The 'Blue Virgin' window is a famous stained glass piece in which French Gothic cathedral?

The “Blue Virgin” window is a famous stained-glass work in Chartres Cathedral. Its formal name is Notre-Dame de la Belle-Verrière, meaning “Our Lady of the Beautiful Window.”

The central image shows the Virgin Mary and Christ Child enthroned, surrounded by angels. Mary’s deep, luminous blue robe is the feature that gives the window its popular English nickname. The celebrated color is associated with the distinctive “Chartres blue,” produced in medieval glassmaking through cobalt-based coloring.

The window is one of the cathedral’s most treasured survivals from the 12th century. Much of Chartres’s famous glass collection was made after the fire of 1194, largely between about 1205 and 1240, but the Blue Virgin includes older panels that survived the blaze and were incorporated into the later building.

Visitors sometimes confuse the Blue Virgin with one of Chartres’s rose windows or assume it is the cathedral’s only Marian image. In fact, Chartres contains many depictions of Mary, while this particular window is remembered for its exceptional blue and its unusual survival from an earlier phase of the cathedral’s history.