Metz · Saint-Maximin Church
A final masterpiece in which glass, myth and poetry transform light into language.
Discover the stained glass ↓Jean Cocteau’s signature on a blue glass panel
Scroll to exploreA final artistic testament
In 1962 and 1963, Jean Cocteau began producing the first designs for the stained-glass windows in the choir of Saint-Maximin Church, assisted by Jean Dedieu—heritage architect and collaborator of Robert Renard, chief architect for France’s historic monuments.
These designs preceded the work of the master glaziers, who then translated the figures imagined by the poet into pieces of coloured glass set in lead.
The first window to be completed was The Sun and the Moon, in which the two celestial bodies are associated respectively with Man and Woman (window 2).
Jean Cocteau died on 11 October 1963, however, without seeing all the apse windows completed.
At Jean Dedieu’s initiative, master glaziers Émile and Michel Brière continued the work using drawings that the poet had left to his companion, Édouard Dermit.
A large proportion of the present windows were therefore made after Cocteau’s death, through the 1970s.
Today, in the half-light of this ancient church, their blues envelop visitors and extend the poet’s presence through light.
In the studio
Jean Cocteau and Jean Dedieu developed together the forms that would later be translated into glass and lead.
Documentary
A filmed journey into the heart of Saint-Maximin, exploring the meaning and message Jean Cocteau entrusted to the light of his stained glass.
Watch on YouTube ↗Cocteau’s stained-glass windows form a true hymn to immortality,
for, in the poet’s words, ‘death is a birth in reverse.’
The secret thread running through Saint-Maximin’s stained glass
Inside the church
Enter the windows as though entering a constellation: each bay is a stage, each light opens a passage.
A cosmogony in reverse
To reach the immortality revealed by the central apse window—window 0, the ‘man with raised arms’—everything seems to begin with this central opening.
Cocteau appears to stop time and embark upon a journey backwards. In Mircea Eliade’s terms, this would mean recovering ‘primordial time, the “pure” time that existed at the moment of Creation’.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, Gallimard, coll. « Folio essais », 2003, p. 71.Across the apse’s four other windows, the artist thus unfolds a reversed narrative that gradually returns to the time of origins.
Reading diagram
The journey begins at central window 0, then follows the apse windows against the flow of chronology: from human civilisation back to the first principles of Creation.
The apse in fact contains seven windows. In addition to windows 0 to 4, window 5 stands at the far left and window 6 at the far right. At first, these two outer windows seem decorative, with their interwoven threads and bonds. Yet they may carry a deeper meaning. Cocteau may have wished to place these motifs within the overarching theme of immortality, echoing the ‘cosmic binding’ described by Mircea Eliade: an invisible fabric connecting every reality, on the scale of the Universe as well as human life. In other words, everything is connected to everything else.
Window 4
This window evokes Egyptian civilisation, which celebrated the principle of immortality more fully than any other. Everything recalls Egypt, especially the abundant vegetation: clusters of palm leaves and, higher up, papyrus stems.
Window 2
The window magnificently celebrates the appearance and first movements of the Moon and the Sun. It recalls Genesis (1:15–19): the Moon is associated with the feminine principle and the Sun with the masculine principle.
Window 3
In the beginning, the world is one. The poet illustrates this original unity by drawing on ancient cosmogonies. Everything would arise from a primordial egg, already present beside a dove in the lower compartment. At the centre, its hatching gives birth to the two principles of Earth and Sky.
Window 1
This window celebrates the beginnings of life. The egg, shown in several forms, already contains in embryo all the principles of Creation.
A universal symbol
The central apse window—window 0—shows a man with raised arms, already present in the first lower section of the composition. This motif is neither insignificant nor commonplace: it refers to a theme of far-reaching importance.
Two aspirations run through humanity: knowledge and immortality. The latter is often expressed through this figure with raised arms. According to Mircea Eliade, when shamans adopt this position during ceremonies, they proclaim: I have reached the sky. I am immortal.
This universal motif crosses ages, regions, myths and religions: a fifth- or sixth-century BC rock carving at Foppe di Nadro in Italy’s Valcamonica; a Quimbaya orant in Colombia; an eighth-century BC praying figure from Luristan in Persia; an Angra shaman in Siberia; a mythical ancestor among the Dogon of Mali and in New Guinea; and, in ancient Egypt, the Ka.
Contemporary painters have also revisited this image. In 1981 Keith Haring produced a large work—2.438 × 2.438 metres—in vinyl ink on vinyl tarpaulin, likewise depicting a human figure raising its arms towards the sky.
Stage play
Written by Christian Schmitt
Performed by Théophile Choquet
Performed on Saturday 17 September 2016 in Saint-Maximin Church, Metz. Through words and the actor’s presence, the play extends the universal figure inscribed by Jean Cocteau in stained glass.
Watch on YouTube ↗
In each of the church’s other windows, Cocteau uses different metamorphoses to develop the same theme of immortality.
Window 7, in the north transept, consists of three lancets. The first, on the left, evokes the story of Hyacinthus, a youth of exceptional beauty. In Greek mythology he is fatally wounded while throwing the discus with Apollo. Yet a flower springs from his blood: rather than being final, his death becomes metamorphosis.
Here immortality takes the form of the ‘phoenixology’ described by Cocteau’s friend Salvador Dalí: rebirth arising from disappearance.
The second, central lancet superimposes two fabulous figures. In its upper section appear the Beast’s eyes from the film Beauty and the Beast. At the end of the story, the Beast’s apparent death precedes his transformation into a handsome Prince: disappearance becomes a passage to new life.
Below appears the Minotaur, a monstrous being, half man and half bull. By killing the monster, Theseus frees Athens from the blood tribute imposed upon it. In this reading, his victory may symbolise the triumph of reason and civic order over dark forces.
Death is therefore never presented as an absolute end: it opens onto transformation—the rebirth of a being, collective liberation or the survival of myth—and thus becomes another way of conceiving immortality.
In this south-facing window 8, Cocteau leads us into a singular world close to that of The Jungle by Surrealist painter Wifredo Lam. Marcel Jean describes this imaginary world as an entangled jungle becoming animal, or the human being changing into a tree alive with multiple eyes, from which other horned heads spring like buds (History of Surrealist Painting, Paris: Seuil, 1959, p. 303).
We are immersed in a Surrealist world populated by totemic figures that also evoke the work of André Masson, Joan Miró and other artists associated with the movement.
These mysterious forms frequently enter the realm of myth, conceived as a route towards realities beyond death and the possibility of another life.
Cocteau also uses biomorphism, blending and transforming vegetal, animal and human forms of life. Presences emerge where the eye least expects them.
The ensemble ultimately becomes an invitation to journey into another world. In the lower part of the third lancet, a rider on horseback can be discerned—an enigmatic figure recalling Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical universe.
In the central light of triple window 10 appears an emaciated, diamond-shaped face crowned by a tuft of unruly hair.
This enigmatic figure bears a striking resemblance to Cocteau in the 1920s. Yet the isolated head emerging amid a bouquet of six-petalled flowers also recalls Orpheus.
Cocteau felt close to this poet-magician. He made the mythical figure an embodiment of immortality: even after decapitation, Orpheus lives on through his voice. According to myth, his severed head continues to sing, prophesy and utter oracles.
The face in the central lancet, considered alongside the motifs in the two other lancets, also belongs to a symbolism of the ‘centre’.
At the same height as the head, the heart of a three-petalled flower appears in the left lancet, while the centre of another six-petalled flower is set within a living tree on the right.
The composition thus evokes the three cosmic regions—Sky, Earth and the lower world—linked at a centre by a single axis. This centre becomes a place of passage and communication between the world’s different levels.
Like Orpheus, Cocteau becomes mediator and guide, seeking to let a light from beyond irradiate natural light.
The three windows on the south façade, in the Des Gournay Chapel, mark the three stages of an initiatory journey.
First window — window 12
Crossed by innumerable threads, the labyrinth connects the living and the dead alike.
It evokes Hades, the intermediate realm between life and death. Symbolically, it also conveys the poet’s unease: he seems to prefer inhabiting death rather than life, as though these threads continually held him in morbid places. The labyrinth gives form to the inner turmoil the artist must traverse and overcome.
Second window — window 14
The poet overcomes this ordeal through the image of the tree of life and the goddess Demeter, who presides over the cycle of the seasons.
Here we encounter the grain of wheat that must die in the earth before it can be reborn. Death is no longer an end: it becomes the necessary passage towards new growth and new life.
Third window — window 16
Finally, the poet experiences ‘phoenixology’. In The Testament of Orpheus, his final film, Minerva strikes him with her spear. A psychopomp horse then carries him towards his final dwelling before he is immediately reborn, his eyes irradiated with light.
Death thus possesses a creative power: each time, it brings the poet back to life.
Window 9, organised around two centres, stands in a vaulted space known as the ‘winter chapel’, at the northern end of the church between the apse—the choir—and the north transept. Its distinctive feature is that it chiefly represents Jean Cocteau from different angles.
The left lancet
Two faces in profile emerge one after the other in this window. Both incline in the same direction, towards the left, and seem to gaze at a being, event or object beyond the frame.
They may be the poet’s two faces: opposed, yet belonging to the same personality. The first, darker and unpredictable, may be lunar, as the crescent moon suggests. The second, brighter, joyful and even carefree, may be solar, as indicated by the radiant star.
The right lancet
In the lower part of the window, Cocteau appears frontally at the centre of the composition, his head encircled by flames. Fire often arises from an encounter or contact with the sacred.
The poet presents himself in splendour, wearing his finest attributes: the Academician’s bicorne on his head and an imposing ruff of sharp triangles around his neck.
Elected to the Académie française in 1955, Jean Cocteau thus became, in the institution’s own terminology, an ‘Immortal’.
The poet may have wished to associate some of those close to him with this ecstatic moment. Immediately above his flaming head appear two faces in profile, set opposite one another. Could they be Jean Marais on the right and Édouard Dermit on the left? This identification remains a hypothesis.
To learn more
Books and articles by Christian Schmitt on Jean Cocteau, his work and the stained-glass windows of Saint-Maximin Church in Metz.
Éditions des Paraiges
2023 · ISBN 978-2-37535-175-8
2012 · ISBN 979-10-90185-04-3
Éditions JALON
2023 · ISBN 978-2-491068-56-1
2022 · ISBN 978-2-491068-48-6
Espace Trévisse
07 · Get in touch
Would you like to respond to this interpretation, request further information or discuss Jean Cocteau’s stained glass at Saint-Maximin? Write directly to Christian Schmitt.
Contact Christian Schmitt↗schmitt020251@gmail.comThis button opens your email application. No message is stored by this website.
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61 rue Mazelle · 57000 Metz
Outre-Seille district