Michael Anthony Müller has created three stained-glass windows for Eberbach Monastery. Installed at the south portal of the basilica, they translate an ancient myth into a visual language of light, color, and abstraction. Drawing on the Greek myth of the Dioscuri Castor and Polydeuces, the works reflect on love, mortality, time, and eternity. The inseparable twin brothers—born of different fathers, one mortal and the other divine—become figures of a perpetual oscillation between life and death after Zeus grants them an eternal alternation between Olympus and the underworld. Rather than illustrating the narrative, the windows condense it into fragmentary visual states that make presence and absence, continuity and rupture perceptible.

In terms of both motif and conceptual structure, the windows are derived from Müller’s cycle Der geschenkte Tag [The Given Day] (2021–22/2025). Within this large painting installation that is currently on view at the Neues Museum in Berlin and was first shown at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. the myth of the Dioscuri unfolds as an abstract sequence of lived moments—heroic deeds, journeys, battles, and encounters. The painting Magnesia ad Sipylum (Fragment 1) (2021–22) is a direct excerpt from this cycle, a “fragment” as the artist describes it, and serves as the immediate point of departure for the stained-glass compositions. In this sense, the windows continue a process of condensation and reduction in which each element refers back to a larger whole that remains necessarily incomplete.

The translation of these painterly structures into glass required a long and technically highly complex process in close collaboration with Derix Glas Studios. Color, transparency, and light had to be rethought in material terms, as the windows are not static images but works that continuously transform with changing daylight. This shift from painting to glass demanded extensive experimentation as well as a precise alignment between artistic intention and artisanal expertise. At the same time, the project was embedded in the historical and architectural context of the former Cistercian monastery of Eberbach, requiring close coordination with heritage authorities and strict respect for conservation requirements.

The completion of the windows was marked by a ceremonial public unveiling, honoring both the conclusion of this demanding artistic and technical process and their installation within the historic fabric of the monastery.

The creation of the stained-glass windows was documented throughout their development in a film that follows the project from its earliest stages to its completion. Accompanying Michael Anthony Müller from the initial designs in his studio through the painting process and the close collaboration with the glass studio, it reveals the artistic and technical decisions that shaped the realization of the windows.The film concludes with the installation of the stained-glass windows at Eberbach Monastery, capturing their integration into the historic basilica and their interaction with natural light. It provides insight into the complexity of the project and the many stages required to transform a painterly concept into a monumental work of stained glass.

You can see the film by clicking here:

Michael Anthony Müller: Eine Frage der Liebe