The Church of Richter

If you do happen to be on the Grand Tour, you might also stop in at the Cologne Cathedral, where a stained glass window by Gerhard Richter was unveiled last weekend.

Richter took his cue for the window's design from his own 4096 Farben (4,096 Colors), a grid painting from 1974 that sold at Christie's in May 2004 for $3.7 million. The window features 11,250 squares of glass in 72 colors.

It's a departure from the traditional program of church windows (i.e. martyrs, saints, biblical stories), to say the least. And word on the street is the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, isn't happy about it. According to Deutsche Welle, a "close confidante" told the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the cardinal didn't want Richter's window, but rather one depicting traditional figures. Artnet.com says that the artist originally came up with a design that showed Nazi victims being executed, but that the depiction was deemed "inappropriate." Abstraction seems to have been lesser of two evils.

The New York Times recently ran a piece about the revival of artist commissions for churches here.

Photo Credit: DPA/Corbis