Saint Gobnait (Clarke)

The Saint Gobnait stained glass window was designed in 1915[1] and installed in 1916 in the Honan Chapel, Cork by the Irish artist Harry Clarke.

According to the art historian Patricia Rogers, Clarke "certainly would have seen the famous ruins of Gobnet's first church on Inisheer, and these may have attracted him to the subject of this saint.

[4] The design and building of the Honan Chapel was overseen by John O'Connell, a leading member of the Celtic revival and Arts and Crafts movements.

According to Michael J. O'Kelly, Clarke's evokes "three-dimensional human expression" using only Gobnait's face and hands, while all other details, including her robes and the floral background, are two dimensional and flat.

[17] (Gobnait is described in early accounts as a "sharp-beaked nun, and according to writer Frank McNally, Clarke gives her nose "the trajectory of an Olympic ski-jump".

[12] According to the Irish novelist E. Œ. Somerville, it conjures late 19th century decadence in its resemblance to an Aubrey Beardsley–type female face, which "though horrible [is] so modern and conventionally unconventional ... [Clarke's] windows have a kind of hellish splendour."

In 1917, Seán Keating produced a modernist oil on canvas painting titled "Thinking Out Gobneh", which shows Clarke working on a design for the window.