, who died in December 1923.
She was the youngest and last of the large Magee family that had been active in, and generous to, St. Stephen’s since at least 1830. We’ve considered the Magees and their contributions in various previous posts. Anna Justina Magee deserves special attention, however. According to her eulogy in the Vestry Minutes, she was, despite her reputation as a recluse, a formidable fundraiser as Treasurer of the church’s United Offerings and member of many local social clubs and institutions. She supported a variety of organizations throughout the city in life and death. Her best-known bequest funded today’s Magee Rehabilitation Hospital. As St. Stephen’s approached its Centennial (1923), the year she died, Miss Magee gave increasing sums of money (advised by the church’s enterprising and persuasive rector, Dr. Grammer) to improve the building, both decoratively and practically.
With that extraordinary service in mind, the vestry reserved the last available window in her honor in 1920. After her demise, however, the project took curiously different directions. In April 1925, the vestry moved to erect a “memorial” in the church to her. In April 1928 they returned to the prospect of a memorial window. In January 1930—seven years after her death—the vestry approached Tiffany Studios, which had provided the St. Stephen windows in the current reredos (a 1917 Magee memorial) and various memorial windows to others. A month later, the vestry committee reported “progress” on the project. Then nothing. With whom did the vestry make progress? Why the gaps? The Crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression affected life everywhere. Tiffany Studios virtually closed in 1933. The vestry ultimately turned to D’Ascenzo Studios, source of their front windows and tower ornamentals of the early 1920s, the latter funded by Miss Magee. The exact date and circumstance of the project have yet to be found, whether before Nicola’s death in 1954 or afterward, when one of his top designers, David Bramnick, took over the studio until his own death in 1959.
We are clearer about the window’s subject. Associating this community-minded modern American woman with the biblical Dorcas (the Greek version of her name in Aramaic, Tabitha) is high tribute. Dorcas appears in the Acts of the Apostles (9:36-42) as a disciple in Joppa (Jaffa), a respected matron whose care for needy widows earned her the high respect of her community. When she sickened and died, local disciples sought the Apostle Peter, preaching in nearby Lydda, to restore her to life, which he does, a miracle that wins witnesses to the faith and, one trusts, enables Dorcas to resume her commendable service.
Dorcas grew in prestige in late Antiquity, sometimes as a protagonist in accounts of St. Peter’s achievements, but especially as one of early Christianity’s models. She became venerated as a woman disciple, often described as a widow herself, of strong and open Christian faith, favored, as we know from Acts, by a top apostle (Peter). She was especially revered for her social engagement. Byzantine icons frequently show her, haloed and labeled a saint, providing for the needy. Nineteenth-century English stained-glass windows rendered her in earthly form, as a woman disciple who personally engaged with the unfortunate. Her example of direct contact triggered many women’s channels that became extraordinarily effective in the nineteenth century. One such women’s venue, named in her honor (Dorcas Societies), proliferated throughout Europe and America, including in Philadelphia. St. Stephen’s participated in two: one, apparently citywide in 1839, and another, centered at the church, established in 1852.
We learn much by examining D’Ascenzo Studios’ Magee window. It shows Dorcas in characteristic charitable action though not in the everyday world. A cherub in the foreground, signaling divine blessing with its sheer presence, directs our attention to the central scene: Within an open Gothic tabernacle, the dignified, veiled matron gazes at and supports a gaunt, kneeling, bare-headed woman (ostensibly a needy widow) as they hold a rich fabric, likely Dorcas’ gift. The architecture stands within a decorative field with no signs of time or place. Scrolls identify Dorcas and her exemplary virtue, generosity. At the base (not visible in this photograph), is the inscription honoring Anna Magee for her many gifts to St. Stephen’s—broadly inspiring her association with Dorcas.
The women in the window are extraordinarily long and slender. Dorcas is smooth, elegant, and utterly human (no halo); her companion is haggard and disheveled, though well dressed, likely thanks to Dorcas. The light-toned tabernacle frames them both, their deep-hued garments offset from the glowing red of the patterned background within the tabernacle. That domain is additionally separated from the world outside the tabernacle through differences in the color and patterns.
Though set close to our space, this is an unworldly image intended, I think, to move and engage. It also hints at profound learning. I can imagine the scholarly Dr. Grammer discussing the design with Nicola D’Ascenzo himself, well known for his art-historical authority and huge library.
The D‘Ascenzo Studios Magee window suggests deep art-historical roots that honor the antiquity of Dorcas’ veneration and the power of an image to convey and inspire religious feeling. The strong color, elongated figures, and angular drapes in the window recall Byzantine icons of Dorcas-Tabitha. The Gothic tabernacle and decorative backdrop provide a rich devotional setting. The flickering light, active figures, and compositional energy (as well as the elongated figures) suggest religious paintings of the Mannerist Late Renaissance (late 16th-early 17th centuries). Consider the late works of El Greco, with their long, turned figures in densely-packed space with eerily smoky night light, the whole alive as in a miracle or mystic vision, as in his Annunciation of 1600.
Finally, the window’s glass segments are prominent, small, jagged, and irregular—like a Cubist work, observed one admirer. This compelling pictorial homage to two community-minded women of faith across the centuries gained broader meaning at St. Stephen’s this past year. Glowing (newly illuminated) over an area of the church opened to neighbors in need, to sit, commune, and eat during the day, this window seems to endorse such hospitality as a worthy example of the social Gospel at work today.
—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator