The Tapestry Book
by Helen Churchill Candee · English · Gutenberg #26151 · 456,229 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Tapestry Book
Author: Helen Churchill Candee
Release date: July 30, 2008 [eBook #26151]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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THE
TAPESTRY
BOOK
BY
HELEN CHURCHILL CANDEE
AUTHOR OF "DECORATIVE STYLES AND PERIODS"
_WITH FOUR PLATES IN COLOUR AND NINETY-NINE
ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
MCMXII
[Illustration: HERSE AND MERCURY
Renaissance Brussels Tapestry, Italian Cartoon. W. de Pannemaker,
weaver.
Collection of George Blumenthal, Esq., New York]
_Copyright, 1912,
by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_
_October, 1912_
TO
TWO CERTAIN BYZANTINE MADONNAS
AND THEIR OWNERS
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Modesty so dominates the staff in art museums that I am requested not
to make mention of those officers who have helped me with friendly
courtesy and efficiency. To the officers and assistants at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago,
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Print Department in the
Library of Congress in Washington, indebtedness is here publicly
acknowledged with the regret that I may not speak of individuals.
Photographs of tapestries are credited to Messrs. A. Giraudon, Paris;
J. Laurent, Madrid; Alinari, Florence; Wm. Baumgarten, and Albert
Herter, New York, and to those private collectors whose names are
mentioned on the plates.
H. C. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A FOREWORD 1
II ANTIQUITY 15
III MODERN AWAKENING 25
IV FRANCE AND FLANDERS, 15TH CENTURY 32
V HIGH GOTHIC 51
VI RENAISSANCE INFLUENCE 64
VII RENAISSANCE TO RUBENS 72
VIII ITALY, 15TH THROUGH 17TH CENTURIES 81
IX FRANCE 90
X THE GOBELINS FACTORY 105
XI THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) 117
XII THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) 126
XIII THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) 135
XIV BEAUVAIS 145
XV AUBUSSON 154
XVI SAVONNERIE 159
XVII MORTLAKE 163
XVIII IDENTIFICATIONS 172
XIX IDENTIFICATIONS (_Continued_) 186
XX BORDERS 201
XXI TAPESTRY MARKS 216
XXII HOW IT IS MADE 226
XXIII THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 241
XXIV TO-DAY 249
BEST PERIODS AND THEIR DATES 265
INDEX 267
ILLUSTRATIONS
HERSE AND MERCURY (_Coloured Plate_) _Frontispiece_
Renaissance Brussels Tapestry, Italian Cartoon. W. de
Pannemaker, weaver. Collection of George Blumenthal,
Esq., New York
FACING PAGE
CHINESE TAPESTRY 14
Chien Lung Period
COPTIC TAPESTRY 15
About 300 A. D.
COPTIC TAPESTRY 16
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
COPTIC TAPESTRY 17
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
TAPESTRY FOUND IN GRAVES IN PERU 18
Date prior to Sixteenth Century
THE SACRAMENTS (_Coloured Plate_) 34
Arras Tapestry, about 1430. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
THE SACRAMENTS 38
Arras Tapestry, about 1430
THE SACRAMENTS 39
Arras Tapestry, about 1430
FIFTEENTH CENTURY, FRENCH TAPESTRY 40
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
THE LIFE OF CHRIST 41
Flemish Tapestry, second half of Fifteenth Century.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
LA BAILLEE DES ROSES 42
French Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
FIFTEENTH CENTURY MILLEFLEUR WITH ARMS 43
Cathedral of Troyes
THE LADY AND THE UNICORN 44
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris
THE LADY AND THE UNICORN 45
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris
THE SACK OF JERUSALEM (DETAIL) 46
Burgundian Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York
SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITH ARMORIAL SHIELDS 48
Flemish Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Institute of Art,
Chicago
HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN 49
Angers Cathedral
DAVID AND BATHSHEBA 50
German Tapestry, about 1450
FLEMISH TAPESTRY. ABOUT 1500 51
Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.
DAVID AND BATHSHEBA 52
Flemish Tapestry, late Fifteenth Century
HISTORY OF ST. STEPHEN 53
Arras Tapestry, Fifteenth Century
VERDURE 54
French Gothic Tapestry
"ECCE HOMO" 55
Brussels Tapestry, about 1520. Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York
ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT 56
Flemish Tapestry, about 1500. Collection of Alfred W.
Hoyt, Esq.
CROSSING THE RED SEA 57
Brussels Tapestry, about 1500. Boston Museum of Fine Arts
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 58
Flemish Tapestry, about 1510. Collection of J. Pierpont
Morgan, Esq., New York
FLEMISH TAPESTRY, END OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 60
Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly
in the Spitzer Collection
THE HOLY FAMILY 61
Flemish Tapestry, end of Fifteenth Century. Collection
of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly in the
Spitzer Collection
CONQUEST OF TUNIS BY CHARLES V (DETAIL) 62
Cartoon by Jan Vermeyen. Woven by Pannemaker. Royal
Collection at Madrid
DEATH OF ANANIAS.--FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY RAPHAEL 64
From the Palace of Madrid
THE STORY OF REBECCA 65
Brussels Tapestry, Sixteenth Century. Collection of
Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
THE CREATION 66
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century
THE ORIGINAL SIN 67
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century
MELEAGER AND ATALANTA 68
Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth Century.
Woven in Paris workshops by Charles de Comans
PUNIC WAR SERIES 69
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of
Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CAESAR 70
Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the
Arazzi, Florence
WILD BOAR HUNT 71
Flemish Cartoon and Weaving, Sixteenth Century. Gallery
of the Arazzi, Florence
VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 72
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
Madrid
VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 73
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
Madrid
VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 74
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
Madrid
VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 75
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
Madrid
TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED 76
Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid
THE STORY OF REBECCA 77
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of
Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 78
Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art, Chicago
MEETING OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 79
Brussels Tapestry. Woven by Gerard van den Strecken.
Cartoon attributed to Rubens
THE ANNUNCIATION (_Coloured Plate_) 82
Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of
Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago
ITALIAN TAPESTRY, MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY 84
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas Karcher
ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY 85
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by G. Rost
ITALIAN VERDURE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 86
THE FINDING OF MOSES 90
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin.
The Louvre Museum
TRIUMPH OF JUNO 91
Gobelins under Louis XIV
TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL) 94
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century
TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL) 95
Gobelins Tapestry
GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 98
CHILDREN GARDENING 99
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century.
Chateau Henri Quatre, Pau
CHILDREN GARDENING 102
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century.
Chateau Henri Quatre, Pau
GOBELINS GROTESQUE 103
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV 104
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York
THE VILLAGE FETE 105
Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers
DESIGN BY RUBENS 110
DESIGN BY RUBENS 111
DESIGN BY RUBENS 112
GOBELINS TAPESTRY. DESIGN BY RUBENS 113
Royal Collection, Madrid
LOUIS XIV VISITING THE GOBELINS FACTORY 114
Gobelins Tapestry, Epoch Louis XIV
GOBELINS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XV 126
HUNTS OF LOUIS XV 130
Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry
ESTHER AND AHASUERUS SERIES 131
Gobelins, about 1730. Cartoon by J. F. de Troy;
G. Audran, weaver
CUPID AND PSYCHE 132
Gobelins Tapestry. Eighteenth Century. Design by Coypel
PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE OF RUSSIA 133
Gobelins under Louis XVI.
CHAIR OF TAPESTRY. STYLE OF LOUIS XV 136
GOBELINS TAPESTRY (DETAIL) CRAMOISEE. STYLE LOUIS XV 137
HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS 146
Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent
HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTREES 147
Design by Vincent
BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 148
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI 149
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York
BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV 150
BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY 152
CHAIR COVERING 153
Beauvais Tapestry. First Empire
SAVONNERIE. PORTRAIT SUPPOSABLY OF LOUIS XV 162
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE 163
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York
VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE 168
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York
VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE 169
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York
THE EXPULSION OF VULCAN FROM OLYMPUS (_Coloured Plate_) 170
WEAVER AT WORK ON LOW LOOM. HERTER STUDIO 228
SEWING AND REPAIR DEPARTMENT. BAUMGARTEN ATELIERS 229
BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 230
BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON 231
BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON 234
BAYEUX TAPESTRY. (DETAIL) 1066 242
BAYEUX TAPESTRY. (DETAIL) 1066 243
BAYEUX TAPESTRY. (DETAIL) 1066 244
MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY, LOUIS XV INSPIRATION 250
MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY FROM FRENCH INSPIRATION 251
GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 252
Luxembourg, Paris
GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 253
Pantheon, Paris
THE ADORATION 256
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Figures by Burne-Jones
DAVID INSTRUCTING SOLOMON IN THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE 257
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Burne-Jones, Artist
TRUTH BLINDFOLDED 258
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Byram Shaw, Artist
THE PASSING OF VENUS 260
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-Jones
ANGELI LAUDANTES 261
Merton Abbey Tapestry
AMERICAN (BAUMGARTEN) TAPESTRY COPIED FROM THE GOTHIC 262
DRYADS AND FAUNS 263
From Herter Looms, New York, 1910
THE TAPESTRY BOOK
CHAPTER I
A FOREWORD
The commercial fact that tapestries have immeasurably increased in
value within the last five years, would have little interest were it
not that this increase is the direct result of America's awakened
appreciation of this form of art. It has come about in these latter
days that tapestries are considered a necessity in the luxurious and
elegant homes which are multiplying all over our land. And the
enormous demand thus made on the supply, has sent the prices for rare
bits into a dizzy altitude, and has made even the less perfect pieces
seem scarce and desirable.
The opinion of two shrewd men of different types is interesting as
bearing on the subject of tapestries. One with tastes fully cultivated
says impressively, "Buy good old tapestries whenever you see them, for
there are no more." The other says bluffly, "Tapestries? You can't
touch 'em. The prices have gone way out of sight, and are going higher
every day." The latter knows but one view, the commercial, yet both
are right, and these two views are at the bottom of the present keen
interest in tapestries in our country. Outside of this, Europe has
collections which we never can equal, and that thought alone is
enough to make us snatch eagerly at any opportunity to secure a piece.
We may begin with our ambition set on museum treasures, but we can
come happily down to the friendly fragments that fit our private
purses and the wall-space by the inglenook.
Tapestries are not to be bought lightly, as one buys a summer coat, to
throw aside at the change of taste or circumstance. They demand more
of the buyer than mere money; they demand that loving understanding
and intimate appreciation that exists between human friends. A
profound knowledge of tapestries benefits in two ways, by giving the
keenest pleasure, and by providing the collector--or the purchaser of
a single piece--with a self-protection that is proof against fraud,
unconscious or deliberate.
The first step toward buying must be a bit of pleasant study which
shall serve in the nature of self-defence. Not by books alone,
however, shall this subject be approached, but by happy jaunts to
sympathetic museums, both at home and abroad, by moments snatched from
the touch-and-go talk of afternoon tea in some friend's salon or
library, or by strolling visits to dealers. These object lessons
supplement the book, as a study of entomology is enlivened by a chase
for butterflies in the flowery meads of June, or as botany is made
endurable by lying on a bank of violets. All work and no play not only
makes Jack a dull boy, but makes dull reading the book he has in hand.
The tale of tapestry itself carries us back to the unfathomable East
which has a trick at dates, making the Christian Era a modern epoch,
and making of us but a newly-sprung civilisation in the history of the
old grey world. After showing us that the East pre-empted originality
for all time, the history of tapestry lightly lifts us over a few
centuries and throws us into the romance of Gothic days, then trails
us along through increasing European civilisation up to the great
awakening, the Renaissance. Then it loiters in the pleasant ways of
the kings of France during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
and finally falls upon modern effort, not limited to Europe now, but
nesting also in the New World which is especially our own.
Tapestry, according to the interpretation of the word used in this
book, is a pictured cloth, woven by an artist or a talented craftsman,
in which the design is an integral part of the fabric, and not an
embroidery stitched on a basic tissue. With this flat statement the
review of tapestries from antiquity until our time may be read without
fear of mistaking the term.
THE LOOM
The looms on which tapestries are made are such as have been known as
long as the history of man is known, but we have come to call them
high-warp and low-warp, or as the French have it, _haute lisse_ and
_basse lisse_. In the celebrated periods of weaving the high loom has
been the one in use, and to it is accredited a power almost
mysterious; yet the work of the two styles of loom are not
distinguishable by the weave alone, and it is true that the low-warp
looms were used in France when the manufacture of tapestries was
permanently established by the Crown about 1600. So difficult is it to
determine the work of the two looms that weavers themselves could not
distinguish without the aid of a red thread which they at one time
wove in the border. Yet because the years of the highest perfection in
tapestries have been when the high loom was in vogue, some peculiar
power is supposed to reside within it. That the high movements of the
fine arts have been contemporary with perfection in tapestries, seems
not to be taken into consideration.
NECESSARY FRENCH TERMS
French terms belong so much to the art of tapestry weaving that it is
hard to find their English equivalent. Tapestries of _verdure_ and of
_personnages_ describe the two general classes, the former being any
charming mass of greenery, from the Gothic _millefleurs_, and curling
leaves with animals beneath, to the lovely landscapes of sophisticated
park and garden which made Beauvais famous in the Eighteenth Century.
_Tapisseries des personnages_ have, as the name implies, the human
figure as the prominent part of the design. The shuttle or bobbin of
the high loom is called a _broche_, and that of the low loom a
_flute_. Weavers throughout Europe, whether in the Low Countries or in
France, were called _tapissiers_, and this term was so liberal as to
need explaining.
WORKERS' FUNCTIONS
The tapestry factory was under the guidance of a director; under him
were the various persons required for the work. Each tapestry woven
had a directing artist, as the design was of primary importance. This
man had the power to select the silks and wools for the work, that
they might suit his eye as to colour. But there was also a _chef
d'atelier_ who was an artist weaver, and he directed this matter and
all others when the artist of the cartoons was not present. Under him
were the tapissiers who did the actual weaving, and under these,
again, were the apprentices, who began as boys and served three years
before being allowed to try their hands at a "'prentice job" or essay
at finished work.
WEAVERS
The word weaver means so little in these days that it is necessary to
consider what were the conditions exacted of the weavers of tapestries
in the time of tapestry's highest perfection. A tapissier was an
artist with whom a loom took place of an easel, and whose brush was a
shuttle, and whose colour-medium was thread instead of paints. This
places him on a higher plane than that of mere weaver, and makes the
term tapissier seem fitter. Much liberty was given him in copying
designs and choosing colours. In the Middle Ages, when the Gothic
style prevailed, the master-weaver needed often no other cartoon for
his work than his own sketches enlarged from the miniatures found in
the luxurious missals of the day. These historic books were the
luxuries of kings, were kept with the plate and jewels, so precious
were considered their exquisitely painted scenes in miniature. From
them the master-weaver drew largely for such designs as _The Seven
Deadly Sins_ and other "morality" subjects.
Master-weavers were many in the best years of tapestry weaving;
indeed, a man must have attained the dignity and ability of that
position before being able to produce those marvels of skill which
were woven between 1475 and 1575 in Flanders, France and Italy. Their
aids, the apprentices, pique the fancy, as Puck harnessed to labour
might do. They were probably as mischievous, as shirking, as
exasperating as boys have ever known how to be, but those little
unwilling slaves of art in the Middle Ages make an appeal to the
imagination more vivid than that of the shabby lunch-box boy of
to-day.
DYERS
Accessory to the weavers, and almost as important, were the dyers who
prepared the thread for use. The conscientiousness of their work cries
out for recognition when the threads they dyed are almost unaltered in
colour after five hundred years of exposure to their enemies, light
and air. Dye stuffs were precious in those days, and so costly that
even threads of gold and silver (which in general were supplied by the
client ordering the tapestry) hardly exceeded in value certain dyed
wools and silk. All of these workers, from director down to
apprenticed lad, were bound by the guild to do or not do, according to
its infinite code, to the end that the art of tapestry-making be held
to the highest standards. The laws of the guilds make interesting
reading. The guild prevailed all over Europe and regulated all crafts.
In Florence even to-day evidences of its power are on every side, and
the Guildhall in London attests its existence there. Moreover, the
greatest artists belonged to the guilds, uniting themselves usually by
work of the goldsmith, as Benvenuto Cellini so quaintly describes in
his naive autobiography.
GUILDS
It was these same protective laws of the guilds that in the end
crippled the hand of the weaver. The laws grew too many to comply
with, in justice to talent, and talent with clipped wings could no
longer soar. At the most brilliant period of tapestry production
Flanders was to the fore. All Europe was appreciating and demanding
the unequalled products of her ateliers. It was but human to want to
keep the excellence, to build a wall of restrictions around her
especial craft that would prevent rivals, and at the same time to
press the ateliers to execute all the orders that piled in toward the
middle of the Sixteenth Century.
But although the guilds could make wise laws and enforce them, it
could not execute in haste and retain the standard of excellence. And
thus came the gradual decay of the art in Brussels, a decay which
guild-laws had no power to arrest.
GOTHIC PERIOD
The first period in tapestries which interests--except the remnants of
Egyptian and aboriginal work--is that of the Middle Ages, the early
Gothic, because that is when the art became a considerable one in
Europe. It is a time of romance, of chivalry, of deep religious
feeling, and yet seems like the childhood of modernity. Is it the
fault of crudity in pictorial art, or the fault of romances that we
look upon those distant people as more elemental than we, and thus
feel for them the indulgent compassion that a child excites? However
it is, theirs is to us a simple time of primitive emotion and romance,
and the tapestries they have left us encourage the whim.
The time of Gothic perfection in tapestry-making is included in the
few years lying between 1475 and 1520. Life was at that time getting
less difficult, and art had time to develop. It was no longer left to
monks and lonely ladies, in convent and castle, but was the serious
consideration of royalty and nobility. No need to dwell on the story
of modern art, except as it affects the art of tapestry weaving. With
the improvement of drawing that came in these years, a greater
excellence of weave was required to translate properly the meaning of
the artist. The human face which had hitherto been either blank or
distorted in expression, now required a treatment that should convey
its subtlest shades of expression. Gifted weavers rose to the task,
became almost inspired in the use of their medium, and produced such
works of their art as have never been equalled in any age. These are
the tapestries that grip the heart, that cause a _frisson_ of joy to
the beholder. And these are the tapestries we buy, if kind chance
allows. If they cannot be ours to live with, then away to the museum
in all haste and often, to feast upon their beauties.
RENAISSANCE
That great usurper, the Renaissance, came creeping up to the North
where the tapestry looms were weaving fairy webs. Pope Pius X wanted
tapestries, those of the marvellous Flemish weave. But he wanted those
of the new style of drawing, not the sweet restraint and finished
refinement of the Gothic. Raphael's cartoons were sent to Brussels'
workshops, and thus was the North inoculated with the Renaissance, and
thus began the second phase of the supreme excellency of Flemish
tapestries. It was the Renaissance expressing itself in the wondrous
textile art. The weavers were already perfect in their work, no change
of drawing could perplex them. But to their deftness with their medium
was now added the rich invention of the Italian artists of the
Renaissance, at the period of perfection when restraint and delicacy
were still dominant notes.
It was the overworking of the craft that led to its decadence. Toward
the end of the Sixteenth Century the extraordinary period of Brussels
perfection had passed.
But tapestry played too important a part in the life and luxury of
those far-away centuries for its production to be allowed to languish.
The magnificence of every great man, whether pope, king or dilettante,
was ill-expressed before his fellows if he were not constantly
surrounded by the storied cloths that were the indispensable
accessories of wealth and glory. Palaces and castles were hung with
them, the tents of military encampments were made gorgeous with their
richness, and no joust nor city procession was conceivable without
their colours flaunting in the sun as background to plumed knights and
fair ladies. Venice looked to them to brighten her historic stones on
days of carnival, and Paris spread them to welcome kings.
FRANCE
When, therefore, Brussels no longer supplied the tissues of her former
excellence, opportunity came for some other centre to rise. The next
important producer was Paris, and in Paris the art has consistently
stayed. Other brief periods of perfection have been attained
elsewhere, but Paris once establishing the art, has never let it drop,
not even in our own day--but that is not to be considered at this
moment.
Divers reigns of divers kings, notably that of Henri IV, fostered the
weaving of tapestry and brought it to an interesting stage of
development, after which Louis XIV established the Gobelins. From that
time on for a hundred years France was without a rival, for the
decadent work of Brussels could not be counted as such. Although the
work of Italy in the Seventeenth Century has its admirers, it is
guilty of the faults of all of Italy's art during the dominance of
Bernini's ideals.
AMERICAN INTEREST
America is too late on the field to enter the game of antiquity. We
have no history of this wonderful textile art to tell. But ours is the
power to acquire the lovely examples of the marvellous historied
hangings of other times and of those nations which were our forebears
before the New World was discovered. And we are acquiring them from
every corner of Europe where they may have been hiding in old chateau
or forgotten chest. To the museums go the most marvellous examples
given or lent by those altruistic collectors who wish to share their
treasures with a hungry public. But to the mellow atmosphere of
private homes come the greater part of the tapestries. To buy them
wisely, a smattering of their history is a requisite. Within the brief
compass of this book is to be found the points important for the
amateur, but for a profounder study he must turn to those huge volumes
in French which omit no details.
Not entirely by books can he learn. Association with the objects
loved, counts infinitely more in coming to an understanding. Happy he
who can make of tapestries the _raison d'etre_ for a few months'
loitering in Europe, and can ravish the eye and intoxicate the
imagination with the storied cloths found hanging in England, in
France, in Spain, in Italy, in Sweden, and learn from them the
fascinating tales of other men's lives in other men's times.
Then, when the tour is finished and a modest tapestry is hung at home,
it represents to its instructed owner the concentrated tale of all he
has seen and learned. In the weave he sees the ancient craftsman
sitting at his loom. In the pattern is the drawing of the artist of
the day, in the colours, the dyes most rare and costly; in the metal,
the gold and silver of a duke or prince; and in the tale told by the
figures he reads a romance of chivalry or history, which has the
glamour given by the haze of distant time to human action.
To enter a house where tapestries abound, is to feel oneself welcomed
even before the host appears. The bending verdure invites, the
animated figures welcome, and at once the atmosphere of elegance and
cordiality envelopes the happy visitor.
To live in a house abundantly hung with old tapestries, to live there
day by day, makes of labour a pleasure and of leisure a delight. It is
no small satisfaction in our work-a-day life to live amidst beauty, to
be sure that every time the eyes are raised from the labour of writing
or sewing--or of bridge whist, if you like--they encounter something
worthy and lovely. In the big living-room of the home, when the hours
come in which the family gathers, on a rainy morning, or on any
afternoon when the shadows grow grim outside and the afternoon
tea-tray is brought in whispering its discreet tune of friendly
communion, the tapestries on the walls seem to gather closer, to
enfold in loving embrace the sheltered group, to promise protection
and to augment brotherly love.
In the dining-room the glorious company assembles, so that he who eats
therein, attends a feast on Olympus, even though the dyspeptic's fast
be his lot. If the eyes gaze on Coypel's gracious ladies, under fruit
and roses, with adolescent gods adoring, what matters if the palate is
chastised? In a dining-room soft-hung with piquant scenes, even
buttermilk and dog-biscuit, burnt canvasback and cold Burgundy lose
half their bitterness.
When night is well started in its flight, perhaps one only, one lover
of the silence and the solitude, loath to give away to soft sleep the
quiet hours, this one remains behind when all the others have flown
bedward, and to him the neighbouring tapestries speak a various
language. From the easy chair he sees the firelight play on the
verdure with the effect of a summer breeze, the gracious foliage all
astir. The figures in this enchanted wood are set in motion and
imagination brings them into the life of the moment, makes of them
sympathetic playmates coaxing one to love, as they do, the land of
romance. Before their imperturbable jocundity what bad humour can
exist? All the old songs of mock pastoral times come singing in the
ears, "It happened on a day, in the merry month of May," "Shepherds
all and maidens fair," "It was a lover and his lass," "Phoebus arise,
and paint the skies," _et cetera_. Animated by the fire, in the
silence of the winter night the loving horde gathers and ministers to
the mind afflicted with much hard practicality and the strain of
keeping up with modern inexorable times. This sweet procession on the
walls, thanks be to lovely art, needs no keeping up with, merely asks
to scatter joy and to soften the asperities of a too arduous day.
All the way up the staircase in the house of tapestries are dainty
bits of _millefleurs_, that Gothic invention for transferring a block
of the spring woods from under the trees into a man-made edifice. It
may have a deep indigo background or a dull red--like the shades of
moss or like last year's fallen leaves--but over it all is abundantly
sprinkled dainty bluebells, anemones, daisies, all the spring beauties
in joyous self-assertion and happy mingling. With such flowery guides
to mark the way the path to slumberland is followed. Once within the
bedroom, the poppies of the hangings spread drowsy influence, and the
happy sleeper passes into unconsciousness, passes through the flowered
border of the ancient square, into the scene beyond, becomes one of
those storied persons in the enchanted land and lives with them in
jousts and tourneys or in _fetes champetres_ at lovely chateaux. The
magic spell of the house of tapestries has fallen like the dew from
heaven to bless the striver in our modern life of exigency and
fatigue.
[Illustration: CHINESE TAPESTRY
Chien Lung Period]
[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
About 300 A. D.]
CHAPTER II
ANTIQUITY
Egypt and China, India and Persia, seem made to take the conceit from
upstart nations like those of Europe and our own toddling America.
Directly we scratch the surface and look for the beginning of applied
arts, the lead takes us inevitably to the oldest civilisation. It
would seem that in a study of fabrics which are made in modern Europe,
it were enough to find their roots in the mediaeval shades of the dark
ages; but no, back we must go to the beginning of history where man
leaped from the ambling dinosaur, which then modestly became extinct,
and looking upon the lands of the Nile and the Yangtsi-kiang found
them good, and proceeded to pre-empt all the ground of applied arts,
so that from that time forward all the nations of the earth were and
are obliged to acknowledge that there is nothing new under the sun.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a bit of tapestry,
Coptic, that period where Greek and Egyptian drawing were intermixed,
a woman's head adorned with much vanity of head-dress, woven two or
three centuries after Christ. (Plate facing page 15.) In the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts are other rare specimens of this same time.
(Plates facing pages 16 and 17.) Looking further back, an ancient
decoration shows Penelope at her high loom, four hundred years before
the Christian era; and one, still older, shows the Egyptians weaving
similarly three thousand years before that epoch.
It is not altogether thrilling to read that civilised people of
ancient times wove fabrics for dress and decoration, but it certainly
is interesting to learn that they were masters of an art which we
carelessly attribute to Europe of six centuries back, and to find that
the weaving apparatus and the mode of work were almost identical. The
Coptic tapestry of the Third Century is woven in the same manner as
the tapestries that come to us from Europe as the flower of
comparatively recent times, and its dyes and treatment of shading are
identical with the Gothic times. Penelope's loom as pictured on an
ancient vase, is the same in principle as the modern high-warp loom,
although lacking a bit in convenience to the weaver; and so we can
easily imagine the lovely lady at work on her famous web, "playing for
time," during Ulysses' absence, when she sat up o' nights undoing her
lovely stint of the day.
And the Egyptian loom shown in ancient pictures--that is even more
modern than Penelope's, although it was set up three thousand years
before, a last guide-post on the backward way to the misty land called
prehistoric.
But as there is really little interest except for the archeologist in
digging so far into the past for an art that has left us but
traditions and museum fragments, let us skim but lightly the surface
of this time, only picking up the glistening facts that attract the
mind's eye, so that we may quickly reach the enchanted land of more
recent times which yet appear antique to the modern.
[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
There are those to whom reading the Bible was a forced task during
childhood, a class which slipped the labour as soon as years gave
liberty of choice. There are others who have always turned as
naturally to its accounts of grand ceremony and terrible battles as to
the accounts of Caesar, Coeur de Lion, Charlemagne. But in either case,
whatever the reason for the eye to absorb these pages of ancient
Hebrew history, the impression is gained of superb pomp. And always
concerned with it are descriptions of details, lovingly impressed, as
though the chronicler was sure of the interest of his audience. In
this enumeration, decorative textiles always played a part. Such
textiles as they were exceed in extravagance of material any that we
know of European production, for in many cases they were woven
entirely of gold and silver, and even set with jewels. These gorgeous
fabrics shone like suns on the magnificent pomp of priest and ruler,
and declared the wealth and power of the nation. They departed from
the original intention of protecting shivering humanity from chill
draughts or from close and cold association with the stones of
architectural construction, and became a luxury of the eye, a source
of bewilderment to the fancy and a lively intoxication to those
who--irrespective of class, or of century--love to compute display in
coin.
But, dipping into the history of one ancient country after another, it
is easy to see that the usual fabric for hanging was woven of wool, of
cotton and of silk, and carried the design in the weaving. Babylon
the great, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Greece in its heroic times, Rome
under the Emperors--not omitting China and India of the Far
East--these countries of ancient peoples all knew the arts of dyeing
and weaving, of using the materials that we employ, and of introducing
figures symbolic, geometric, or realistic into the weaving. Beyond a
doubt the high loom has been known to man since prehistoric times. It
may be discouraging to those who like to feel that tapestry properly
belongs to Europe only,--Europe of the last six centuries--to find
that the art has been sifted down through the ages; but in reality it
is but one more link between us and the centuries past, the human
touch that revivifies history, that unites humanity. People of the
past wear a haze about them, are immovable and rigid as their pictured
representations. The Assyrian is to us a huge man of impossible beard,
the Egyptian is a lean angle fixed in posture, the Greek is eternally
posed for the sculptor.
But once we can find that these people were not forever transfixed to
frieze, but were as simple, as industrious, as human as we, the
kinship is established, and through their veins begins to flow the
stream that is common to all humanity. These people felt the same need
for elegantly covering the walls of their homes that we in this
country of new homes feel, and the craftsmen led much the same lives
as do craftsmen of to-day. Even in the matter of expense, of money
which purchasers were willing to spend for woven decorative fabrics,
we see no novelty in the high prices of to-day, the Twentieth
Century. _The Mantle of Alcisthenes_ is celebrated for having been
bought by the Carthaginians for the equal of a hundred thousand
dollars.
[Illustration: TAPESTRY FOUND IN GRAVES IN PERU
Date prior to Sixteenth Century]
Thus we connect ourselves with the remote past in making a continuous
history. But as the purpose of this book is to assist the owner of
tapestries to understand the story of his hangings and to enable the
purchaser or collector to identify tapestries on his own knowledge
instead of through the prejudiced statements of the salesman, it is
useless to dwell long upon the fabrics that we can only see through
exercise of the imagination or in disintegrated fragments in museums.
Then away with Circe and her leisure hours of weaving, with Helen and
her heroic canvas, and the army of grandiose Biblical folk, and let us
come westward into Europe in short review of the textiles called
tapestry which were produced from the early Christian centuries to the
time of the Crusades, and thus will we approach more modern times.
So far as known, high-warp weaving was not universally used in Europe
in the first part of the Middle Ages. Whether plain or figured, most
of the fabrics of that time that have come down to us for hangings or
for clothing, are woven, with the decorative pattern executed by the
needle on woven cloth. In Persia and neighbouring states, however, the
high-warp loom was used.[1]
Europe in the Middle Ages was a place so savage, so devastated by war
and by neighbouring malice, that to consider it is to hear the clash
of steel, to feel the pangs of hunger, to experience the fearsome
chill of dungeons or moated castles. It was a time when those who
could huddle in fortresses mayhap died natural deaths, but those who
lived in the world were killed as a matter of course. Man was man's
enemy and to be killed on sight.
In such gay times of carnage, art is dead. Men there were who drew
designs and executed them, for the _luxe_ of the eye is ever
demanding, but the designs were timid and stunted and came far from
the field of art. Fabrics were made and worn, no doubt, but when looms
were like to be destroyed and the weavers with them, scant attention
was given to refinements.
By the time the Tenth Century was reached matters had improved. We
come into the light of records. It is positively known that the town
of Saumur, down in the lovely country below Tours, became the
destination of a quantity of wall-hangings, carpets, curtains, and
seat covers woven of wool. This was by order of the third Abbot Robert
of the Monastery of St. Florent, one of those vigorous, progressive
men whose initiative inspires a host. It is recorded that he also
ordered two pieces of tapestry executed, not of wool exclusively, but
with silk introduced, and in these the figures of the designs were the
beasts that were then favourites in decoration and that still showed
the influence of Oriental drawing.
Before enumerating other authentic examples of early tapestries it is
well to speak of the reason for their being invariably associated with
the church. The impression left by history is that folk of those days
must have been universally religious when not cutting each other in
bits with bloody cutlass. The reason is, of course, that when poor
crushed humanity began to revive from the devastating onslaughts of
fierce Northern barbarians, it was with a timid huddling in
monasteries, for there was found immunity from attack. The lord of the
castle was forced to go to war or to resist attack in his castle, but
the monastery was exempt from whatever conscription the times imposed,
and frocked friars were always on hand were defence needed. Thus it
came about that monasteries became treasure-houses, the only safe
ones, were built strong, were sufficiently manned, and therefore were
the safe-deposit of whatever articles of concentrated value the great
lord of the Middle Ages might accumulate. Many tapestries thus
deposited became gifts to the institution which gave them asylum.
The arts and crafts of the Middle Ages were in the hands of the
monasteries, monks and friars being the only persons with safety and
leisure. Weaving fell naturally to them to execute as an art. In the
castles, necessary weaving for the family was done by the women, as on
every great lord's domains were artisans for all crafts; and great
ladies emulated Penelope and Helen of old in passing their hours of
patience and anxiety with fabricating gorgeous cloths. But these are
exceptional, and deal with such grand ladies as Queen Matilda, who
with her maidens embroidered (not wove) the Bayeux Tapestry, and with
the Duchess Gonnor, wife of Richard First, who embroidered for the
church of Notre Dame at Rouen a history of the Virgin and Saints.[2]
To the monasteries must be given the honour of preserving this as
many other arts, and of stimulating the laity which had wealth and
power to present to religious institutions the best products of the
day. The subjects executed inside the monastery were perforce
religious, many revelling in the horrors of martyrology, and those
intended as gifts or those ordered by the clergy were religious in
subject for the sake of appropriateness. It is interesting to note the
sweet childlike attitude of all lower Europe toward the church in
these years, a sort of infantile way of leaving everything in its
hands, all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. It was not even necessary
to read or write, as the clergy conveniently concerned themselves with
literacy. As late as the beginning of the Fifteenth Century Philip the
Hardy, the great Duke of Burgundy, in ordering a tapestry, signed the
order, not with his autograph, for he could not, but with his mark,
for he, too, left pen-work to the clerks of the church.
That pile of concentrated royal history, the old abbey of St. Denis,
received, late in the Tenth Century, one of the evidences of royal
patronage that every abbey must have envied. It was a woven
representation of the world, as scientists of that day imagined our
half-discovered planet, and was presented by Queen Adelaide, the wife
of Hugh Capet, whose descendants reigned for three hundred years.[3]
While dealing with records rather than with objects on which the eye
can gaze and the hand can rest, note must be made of an order of a
Count of Poitou, William V, to a factory for tapestries then existing
in Poitiers, showing that the art of weaving had in that spot jumped
the monastery walls in 1025.[4] The order was for a large hanging with
subjects taken from the Scriptures, but given the then modern touch by
introducing portraits of kings and emperors and their favourite
animals transfixed in ways peculiar to the nature of the day.
A century later, another Abbot of St. Florent in Saumur had hangings
made important enough to be recorded. One of these represented the
four and twenty elders of the Apocalypse with musical instruments, and
other subjects taken from the Revelation of John. This subject was one
of unending interest to the artists of that time who seemed to find in
its depicting a serving of both God and imagination.
Among the few tapestries of this period, those of the Cathedral at
Halberstadt must be mentioned, partly by way of conscientious
chronicling, partly that the interested traveller may, as he travels,
know where to find the rare specimens of the hobby he is pursuing.
This is a high-warp tapestry which authorities variously place as the
product of the Eleventh or the Twelfth Centuries. Entirely regardless
of its age, it has for us the charm of the craft of hands long
vanished, and of primitive art in all its simplicity of artifice. The
subject is religious--could hardly have been otherwise in those
monastic days--and for church decoration, and to fit the space they
were woven to occupy, each of the two parts was but three and a half
feet high although more than fourteen yards long.
Each important event recorded in history has its expression in the
material product of its time, and this is one of the charms of
studying the liberal arts. Tapestry more than almost any other
handicraft has left us a pictured history of events in a time when
records were scarce. The effect of the Crusades was noticeable in the
impetus it gave to tapestry, not only by bringing Europe into fresh
contact with Oriental design but by increasing the desire for
luxurious stuffs. The returning crusaders--what traveller's tales did
they not tell of the fabrics of the great Oriental sovereigns and
their subjects, the soft rugs, the tent coverings, the gorgeous
raiment; and these tales they illustrated with what fragments they
could port in their travellers' packs. Here lay inspiration for a
continent.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Eugene Muentz, "History of Tapestry."
[2] Jubinal, "Recherches," Vol. I.
[3] F. Michel, "Recherches."
[4] Jubinal, "Recherches."
CHAPTER III
MODERN AWAKENING
In the Fourteenth Century, tapestry, the high-warp product, began to
play an important part in the refinements of the day. We have seen the
tendency of the past time to embellish and soften churches and
monastic institutions with hangings. Records mostly in clerical Latin,
speak of these as curtains for doorways, dossers for covering seats,
and the backs of benches, and baldachins, as well as carpets for use
on the floor. Subjects were ecclesiastic, as the favourite Apocalypse;
or classic, like that of the Quedlimburg hanging which fantastically
represents the marriage of Mercury and Philology.
But in the Thirteenth Century the political situation had improved and
men no longer slept in armour and women no longer were prepared to
thrust all household valuables into a coffer on notice that the enemy
was approaching over the plains or up the rocks. Therefore, homes
began to be a little less rude in their comforts. Stone walls were
very much the rule inside as well as out, but it became convenient
then to cover their grim asperities with the woven draperies, the
remains of which so interest us to-day, and which we in our accession
of luxuriousness would add to the already gently finished apartments.
To put ourselves back into one of those castle homes we are to
imagine a room of stone walls, fitted with big iron hooks, on which
hung pictured tapestry which reached all around, even covering the
doors in its completeness. To admit of passing in and out the door a
slit was made, or two tapestries joined at this spot. Set Gothic
furniture scantily about such a room, a coffer or two, some
high-backed chairs, a generous table, and there is a room which the
art of to-day with its multiple ingenuity cannot surpass for beauty
and repose.
But such a room gave opportunity for other matters in the Thirteenth
Century. Customs were less polite and morals more primitive. Important
people desiring important information were given to the spying and
eavesdropping which now has passed out of polite fashion. And those
ancient rooms favoured the intriguer, for the hangings were suspended
a foot or two away from the wall, and a man or a woman, for that
matter, might easily slip behind and witness conversations to which
the listener had not been invited. So it was customary on occasions of
intimate and secret converse lightly to thrust a sharpened blade
behind the curtains. If, as in the case in "Hamlet," the sword pierced
a human quarry, so much the worse for the listener who thus gained
death and lost its dignity.
Before leaving this ancient chamber it is well to impress ourselves
with the interesting fact that tapestries were originally meant to be
suspended loosely, liberally, from the upper edge only, and to fall in
folds or gentle undulations, thus gaining in decorative value and
elegance. This practice had an important effect on the design, and
also gave an appearance of movement to human figures and to foliage,
as each swayed in light folds.
When considering tapestries of the Thirteenth Century we are only
contemplating the stones of history, for the actual products of the
looms of that time are not for us; they are all gathered into museums,
public or ecclesiastic. The same might be said of tapestries of the
Fourteenth Century, and almost of the Fifteenth. But those old times
are so full of romance, that their history is worth our toying with.
It adds infinite joy to the possessing of old tapestries, and converts
museum visits into a keen chase for the elusive but fascinating
figures of the past.
Let us then absorb willingly one or two dry facts. High-warp tapestry
we have traced lightly from Egypt through Greece and Rome and, almost
losing the thread in the Middle Ages, have seen it rising a virile
industry, nursed in monasteries. It was when the stirrings of artistic
life were commencing under the Van Eycks in the North and under Giotto
and the Tuscans in the South that the weaving of tapestries reached a
high standard of production and from that time until the Nineteenth
Century has been an important artistic craft. The Thirteenth Century
saw it started, the Fourteenth saw the beginnings of important
factories, and the Fifteenth bloomed into full productions and beauty
of the style we call Gothic.
In these early times of the close of the Thirteenth Century and the
beginning of the Fourteenth, the best known high-warp factories were
centred in northern and midland provinces of France and Flanders,
Paris and Arras being the towns most famed for their productions. As
these were able to supply the rest of Europe, the skilled technique
was lost otherwheres, so that later, when Italy, Germany and England
wished to catch up again their ancient work, they were obliged to ask
instruction of the Franco-Flemish high-warp workers.[5]
It is not possible in the light of history for either Paris or Arras
to claim the invention of so nearly a prehistoric art as that of
high-warp tapestry, and there is much discussion as to which of these
cities should be given the honour of superiority and priority in the
work of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.
Factories existed at both places and each had its rules of manufacture
which regulated the workman and stimulated its excellence. The
factories at Paris, however, were more given to producing copies of
carpets brought from the East by returning crusaders, and these were
intended for floors. The craftsmen were sometimes alluded to as
_tapissiers Sarrazinois_, named, as is easily seen, after the Saracens
who played so large a part in the adventurous voyages of the day. But
in Paris in 1302, by instigation of the Provost Pierre le Jumeau,
there were associated with these tapissiers or workmen, ten others,
for the purpose of making high-warp tapestry, and these were bound
with all sorts of oaths not to depart from the strict manner of
proceeding in this valued handicraft.
Indeed, the Articles of Faith, nor the Vows of the Rosicrucians,
could not be more inviolable than the promises demanded of the early
tapestry workers. In some cases--notably a factory of Brussels,
Brabant, in the Sixteenth Century--there were frightful penalties
attendant upon the breaking of these vows, like the loss of an ear or
even of a hand.
The records of the undertaking of the Provost Pierre le Jumeau in
introducing the high-warp (_haute lisse_) workers into the factory
where Sarrazinois and other fabrics were produced, means only that the
improvement had begun, but not that Paris had never before practised
an art so ancient.
The name of Nicolas Bataille is one of the earliest which we can
surround with those props of records that please the searcher for
exact detail.[6] He was both manufacturer and merchant and was a man
of Paris in the reign of Charles VI, a king who patronised him so well
that the workshops of Paris benefited largely. The king's brother
becoming envious, tried to equal him in personal magnificence and gave
orders almost as large as those of the king. Philip the Hardy, uncle
of the king, also employed this designer whose importance has not
lessened in the descent of the centuries.
What makes Bataille of special interest to us is that we cannot only
read of him in fascinating chronicles as well as dry histories, but we
can ourselves see his wondrous works. In the cathedral at Angers hangs
a tapestry executed by him; it is a part of the _Apocalypse_
(favourite subject) drawn by Dourdin, who was artist of the cartoons
as well as artist to Charles V.
In those days the weaver occupied much the same place in relation to
the cartoonist as the etcher does now to the painter. That is to say,
that because the drawing was his inspiration, the weaver was none the
less an artist of originality and talent.
These celebrated hangings at Angers, although commenced in 1376 for
Louis of Anjou, were not completed in all the series until 1490,
therefore Bataille's work was on the first ones, finished on
Christmas, 1379. The design includes imposing figures, each seated on
a Gothic throne reading and meditating. The larger scenes are topped
with charming figures of angels in primitive skies of the "twisted
ribbon" style of cloud, angels whose duty and whose joy is to trump
eternally and float in defiance of natural laws of gravitation.
The museum at the Gobelins factory in Paris shows to wondering eyes
the other authentic example of late Fourteenth Century high-warp
tapestry, as woven in the early Paris workshops. It portrays with a
lovely naive simplicity _The Presentation in the Temple_. This with
the pieces of the _Apocalypse_ at Angers are all that are positively
known to have come from the Paris workshops of the late Fourteenth
Century.
History steps in with an event that crushed the industry in Paris.
Just when design and execution were at their highest excellence, and
production was prolific, political events began to annihilate the
trade. The English King, Henry V, crossed the Channel and occupied
Paris in 1422. Thus, under the oppression of the invaders, the art of
tapestry was discouraged and fell by the way, not to rise lustily
again in Paris for two hundred years.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Eugene Muentz, "La Tapisserie."
[6] For extensive reading see Guiffrey, "Nicolas Bataille, tapissier
parisien," and "L'Histoire General de la Tapisserie," the section
called "Les Tapisseries Francaises."
CHAPTER IV
FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS
Whether Arras began as early as Paris is a question better left
unsettled if only for the sake of furnishing a subject of happy
controversy between the champions of the two opinions. But certain it
is that with fewer distractions to disturb her craftsmen, and under
the stimulus of certain ducal and royal patrons, Arras succeeded in
advancing the art more than did her celebrated neighbour. It was
Arras, too, that gave the name to the fabric, a name which appears in
England as arras and in Italy as arazzo, as though there was no other
parent-region for the much-needed and much-prized stuffs than the busy
Flemish town.
Among the early records is found proof that in 1311, a countess of the
province of Artois, of which Arras was the capital, bought a figured
cloth in that city, and two years later ordered various works in high
warp.[7] It is she who became ruler of the province. To patronise the
busy town of her own domains, Arras, she ordered from there the
hangings that were its specialty. Paris also shared her patronage. She
took as husband Otho, Count of Burgundy, and set his great family the
fashion in the way of patronising the tapestry looms.
It was in the time of Charles V of France, that the Burgundian duke
Philip, called the Hardy, began to patronise conspicuously the Arras
factories. In 1393, as de Barante delightfully chronicles, the
gorgeous equipments of this duke were more than amazing when he went
to arrange peace with the English at Lelingien.[8]
The town chosen for the pourparlers, wherein assembled the English
dukes, Lancaster and Gloucester and their attendants, as well as the
cortege attending the Duke of Burgundy, was a poor little village
ruined by wars. The conferences were held by these superb old fighters
and statesmen in an ancient thatched chapel. To make it presentable
and worthy of the nobles, it was covered with tapestries which
entirely hid the ruined walls. The subject of the superb pieces was a
series of battles, which made the Duke of Lancaster whimsically
critical of a subject ill-chosen for a peace conference, he suggesting
that it were better to have represented "_la Passion de notre
Seigneur_."
Not satisfied with having the meeting place a gorgeous and luxurious
temple, this Philip, Duke of Burgundy, demonstrated his magnificence
in his own tent, which was made of wooden planks entirely covered with
"toiles peintes" (authorities state that tapestries with personages
were thus described), and was in form of a chateau flanked with
towers. As a means of pleasing the English dukes and the principal
envoys, Philip gave to them superb gifts of tapestries, the beautiful
tapestries of Flanders such as were made only in the territory of the
duke. It is interesting to note this authentic account of the
importation of certain Arras tapestries into England.
Subjects at this time introduced, besides Bible people, figures of
Clovis and of Charlemagne. Two hangings represented, the one _The
Seven Cardinal Vices_, with their conspicuous royal exponents in the
shape of seven vicious kings and emperors; the other, _The Seven
Cardinal Virtues_, with the royalties who had been their notable
exponents. Here is a frank criticism on the lives of kings which
smacks of latter-day democracy. All these tapestries were enriched
with gold of Cyprus, as gold threads were called.
This same magnificent Philip the Hardy, had other treaties to make
later on, and seeing how much his tapestries were appreciated,
continued to make presents of them. One time it was the Duke of
Brittany who had to be propitiated, all in the interests of peace,
peace being a quality much sought and but little experienced at this
time in France. Perhaps this especial Burgundian duke had a bit of
self-interest in his desire for amity with the English, for he was
lord of the Comite of Artois (including Arras) and this was a district
which, because of its heavy commerce with England, might favour that
country. A large part of that commerce was wool for tapestry weaving,
wool which came from the _pres sales_ of Kent, where to-day are seen
the same meadows, salt with ocean spray and breezes, whereon flocks
are grazing now as of old--but this time more for mutton chops than
for tapestry wools.
[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
The history of the Dukes of Burgundy, because their patronage was
so stimulating to the factories of Flanders, leads us to recall the
horrors of the war with Bajazet, the terrible Sultan of Turkey, and
the way in which this cool monster bartered human lives for human
luxuries. It was when the flower of France (1396) invaded his country
and was in the power of his hand, that he had the brave company of
nobles pass in review before his royal couch that he might see them
mutilated to the death. Three or four only he retained alive, then
sent one of these, the Sire de Helly, back to his France with _parole
d'honneur_ to return--to amass, first, as big a ransom as could be
raised; this, if in the Turk's demanding eyes it appeared sufficient,
he would accept in exchange for the remaining unhappy nobles.
Added to the money which de Helly was able to collect, were superb
tapestries of Arras contributed by the Burgundian duke, Philip the
Hardy. It was argued that of these luxurious hangings, Bajazet had
none, for the looms of his country had not the craft to make
tapestries of personages. Cloth of gold and of silver, considered an
extreme elegance in France, they argued was no rarity to the terrible
Turk, for it was from Damascus in his part of the world that this
precious fabric came most plentifully. So de Helly took Arras
tapestries into Turkey, a suite representing the history of Alexander
the Great, and the avaricious monarch was persuaded by reason of this
and other ransom to let his prisoners free.[9]
After the death of Philip the Hardy in 1404, his accumulated luxuries
had to be sold to help pay his fabulous debts. To this end his son
sold, among other things, his superb tapestries, and thus they became
distributed in Paris. And yet John without Fear, who succeeded Philip,
continued to stimulate the Arras weavers. In 1409 he ordered five big
hangings representing his victories of Liege, all battle subjects.[10]
Philip the Good was the next head of the Burgundian house, and he it
was who assisted in the sumptuous preparations for the entry of the
king, Louis XI, into Paris. The king himself could scarcely equal in
magnificence this much-jewelled duke, whose splendour was a matter of
excitement to the populace. People ran to see him in the streets or to
the church, to feast their eyes on his cortege, his mounted escort of
a hundred knights who were themselves dukes, princes and other nobles.
His house, in the old quarter of Paris, where we are wont to wander
with a Baedeker veiled, was the wonder of all who were permitted to
view its interior. Here he had brought his magnificent Arras
tapestries and among them the set of the _History of Gideon_, which he
had had made in honour of the order of the Golden Fleece founded by
him at Bruges, in 1429, for, he said, the tale of Gideon was more
appropriate to the Fleece than the tale of Jason, who had not kept his
trust--a bit of unconventionalism appreciable even at this distance of
time.
Charles le Temeraire--the Bold or rather the foolhardy--how he used
and lost his tapestries is of interest to us, because his possessions
fell into a place where we can see them by taking a little trouble.
Some of them are among the treasures in the museum at Nancy and at
Berne in Switzerland. How they got there is in itself a matter of
history, the history of a war between Burgundy and Switzerland.
Like all the line of these half-barbaric, picturesque dukes, Charles
could not disassociate himself from magnificence, which in those days
took the place of comfort. When making war, he endeavoured to have his
camp lodgment as near as possible reproduce the elegance of his home.
In his campaign against Switzerland, his tent was entirely hung with
the most magnificent of tapestries. After foolhardy onslaughts on a
people whose strength he miscalculated, he lost his battles, his
life--and his tapestries. And this is how certain Burgundian
tapestries hang in the cathedral at Berne, and in the museums at
Nancy.[11]
The simple Swiss mountaineers, accustomed more to expediency than to
luxury, are said to have been entirely ignorant of the value of their
spoils of war. Tapestries they had never seen, nor had they the
experienced eye to discern their beauties; but cloth, thick woollen
cloth, that would protect shivering man from the cold, was a commodity
most useful; so, many of the fine products of the high-warp looms that
had augmented the pride of their noble possessor, found their way into
shops and were sold to the Swiss populace in any desired length,
according to bourgeois household needs, a length for a warm bed-cover,
or a square for a table; and thus disappeared so many that we are
thankful for the few whole hangings of that time which are ours to
inspect, and which represent the best work of the day both from Arras
and from Brussels, which was then (about 1476) beginning to produce.
There is a special and local reason why we should be interested in the
products of the high-warp tapestries in the time of the greatest power
of the Dukes of Burgundy. It is that we can have the happy experience
of studying, in our own country, a set of these hangings, and this
without going farther than to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York, where repose the set called _The Sacraments_. (Plates facing
pages 34, 38 and 39.) There are in all seven pieces, although the
grounds are well taken that the set originally included one more. They
represent the four Sacraments of Baptism, Marriage, Confirmation and
Extreme Unction, first by a series of ideal representations, then by
the everyday ceremonies of the time--the time of Joan of Arc. Thus we
have the early Fifteenth Century folk unveiled to us in their ideals
and in their practicality. The one shows them to be religionists of a
high order, the other reveals a sumptuous and elegant scale of living
belonging to the nobility who made resplendent those early times.
[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430]
[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430]
The drawing is full of simplicity and honesty, the composition limited
to a few individuals, each one having its place of importance. In
this, the early work differed from the later, which multiplied figures
until whole groups counted no more than individuals. The background is
a field of conventionalised fleur-de-lis of so large a pattern as not
to interfere with the details thrown against it. Scenes are divided
by slender Gothic columns, and other architectural features are
tessellated floors and a sketchy sort of brick-work that appears
wherever a limit-line is needed. It is the charming naivete of its
drawing that delights. Border there is none, but its lack is never
felt, for the pictures are of such interest that the eye needs no
barrier to keep it from wandering. Whatever border is found is a
varying structure of architecture and of lettering and of the happy
flowers of Gothic times which thrust their charm into all possible and
impossible places.
The dress, in the suite of ideals, is created by the imagining of the
artist, admixed with the fashion of the day; but in scenes portraying
life of the moment, we are given an interesting idea of how a bride a
la mode was arrayed, in what manner a gay young lord dressed himself
on his wedding morning, and how a young mother draped her proud
brocade. The colouring is that of ancient stained glass, simple, rich,
the gamut of colours limited, but the manner of their combining is
infinite in its power to please. The conscientiousness of the ancient
dyer lives after him through the centuries, and the fresh ruby-colour,
the golden yellow of the large-figured brocades, glow almost as richly
now as they did when the Burgundian dukes were marching up and down
the land from the Mediterranean, east of France, to the coast of
Flanders, carrying with them the woven pictures of their ideals, their
religion and their conquests. The weave is smooth and even, speaking
for the work of the tapissier or weaver, although time has distorted
the faces beyond the lines of absolute beauty; and hatching
accomplishes the shading.
The repairer has been at work on this valuable set, not the
intelligent restorer, but the frank bungler who has not hesitated to
turn certain pieces wrong side out, nor to set in large sections
obviously cut from another tapestry. It is surmised that the set
contained one more piece--it would be regrettable, indeed, if that
missing square had been cut up for repairs.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns these tapestries
through the altruistic generosity of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. They are
the most interesting primitive work which are on public view in our
country, and awake to enthusiasm even the most insensate dullard, who
has a half hour to stand before them and realise all they mean in art,
in morals and in history.
To the lives of the Prophets and Saints we can always turn; from the
romance of men and women we can never turn away. And so when a Gothic
tapestry is found that frankly omits Biblical folk and gives us a true
picture of men and women of the almost impenetrable time back of the
fifteen hundreds, tells us what they wore, in what manner they
comported themselves, that tapestry has a sure and peculiar value. The
surviving art of the Middle Ages smacks strong of saints, paints at
full length the people of Moses' time, but unhappily gives only a bust
of their contemporaries.
[Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
[Illustration: THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Flemish Tapestry, second half of Fifteenth Century. Boston Museum
of Fine Arts]
Hangings portraying secular subjects were less often woven than those
of religion and morals, but also the former have less lustily outlived
the centuries, owing to the habit of tearing them from the
suspending hooks and packing them about from chateau to chateau, to
soften surroundings for the wandering visitor. Thus it comes that we
have little tapestried record of a time when knights and ladies and
ill-assorted attributes walked hand in hand, a time of chivalry and
cruelty, of roses and war, of sumptuousness and crudity, of privation
and indulgence, of simplicity and deceit.
If prowling among old books has tempted the hand to take from the
shelves one of those quaint luxuries known as a "Book of Hours," there
before the eye lies the spirit of that age in decoration and design.
There, too, lies much of the old spirit of morality--that, whether
genuine or affected, was bound to be expressed. Morality had a vogue
in those days, was a _sine qua non_ of fashion. That famous amateur
Jean, duc de Berry, uncle of Charles VI of France, had such a book,
"Les Tres Riches Heures"; one was possessed by that gifted Milanese
lady whom Ludovico Sforza put out of the line of Lombardy's throne.
The wonderful Gothic ingenuousness lies in their careful paintings,
the ingenuousness where virtue is expressed by beauty, and vice by
ugliness, and where, with delightful seriousness, standing figures
overtop the houses they occupy--the same people, the same battlements,
we have seen on the early tapestries. Weavers must surely have
consulted the lovely books of Gothic miniature, so like is the spirit
of the designs to that in the Gothic fabrics.
"The beauties of Agnes Sorel were represented on the wool," says
Jubinal, "and she herself gave a superb and magnificent tapestry to
the church at Loches," but this quaint student is doubtful if the
lovely _amante du roi_ actually gave the tapestries that set forth her
own beauties, which beauty all can see in the quiet marble as she lies
sleeping with her spaniel curled up at her lovely feet in the big
chateau on the Loire.
By means of a rare set bought by the Rogers Fund for the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, we can see, if not the actual tapestries of
fair Agnes Sorel, at least those of the same epoch and manner. This
set is called _The Baillee des Roses_ and comprises three pieces,
fragments one is inclined to call them, seeing the mutilations of the
ages. (Plate facing page 42.) They were woven probably before 1450,
probably in France, undoubtedly from French drawings, for the hand and
eye of the artist were evidently under the influence of the celebrated
miniaturist, Jean Fouquet of Tours. Childlike is the charm of this
careful artist of olden times, childlike is his simplicity, his
honesty, his care to retain the fundamental virtues of a good little
boy who lives to the tune of Eternal Verities.
These three tapestries of the Roses illustrate so well so many things
characteristic of their day, that it is not time lost to study them
with an eye to all their points. There is the weave, the wool, the
introduction of metal threads, the colour scale; all these besides the
design and the story it tells.
The tapestries represent a custom of France in the time when Charles
VII, the Indolent (and likewise through Jeanne d'Arc, the victorious)
had as his favourite the fascinating Agnes Sorel. During the late
spring, when the roses of France are in fullest flower, various
peers of France had as political duty to present to each member of the
Parliament a rose when the members answered in response to roll call.
[Illustration: LA BAILLEE DES ROSES
French Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
[Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY MILLEFLEUR WITH ARMS
Cathedral of Troyes]
The great chamber where the body met was for the occasion transformed
into a bower; vines and sprays of roses covered all the grim walls, as
the straying vines in the tapestry reveal. The host of the day, who
might be a foreign prince or cardinal, or one of the "children of
France," began the day with giving a great breakfast which took place
in the several chambers. During the feast the noble host paid a
courtly visit to each chamber, accompanied by a servitor who bore a
huge salver on which were the flowers and souvenirs to be presented.
The air was sweet with blossoms and pungent herbs, music penetrated
from the halls outside as the man of conspicuous elegance played mock
humility and served all with the dainty tribute of a fragrant tender
rose. This part of the ceremony over, the company moved on to the
great audience chamber, where mass was said.
Our tapestries show the figures of ladies and gentlemen present at
this pretty ceremony--too pretty to associate with desperate Jeanne
d'Arc, who at that very time was rousing France to war to throw off
the foreign yoke. The ladies fair and masters bold are intensely human
little people, for the most part paired off in couples as men and
women have been wont to pair in gardens since Eden's time. They are
dressed in their best, that is evident, and by their distant,
courteous manners show good society. The faces of the ladies are
childlike, dutiful; those of the men more determined, after the
manner of men.
But the interest of the set centres in the tableau wherein are but
three figures, those of two men and a woman. Here lies a piquant
romance. Who is she, the grand and gracious lady, bending like a lily
stalk among the roses, with a man on either side? A token is being
exchanged between her and the supplicant at her right. He, wholly
elegant, half afraid, bends the knee and fixes her with a regard into
which his whole soul is thrown. She, fair lady, is inclining, yet
withdrawing, eyes of fear and modesty cast down. Yet whatever of
temerity the faces tell, the hands are carrying out a comedy. Hid in
the shadow of a copious hat, which the gentleman extends, lurks a
rose; proffered by the lady's hand is a token--fair exchange, indeed,
of lover's symbols--provided the strong, hard man to the left of the
lady has himself no right of command over her and her favours. Thus
might one dream on forever over history's sweets and romance's
gallantries.
It is across the sea, in the sympathetic Museum of Cluny that the
beauty of early French work is exquisitely demonstrated. The set of
_The Lady and the Unicorn_ is one of infinite charm. (Plates facing
pages 44 and 45.) In its enchanted wood lives a noble lady tall and
fair, lithe, young and elegant, with attendant maid and two faithful,
fabulous beasts that uphold the standards of maidenhood. A simple
circle denotes the boundary of the enchanted land wherein she dwells,
a park with noble trees and lovely flowers, among which disport the
little animals that associate themselves with mankind. For four
centuries these hangings have delighted the eye of man, and are
perhaps more than ever appreciated now. Certain it is that the art
student's easel is often set before them for copying the quaint design
and soft colour.
[Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris]
[Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris]
As the early worker in wools could not forget the beauties of earth,
the foreground of many Gothic tapestries is sprinkled with the loved
common flowers of every day, of the field and wood. This is one of the
charming touches in early tapestry, these little flowers that thrust
themselves with captivating inappropriateness into every sort of
scene. The grave and awesome figures in the _Apocalypse_ find them at
their feet, and in scenes of battle they adorn the sanguinary sod and
twinkle between fierce combatants.
Occasionally a weaver goes mad about them and refuses to produce
anything else but lily-bells newly sprung in June, cowslips and
daisies pied, rosemary and rue, and all these in decorous courtesy on
a deep, dark background like twilight on a bank or moonlight in a
dell--and lo, we have the marvellous bit of nature-painting called
_millefleurs_.
A Burgundian tapestry that has come to this country to add to our
increasing riches, is the large hanging known as _The Sack of
Jerusalem_. (Plate facing page 46.) Almost more than any other it
revivifies the ancient times of Philip the Hardy, John without Fear,
and Charles the Bold, when these dukes, who were monarchs in all but
name, were leading lives that make our own Twentieth Century fretting
seem but the unrest of aspens. Such hangings as this, _The Sack of
Jerusalem_, were those that the great Burgundian dukes had hung about
their tents in battle, their castles in peace, their facades and
bridges in fetes.
The subject chosen hints religion, but shouts bloodshed and battle.
Those who like to feel the texture of old tapestries would find this
soft and pliable, and in wondrous state of preservation. Its colours
are warm and fresh, adhering to red-browns and brown-reds and a
general mellow tone differing from the sharp stained-glass contrasts
noticed in _The Sacraments_. Costumes show a naive compromise between
those the artist knew in his own time and those he guessed to
appertain to the year of our Lord 70, when the scene depicted was
actually occurring. The tapestry resembles in many ways the famous
tapestries of the Duke of Devonshire which are known as the Hardwick
Hall tapestries. In drawing it is similar, in massing, in the placing
of spots of interest. This large hanging is a part of the collection
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibits a primitive hanging which is
probably woven in France, Northern France, at the end of the Fifteenth
Century. (Plate facing page 40.) It represents, in two panels, the
power of the church to drive out demons and to confound the heathen.
Fault can be found with its crudity of drawing and weave, but
tapestries of this epoch can hold a position of interest in spite of
faults.
[Illustration: THE SACK OF JERUSALEM (DETAIL)
Burgundian Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York]
A fine piece at the same museum is the long, narrow hanging
representing scenes from the life of Christ, with a scene from
Paradise to start the drama. (Plate facing page 41.) This tapestry,
which is of great beauty, is subdivided into four panels by slender
columns suggesting a springing arch which the cloth was too low to
carry. All the pretty Gothic signs are here. The simple flowers
upspringing, the Gothic lettering, the panelling, and a narrow border
of such design as suggests rose-windows or other lace-like carving.
Here is noticeable, too, the sumptuous brocades in figures far too
large for the human form to wear, figures which diminished greatly a
very few decades later.
The Institute of Art, Chicago, possesses an interesting piece of the
period showing another treatment of a similar subject. (Plate facing
page 48.) In this the columns are omitted, the planes are increased,
and there is an entire absence of the triptych or altar-piece style of
drawing which we associate with the primitive artists in painting.
We have seen in this slight review that Paris was in a fair way to
cover the castle walls and floors of noble lords with her high loom
and _sarrazinois_ products, when the English occupation ruined the
prosperity of the weaver's guild. Arras supplied the enormous demand
for tapestries through Europe, and made a lasting fame. But this
little city, too, had to go down before the hard conditions of the
Conqueror. Louis XI, in 1477, possessed himself of the town after the
death of the last-famed Burgundian duke, Charles the Bold, and under
his eccentric persecutions the guild of weavers scattered. He saw too
late his mistake. But other towns benefited by it, towns whither the
tapissiers fled with their art.
There had also been much trouble between the last Duke of Burgundy and
his Flemish cities. His extravagances and expeditions led him to make
extraordinary demands upon one town and another for funds, and even to
make war upon them, as at Liege, the battles of which conflict were
perpetuated in tapestries. Let us trust that no Liegois weaver was
forced to the humiliation of weaving this set.
This disposition to work to his own ultimate undoing was encouraged in
the duke, wherever possible, by the crafty Louis XI, who had his own
reasons for wishing the downfall of so powerful a neighbour. And thus
it came that Arras, the great tapestry centre, was at first weakened,
then destroyed by the capture of the town by Louis XI immediately
after the tragic death of the duke in 1477.
Thus everything was favourable to the Brussels factories, which began
to produce those marvels of workmanship that force from the world the
sincerest admiration. It is frankly asserted that toward the end of
the century, or more accurately, during the reigns of Charles VIII and
Louis XII (1483-1515), tapestry attained a degree of perfection which
has never been surpassed.
[Illustration: SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITH ARMORIAL SHIELDS
Flemish Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Institute of Art, Chicago]
[Illustration: HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN
Angers Cathedral]
We have a very clear idea of what use to make of tapestries in these
days--to hang them in a part of the house where they will be much seen
and much protected, on an important wall-space where their figures
become the friend of daily life, or the bosky shades of their
verdure invite to revery. They are extended flat against the wall, or
even framed, that not one stroke of the artist's pencil or one flash
of the weaver's shuttle be hid. But, many were their uses and grand
were their purposes in the days when high-warp and low-warp weaving
was the important industry of whole provinces. Palaces and castles
were hung with them, but apart from this was the sumptuous use of a
reserve of hangings for outdoor fetes and celebrations of all sorts.
These were the great opportunities for all to exhibit their
possessions and to make a street look almost as elegant and habitable
as the grandest chamber of the king.
On the occasion of the entry of a certain queen into Paris, all the
way from Porte St. Denis to the Cathedral of Notre Dame was hung with
such specimens of the weaver's art as would make the heart of the
modern amateur throb wildly. They were hung from windows, draped
across the fronts of the houses, and fluttered their bright colours in
the face of an illuminating sun that yet had no power to fade the
conscientious work of the craftsman. The high lights of silk in the
weave, and the enrichment of gold and silver in the pattern caught and
held the sunbeams. In all the cavalcade of mounted knights and ladies,
there was the flashing of arms, the gleam of jewelled bridles, the
flaunting of rich stuffs, all with a background of unsurpassed
blending of colour and texture. The bridge over the Seine leading to
Notre Dame, its ramparts were entirely concealed, its asperities
softened, by the tapestries which hung over its sides, making the
passage over the river like the approach to a throne, the luxury of
kings combined with the beauty of the flowing river, the blue sky, the
tender green of the trees.
Indeed, it was so lovely a sight that the king himself was not content
to see it from his honoured but restricted post, but needs must doff
his crown--monarchs wore them in those fairy days--and fling a leg
over a gentleman's charger, behind its owner, and thus ride double to
see the sights. So great was his eagerness to enjoy all the display
that he got a smart reproof from an officer of ceremonies for
trespassing.[12]
When Louis XI was the young king, and had not yet developed the taste
for bloodshed and torture that as a crafty fox he used later to the
horror of his nation, he, too, had similar festivals with similar
decorations. On one occasion the Pont des Changes was made the chief
point in the royal progress through the streets of Paris. The bridge
was hung with superb tapestries of great size, from end to end, and
the king rode to it on a white charger, his trappings set with
turquoise, with a gorgeous canopy supported over his head. Just as he
reached the bridge the air became full of the music of singing birds,
twenty-five hundred of them at that moment released, and all
fluttering, darting, singing amid the gorgeous scene to tickle the
fancy of a king.
[Illustration: DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
German Tapestry, about 1450]
[Illustration: FLEMISH TAPESTRY. ABOUT 1500
Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Canon de Haisnes, "La Tapisserie."
[8] M. de Barante, "Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne."
[9] Froissart, manuscript of the library of Dijon.
[10] De Barante, "Histoire."
[11] See M. Pinchart, "Roger van der Weyden et les Tapisseries de
Berne."
[12] Enguerrand de Monstrelet, "Chronicles."
CHAPTER V
HIGH GOTHIC
The wonderful time of the Burgundian dukes is gone; Charles le
Temeraire leaves the world at Nancy, where the pitying have set up a
cross in memory of his unkingly death, and where the lover of things
Gothic may wander down a certain way to the exquisite portico of the
Ducal Palace and, entering, find the Gothic room where the duke's
precious tapestries are hung. In this sympathetic atmosphere one may
dream away hours in sheer joy of association with these shadowy hosts
of the past, the relentless slayers in the battle scenes, relentless
moralists in the religious subjects--for morality plays had a parallel
in the morality tapestry, issuing such rigid warnings to those who
make merry as is seen in _The Condemnation of Suppers and Banquets_,
_The Reward of Virtue_, _The Triumph of Right_, _The Horrors of the
Seven Deadly Sins_, all of which were popular subjects for the weaver.
With the artists who might be called primitives we have almost
finished in the end of the Fifteenth Century. The simplicity of the
very early weavers passed. They were content with comparatively few
figures, and these so strongly treated that in composition one scarce
took on more importance than another. When Arras and other Flemish
towns, as well as Paris and certain French towns, developed the
industry and employed more ambitious artists, the designs became more
crowded, and the tendency was to multiply figures in an effort to
crowd as many as possible into the space. When architecture appeared
in the design, towers and battlements were crowded with peeping heads
in delightful lack of proportion, and forests of spears springing from
platoons of soldiers, filled almost the entire height of the cloth.
The naive fashion still existed of dressing the characters of an
ancient Biblical or classic drama in costumes which were the mode of
the weaver's time, disregarding the epoch in which the characters
actually lived.
An adherence to the childlike drawing of the early workers continues
noticeable in their quaint way of putting many scenes on one tapestry.
Interiors are readily managed, by dividing--as in _The Sacraments_ set
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York--with slender Gothic
columns, than which nothing could be prettier, especially when framed
in at the top with the Gothic arch. In outdoor scenes the frank
disregard of the probable adds the charm of audacity. Side by side
with a scene of carnage, a field of blood with victims lying prone, is
inserted an island of flowers whereon youths and dogs are pleasantly
sporting; and adjoining that may be another section cunningly
introduced where a martyred woman is enveloped in flames which spring
from the ground around her as naturally as grass in springtime.
[Illustration: DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
Flemish Tapestry, late Fifteenth Century]
[Illustration: HISTORY OF ST. STEPHEN
Arras Tapestry, Fifteenth Century]
And flowers, flowers everywhere. Those little blossoms of the Gothic
with their perennial beauty, they are one of the smiles of that far
time that shed cheer through the centuries. They are not the
grandiose affairs of the Renaissance whose voluptuous development
contains the arrogant assurance of beauty matured. They do not crown a
column or trail themselves in foliated scrolls; but are just as Nature
meant them to be, unaffected bits of colour and grace, upspringing
from the sod. In the cathedral at Berne is a happy example of the use
of these sweet flowers, as they appear at the feet of the sacred
group, and as they carry the eye into the sky by means of the feathery
branches like fern-fronds which tops the scene; but we find them
nearer home, in almost every Gothic tapestry.
It was about the end of the last Crusade when Italy began to produce
the inspired artists who broke the bonds of Byzantine traditions and
turned back to the inspiration of all art, which is Nature. Giotto,
tending his sheep, began to draw pictures of things as he saw them,
Savonarola awoke the conscience, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio--a string
of names to conjure with--all roused the intellect. The dawn of the
Renaissance flushed Europe with the life of civilisation. But before
the wonderful development of art through the reversion to classic
lines, came a high perfection of the style called Gothic, and with
that we are pleased to deal first. It is so full of beauty to the eye
and interest to the intellect that sometimes we must be dragged away
from it to regard the softer lines of later art, with the ingratitude
and reluctance of childhood when torn from its fairy tales to read of
real people in the commonplace of every day.
We are now in the time when the perfection of production was reached
in the tapestries we call Gothic. Artists had grown more certain of
their touch in colour and design, and weavers worked with such
conscientious care as is now almost unknown, and produced a quality of
tapestry superior to that of their forebears. The Fifteenth Century
and the first few years of the Sixteenth were spent in perfecting the
style of the preceding century, and so great was the perfection
reached, that it was impossible to develop further on those lines.
It must not be supposed from their importance that Brussels and Bruges
were the sole towns of weavers. There were many high-warp looms, and
low-warp as well, in many towns in Flanders and France, and there were
also beginnings in Spain, England and Germany. Italy came later. The
superb set in the Cluny Museum in Paris, _The Lady and the Unicorn_,
than which nothing could be lovelier in poetic feeling as well as in
technique, is accorded to French looms. But as it is impossible in a
cursory survey to mention all, the two most important cities are dwelt
upon because it is from them that the greatest amount of the best
product emanated.
Tapestries could not well decline with the fortunes of a town, for
they were a heavy article of commerce at the time when Louis XI
attacked Arras. Trade was made across the Channel, whence came the
best wool for their manufacture; they were bought by the French
monarchs and nobility; many drifted to Genoa and Italy, to be sold by
the active merchants of the times to whoever could buy. When,
therefore, Arras was crushed, her able workmen flew to other centres
of production, principally in Flanders, notably to Bruges and
Brussels, and helped to bring these places into their high position.
[Illustration: VERDURE
French Gothic Tapestry]
[Illustration: "ECCE HOMO"
Brussels Tapestry, about 1520. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York]
Stories of kings and their magnificence breathe ever of romance, but
kings could not be magnificent were it not for the labour of the
conscientious common people, those who go daily to their task, asking
nothing better than to live their little span in humble endeavour. The
weavers, the tapissiers of that far-away time in Flanders are
intensely appealing now when their beautiful work hangs before us
to-day. They send us a friendly message down through the centuries. It
is this makes us inquire a bit into the conditions of their lives, and
so we find them scattered through the country north of France working
with single-hearted devotion toward the perfection of their art. That
they arrived there, we know by such tapestries as are left us of their
time.
Bruges was the home of a movement in art similar to that occurring in
Italy. Old traditions of painting were being thrown aside--the
revolution even attacking the painter's medium, tempera, which was
criticised, discarded and replaced by oil on the palettes. Memling,
the brothers Van Eyck, were painting things as they saw them, not as
rules prescribed. Bernard Van Orley was at work with bold originality.
It were strange if this Northern school of painters had not influenced
all art near by. It is to these men that Brussels owes the beauty of
her tapestries in that apogee of Gothic art which immediately preceded
the introduction of the Renaissance from Italy.
Cartoons or drawings for tapestries took on the rules of composition
of these talented and original men. Easily distinguishable is the
strong influence of the religious feeling, the fidelity to standards
of the church. When a rich townsman wished to express his praise or
gratitude to God, he ordered for the church an altar-piece or dainty
gilded Gothic carving to frame the painted panels of careful
execution. When Jean de Rome executed a cartoon, he treated it in much
the same way; built up an airy Gothic structure and filled the spaces
with pretty pictures. The so-called Mazarin tapestry of Mr. Morgan's
shows this treatment at its best. Unhappily, the atelier of Jean de
Rome or Jan von Room is too sketchily portrayed in the book of the
past; its records are faint and elusive. We only hear now and then an
interested allusion, a suggestion that this or that beautiful specimen
of work has come from his atelier.
Cartoons at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century were not all
divided into their different scenes by Gothic column and arch. In much
of the fine work there was no division except a natural one, for the
picture began to develop the modern scheme of treating but one scene
in one picture. Although this might be filled with many groups, yet
all formed a harmonious whole. The practice then fell into disuse of
repeating the same individual many times in one picture.
A good example of the change and improvement in drawing which assisted
in making Brussels' supremacy and in bringing Gothic art to
perfection, is the fine hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
(Plate facing page 57.) It depicts with beautiful naivete and much
realism the discomfiture of Pharaoh and his army floundering in the
Red Sea, while the serene and elegant children of Israel contemplate
their distress with well-bred calm from the flowery banks of an
orderly park.
[Illustration: ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT
Flemish Tapestry, about 1500. Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.]
[Illustration: CROSSING THE RED SEA
Brussels Tapestry, about 1500. Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
This tapestry illustrates so many of the important features of work
during the first period of Brussels' supremacy that it is to be
lingered over, dissected and tasted like a dessert of nuts and wine.
Should one speak first of the cartoon or of the weave, of the artist
or of the craftsmen? If it is to be the tapissier, then to him all
credit, for in this and similar work he has reached a care in
execution and a talent in translation that are inspired. Such quantity
of detail, so many human faces with their varying expressions, could
only be woven by the most adroit tapissier.
The drawing shows, first, one scene of many groups but a sole
interest, with none but probable divisions. Much grace and freedom is
shown in the attitudes of the persons on the shore, and strenuous
effort and despair among the engulfed soldiers. Extreme attention to
detail, the making one part as finished as another, even to the least
detail, is noticeable. The exaggerated patterns of the stuffs
observable in earlier work is absent, and a sense of proportion is
displayed in dress ornament. The free movement of men and beasts, and
the variety of facial expression all show the immense strides made in
drawing and the perfection attained in this brilliant period.
It was a time when the artist perfected the old style and presaged the
new, the years before the Renaissance had left its cradle and marched
over Europe. This perfection of the Gothic ideal has a purity and
simplicity that can never fail to appeal to all who feel that
sincerity is the basic principle of art as it is of character. The
style of Quentin Matsys, of the Van Eycks, was the mode at the end of
the Fifteenth Century and the beginning of the Sixteenth, and after
all this lapse of time it seems to us a sweet and natural expression
of admirable human attributes.
In the new wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
labels of certain exhibits, purchases and loans allude briefly to
"studio of Jean de Rome." It is an allusion which especially interests
us, as our country now holds examples of this atelier which make us
wish to know more about its master. He was a designer in the
marvellous transition period of about 1500, when art trembled between
the restraint of ecclesiastic Gothic and the voluptuous freedom of the
Renaissance; hesitated between the conventions of religion and the
abandonment to luxury, to indulgence of the senses. It is the fashion
to regard periods of transition as times of decadence, of false
standards of hybrid production, but at least they are full of deepest
interest to the student of design who finds in the tremulous dawn of
the new idea a flush which beautifies the last years of the old
method.
[Illustration: THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Flemish Tapestry, about 1510. Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan,
Esq., New York]
Attributed to this newly unearthed studio of Jean de Rome hangs a
marvellous tapestry in the new wing alluded to, one which deserves
repeated visits. (Plate facing page 58.) Indeed, to see it once
creates the desire to see it again, so beautiful is it in drawing and
so exquisite in colour and weave. It is suggested that Quentin
Matsys is responsible for the drawing, and it is known that only
Bruges or Brussels could produce such perfection of textile. Indeed,
Jean de Rome is by some authorities spoken of as Jean de Brussels, for
it is there that he worked long and well, assisting to produce those
wonders of textile art that have never been surpassed, not even by the
Gobelins factory in the Seventeenth Century. The tapestry in the
Metropolitan Museum is now the property of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.,
but began life as the treasure of the King and Queen of Spain who, at
the time when Brussels was producing its best, were sitting firmly on
a throne but just wrested from the Saracenic occupancy. Spain, while
unable to establish famous and enduring tapestry factories of her own,
yet was known always as a lavish buyer. Later, Cardinal Mazarin, with
his trained Italian eye, detected at once the value of the tapestry
and became possessed of it, counting it among his best treasures of
art. It is a woven representation of the triptych, so favourite in the
time of the Van Eycks, and is almost as rich with gold as those
ancient altar decorations. The tapestry is variously called _The
Kingdom of Heaven_, and _The Adoration of the Eternal Father_ and is
the most beautiful and important of its kind in America. Fortunate
they who can go to the museum to see it--only less fortunate than
those who can go to see it many times.
In the private collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., of Chicago, are
three examples of great perfection. They belonged to the celebrated
art collection of Baron Spitzer, which fact, apart from their beauty,
gives them renown. The first of these (plate facing page 60) is an
appearance of Christ to the Magdalen after the Entombment, and is
Flemish work of late in the Fifteenth Century. It is woven in silk and
gold with infinite skill. With exquisite patience the weaver has
brought out the crowded detail in the distance; indeed, it is this
background, stretching away to the far sky, past the Tomb, beyond
towns and plains of fruited trees to yet more cities set on a hill,
that constitutes the greatest charm of the picture, and which must
have brought hours of happy toil to the inspired weaver.
The second tapestry of Mr. Ryerson's three pieces is also Flemish of
the late Fifteenth Century. (Plate facing page 61.) This small group
of the Holy Family shows at its best the conscientious work of the
time, a time wherein man regarded labour as a means of worshipping his
God. The subject is treated by both artist and weaver with that loving
care which approaches religion. The holy three are all engaged in
holding bunches of grapes, while the Child symbolically spills their
juice into a chalice. Other symbols are found in the book and the
cross-surmounted globe. A background of flat drapery throws into
beautiful relief the inspired faces of the group. Behind this
stretches the miniature landscape, but the foreground is unfretted by
detail, abounding in the repose of the simple surfaces of the garments
of Mother and Child. By a subtle trick of line, St. Joseph is
separated from the holier pair. The border is the familiar
well-balanced Gothic composition of flower, fruit, and leaf, all
placed as though by the hand of Nature. The materials used are silk
and gold, but one might well add that the soul of the weaver also
entered into the fabric.
[Illustration: FLEMISH TAPESTRY, END OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly in the
Spitzer Collection]
[Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY
Flemish Tapestry, end of Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin
A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly in the Spitzer Collection]
The third piece from the Spitzer collection bears all those marks of
exquisite beauty with which Italy was teeming in the Fifteenth
Century. (Colour plate facing page 82.) Weavers from Brussels went
down into Italy and worked under the direction of Italian artists who
drew the designs. Andrea Mantegna was one of these. The patron of the
industry was the powerful Gonzaga family. This tapestry of _The
Annunciation_ which Mr. Ryerson is so fortunate as to hang in his
collection, is decorated with the arms of the Gonzaga family. The
border of veined marble, the altar of mosaics and fine relief, the
architecture of the outlying baptistry, the wreathed angel, all speak
of Italy in that lovely moment when the Gothic had not been entirely
abandoned and the Renaissance was but an opening bud.
The highest work of painter and weaver--artists both--continued
through thirty or forty years. Pity it is, the time had not been long
enough for more remains of it to have come to us than those that
scantily supply museums. After the Gothic perfection came the great
change made in Flanders by the introduction of the Renaissance.
It came through the excellence of the weavers. It was not the worth of
the artists that brought Brussels its greatest fame, but the humbler
work of its tapissiers. Their lives, their endeavours counted more in
textile art than did the Flemish school of painting. No such weavers
existed in all the world. They were bound together as a guild, had
restrictions and regulations of their own that would shame a trades
union of to-day, and in change of politics had scant consideration
from new powers. But in the end they were the ones to bring fame to
the Brussels workshops.
In 1528 they were banded together by organisation, and from that time
on their work is easily followed and identified. It was in that year
that a law was made compelling weavers--and allowing weavers--to
incorporate into the encompassing galloon of the tapestry the Brussels
Brabant mark of two B's with a shield between. And it was about this
time and later that the celebrated family of weavers named Pannemaker
came into prominence through the talent of Wilhelm de Pannemaker, he
who accompanied the Emperor Charles V on his expedition to Tunis.
This expedition flaunts itself in the set of tapestries now in Madrid.
(Plate facing page 62.) The emperor seems, from our point of view, to
have done it all with dramatic forethought. There was his special
artist on the spot, Jan Vermeyen, to draw the superb cartoons, and
accompanying him was Wilhelm de Pannemaker, the ablest weaver of his
day, to set the loom and thrust the shuttle. Granada was the place
selected for the weaving, and the finest of wool was set aside for it,
besides lavish amounts of silk, and pounds of silver and gold. In
three years, by the help of eighty workmen, Pannemaker completed his
colossal task. Such was the master-weaver of the Sixteenth Century.
[Illustration: CONQUEST OF TUNIS BY CHARLES V (DETAIL)
Cartoon by Jan Vermeyen. Woven by Pannemaker. Royal Collection at
Madrid]
As for Pannemaker's imperial patron, John Addington Symonds
discriminatingly says of him: "Like a gale sweeping across a forest of
trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilising pollen to far distant
trees, the storm of Charles Fifth's army carried far and wide through
Europe the productive energy of the Renaissance."
CHAPTER VI
RENAISSANCE INFLUENCE
Brussels in 1515, with her workmen at the zenith of their perfection,
was given the order to weave the set of the _Acts of the Apostles_ for
the Pope to hang in the Sistine Chapel. (Plate facing page 64.) The
cartoons were by the great Raphael. Not only did he draw the splendid
scenes, but with his exquisite invention elaborated the borders. Thus
was set in the midst of the Brussels ateliers a pattern for the new
art that was to retire the nice perfection of the previous school of
restraint. From that time, all was regulated by new standards.
Before considering the change that came to designs in tapestry, it is
necessary that both mind and eye should be literally savants in the
Gothic. Without this the greatest point in classifying and
distinguishing is missed. The dainty grace of the verdure and flowers,
the exquisite models of the architectural details, the honest, simple
scheme of colour, all these are distinguishing marks, but to them is
added the still greater one of the figures and their grouping. In the
very early work, these are few in number, all equally accented in size
and finish, but later the laws of perspective are better understood,
and subordinates to the subject are drawn smaller. This gives
opportunity for increase in the number of personages, and for the
introduction of the horses and dogs and little wild animals that cause
a childish thrill of delight wherever they are encountered, so like
are they to the species that haunt childhood's fairyland.
[Illustration: DEATH OF ANANIAS.--FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY
RAPHAEL
From the Palace of Madrid]
[Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
Carey, Esq., Boston]
Indeed, the Gothic tapestries more than any other existing pictures
take us back to that epoch of our lives when we lived in romance, when
the Sleeping Beauty hid in just such towers, when the prince rode such
a horse and appeared an elegant young knight. The inscrutable mystery
of those folk of other days is like the inscrutable mystery of that
childhood time, the Mediaeval time of the imagination, and those of us
who remember its joys gaze silent and happy in the tapestry room of
the Ducal Palace at Nancy, or in Mary's Chamber at Holyrood, or in any
place whatever where hang the magic pictured cloths.
When the highest development of a style is reached a change is sure to
come. It may be a degeneration, or it may be the introduction of a new
style through some great artistic impulse either native or introduced
by contact with an outside influence. Fortunately, the Gothic passed
through no pallid process of deterioration. The examples that nest
comfortably in the museums of the world or in the homes of certain
fortunate owners, do not contain marks of decadence--only of
transition. It is a style that was replaced, but not one that died the
death of decadence.
It is with reluctance that one who loves the Gothic will leave it for
the more recent art of the Renaissance. Its charm is one that embodies
chasteness, grace, and simplicity, one that is so exquisitely
finished, and so individual that the mind and eye rest lovingly upon
its decorative expressions. It is averred that the introduction of the
revived styles of Greece and Rome into France destroyed an art
superior. One is inclined to this opinion in studying a tapestry of
the highest Gothic expression, a finished product of the artist and
the craftsman, both having given to its execution their honest labour
and highest skill. Unhappily it is often, with the tapestry lover, a
case similar to that of the penniless boy before the bakeshop
window--you may look, but you may not have,--for not often are
tapestries such as these for sale. Only among the experienced
dealer-collectors is one fortunate enough to find these rare remnants
of the past which for colour, design and texture are unsurpassed.
But the Gothic was bound to give way as a fashion in design. Politics
of Europe were at work, and men were more easily moving about from one
country to another. The cities of the various provinces over which the
Burgundian dukes had ruled were prevented by natural causes, from
being united. Arras, Ghent, Liege instead of forming a solidarity,
were separate units of interest. This made the subjugation of one or
the other an easy matter to the tyrant who oppressed. As Arras
declined under the misrule of Charles le Temeraire (whose possessions
at one time outlined the whole northern and eastern border of France)
Brussels came into the highest prominence as a source of the finest
tapestries.
[Illustration: THE CREATION
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century]
[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL SIN
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century]
The great change in tapestries that now occurs is the same that
altered all European art and decoration and architecture. Indeed it
cannot be limited to these evidences alone, for it affected
literature, politics, religion, every intellectual evidence. Man was
breaking his bonds and becoming freed for centuries to come. The time
was well-named for the new birth. Like another Birth of long ago, it
occurred in the South, and its influence gradually spread over the
entire civilised world. The Renaissance, starting in Italy, gradually
flushed the whole of Europe with its glory. Artists could not be
restrained. Throbbing with poetry to be expressed, they threw off
design after design of inspired beauty and flooded the world with
them. The legitimate field of painting was not large enough for their
teeming originality which pre-empted also the field of decorative
design as well. Many painters apprenticed themselves to goldsmiths and
silversmiths to become yet more cunning in the art of minute design,
and the guilds of Florence held the names best known in the fine arts.
Tapestry weaving seems a natural expression in the North, the
impulsive supplying of a local need. Possibly Italy felt no such need
throughout the Middle Ages. However that may be, when her artists
composed designs for woven pictures there were no permanent artisans
at home of sufficient skill to weave them.
But up in the North, craftsmen were able to produce work of such
brilliant and perfect execution that the great artists of Italy were
inspired to draw cartoons. And so it came, that to make sure of having
their drawings translated into wool and silk with proper artistic
feeling, the cartoons of Raphael were bundled off by trusty carriers
to the ateliers of Flanders. Thus Italy got her tapestries of the
Renaissance, and thus Flanders acquired by inoculation the rich art of
the Renaissance.
The direct cause of the change in Flemish style of tapestries was in
this way brought about by the Renaissance of Italy. New rules of
drawing were dominating. Changes were slower when travelling was
difficult, and the average of literacy was low; but gradually there
came creeping up to Brussels cartoon after cartoon in the new method,
for her skilled workmen to transpose into wool and silk and metal,
"thread of Arras," and "gold and silver of Cyprus." Italy had the
artists, Brussels had the craftsmen--what happier combination could be
made than the union of these two? Thus was the great change brought
about in tapestries, and this union is the great fact to be borne in
mind about the difference between the Gothic tapestries and those
which so quickly succeeded them.
From now on the old method is abandoned, not only in Brussels, but
everywhere that the high-warp looms are set up. The "art nouveau" of
that day influenced every brush and pencil. The great crowding of
serried hosts on a single field disappeared, and fewer but perfect
figures played their parts on the woven surface. Wherever
architectural details, such as porticoes or columns, were introduced,
these dropped the old designs of "pointed" style or battlements, and
took on the classic or the high Renaissance that ornaments the facade
of Pavia's Certosa. One by one the wildwood flowers receded before the
advance of civilisation, very much as those in the veritable land
are wont to do, and their place was taken by a verdure as rich as the
South could produce, with heavy foliage and massive blossoms.
[Illustration: MELEAGER AND ATALANTA
Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth Century. Woven in Paris
workshops by Charles de Comans]
[Illustration: PUNIC WAR SERIES
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
Carey, Esq., Boston]
It is impossible to overestimate the importance to Brussels of the
animating experience and distinguished commission of executing the set
of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel after cartoons by Raffaelo
Sanzio. The date is one to tie to (1515) and the influence of the work
was far-reaching. The Gothic method could no longer continue.
The Renaissance spread its influence, established its standards and
introduced that wave of productiveness which always followed its
introduction. There are many who doubt the superiority of the
voluptuous art of the high Renaissance. There are those who prefer
(perhaps for reasons of sentiment) the early Gothic, and many more who
love far better the sweet purity of the early Renaissance. Before us
Raphael presents his full figures replete with action, rich with
broad, open curves in nudity, and magnificent with lines of flowing
drapery. To him be accorded all due honour; but, if it is the
privilege of the artist's spirit to wander still on earth, he must
find his particular post-mortem punishment in viewing the deplorable
school of exaggeration which his example founded. Who would not prefer
one of the chaste tapestries of perfected Gothic to one of those which
followed Raphael, imitating none of his virtues, exaggerating his
faults? It is these followers, the virilities of whose false art is as
that of weeds, who have come almost to our own day and who have
succeeded in spoiling the historical aspect of the New Testament for
many an imaginative Sunday-school attendant by giving us Bible folk in
swarthy undress, in lunatic beards and in unwearable drapings. These
terrible persons, descendants of Raphael's art, can never stir a human
sympathy.
Just here a word must be said of the workmen, the weavers of Brussels.
For them certain fixed rules were made, but also they were allowed
much liberty in execution. The artist might draw the big cartoons and
thus become the governing influence, but much of the choice of colour
and thread was left to the weaver. This made of him a more important
factor in the composition than a mere artisan; he was, in fact, an
artist, must needs be, to execute a work of such sublimity as the
Raphael set.
And as a weaver, his patience was without limit. Thread by thread, the
warp was set, and thread by thread the woof was woven and coerced into
place by the relentless comb of the weaver. Perhaps a man might make a
square foot, by a week of close application; but "how much" mattered
nothing--it was "how well" that counted. Haste is disassociable from
labour of our day; we might produce--or reproduce--tapestries as good
as the old, but some one is in haste for the hanging, and excellency
goes by the board. The weaver of those days of perfection was content
to be a weaver, felt his ambition gratified if his work was good.
[Illustration: EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CAESAR
Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the Arazzi,
Florence]
[Illustration: WILD BOAR HUNT
Flemish Cartoon and Weaving, Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the
Arazzi, Florence]
Peter van Aelst was the master chosen to execute the Raphael
tapestries, and the pieces were finished in three or four years. Those
who think present-day prices high, should think on the fact that Pope
Leo X paid $130,000 for the execution of the tapestries, which in
1515 counted for more than now. Raphael received $1,000 each for the
cartoons, almost all of which are now guarded in England. The
tapestries after a varied history are resting safely in the Vatican, a
wonder to the visitor.
When Van Aelst had finished his magnificent work, the tapestries were
sent to Rome. Those who go now to the Sistine Chapel to gaze upon
Michael Angelo's painted ceiling, and the panelled sidewalls of
Botticelli and other cotemporary artists, are more than intoxicated
with the feast. But fancy what the scene must have been when Pope Leo
X summoned his gorgeous guard and cardinals around him in this chapel
enriched also with the splendour of these unparalleled hangings.
And thus it came that Italy held the first place--almost the only
place--in design, and Brussels led in manufacture.
In 1528 appeared a mark on Brussels' tapestries which distinguished
them from that time on. Prior to that their works, except in certain
authenticated instances, are not always distinguishable from those of
other looms--of which many existed in many towns. The mark alluded to
is the famous one of two large B's on either side of a shield or
scutcheon. This was woven into a plain band on the border, and the
penalty for its misuse was the no small one of the loss of the right
hand--the death of the culprit as a weaver. This mark and its laws
were intended to discourage fraud, to promote perfection and to
conserve a high reputation for weavers as well as for dealers.
CHAPTER VII
RENAISSANCE TO RUBENS
When the Raphael cartoons first came to Brussels the new method was a
little difficult for the tapissier. His hand had been accustomed to
another manner. He had, too, been allowed much liberty in his
translations--if one may so call the art of reproducing a painted
model on the loom. He might change at will the colour of a drapery,
even the position of a figure, and, most interesting fact, he had on
hand a supply of stock figures that he might use at will, making for
himself suitable combination. The figures of Adam and Eve gave a
certain cachet to hangings not entirely secular and these were slipped
in when a space needed filling. There were also certain lovely ladies
who might at one time play the role of attendant at a feast _al
fresco_, at another time a character in an allegory. The weaver's hand
was a little conventional when he began to execute the Raphael
cartoons, but during the three years required for their execution he
lost all restriction and was ready for the freer manner.
[Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
[Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
It must not be supposed the Flemish artists were content to let the
Italians entirely usurp them in the drawing of cartoons. The lovely
refinement of the Bruges school having been thrust aside, the Fleming
tried his hand at the freer method, not imitating its classicism but
giving his themes a broader treatment. The Northern temperament
failed to grasp the spirit of the South, and figures grew gross and
loose in the exaggerated drawing. Borders, however, show no such
deterioration; the attention to detail to which the old school was
accustomed was here continued and with good effect. No stronger
evidence is needed than some of these half savage portrayals of life
in the Sixteenth Century to declare the classic method an exotic in
Flanders.
But with the passing of the old Gothic method, there was little need
for other cartoonists than the Italian, so infinitely able and
prolific were they. Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Giulio
Romano, these are among the artists whose work went up to Brussels
workshops and to other able looms of the day. We can fancy the fair
face of Andrea's wife being lovingly caressed by the weaver's fingers
in his work; we can imagine the beauties of Titian, the sumptuousness
of Veronese's feasts, and the fat materialism of Giulio Romano's heavy
cherubs, all contributing to the most beautiful of textile arts.
Still earlier, Mantegna supplied a series of idealised Pompeian
figures exquisitely composed, set in a lacy fancy of airy
architectural detail, in which he idealised all the gods of Olympus.
Each fair young goddess, each strong and perfect god, stood in its
particular niche and indicated its _penchant_ by a tripod, a peacock,
an apple or a caduceus, as clue to the proper name. Such airy beauty,
such dainty conception, makes of the gods rulers of aesthetics, if not
of fate. This series of Mantegna was the inspiration two centuries
later of the _Triumphs of the Gods_, and similar hangings of the
newly-formed Gobelins.
Giulio Romano drew, among other cartoons, a set of _Children Playing_,
which were the inspiration later at the Gobelins for Lebrun's _Enfants
Jardiniers_.
As classic treatment was the mode in the Sixteenth Century, so classic
subject most appealed. The loves and adventures of gods and heroes
gave stories for an infinite number of sets. As it was the fashion to
fill a room with a series, not with miscellaneous and contrasting
bits, several tapestries similar in subject and treatment were a
necessity. The gods were carried through their adventures in varying
composition, but the borders in all the set were uniform in style and
measurement.
In those prolific days, when ideas were crowding fast for expression,
the border gave just the outlet necessary for the superfluous designs
of the artist. He was wont to plot it off into squares with such
architectonic fineness as Mina da Fiesole might have used, and to make
of each of these a picture or a figure so perfect that in itself it
would have sufficient composition for an entire tapestry. All honour
to such artists, but let us never once forget that without the skill
and talent of the master-weaver these beauties would never have come
down to us.
[Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
[Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
The collection of George Blumenthal, Esquire, of New York, contains as
beautiful examples of Sixteenth Century composition and weaving as
could be imagined. Two of these were found in Spain--the country
which has ever hoarded her stores of marvellous tapestries. They
represent the story of _Mercury_. (Frontispiece.) The cartoon is
Italian, and so perfect is its drawing, so rich in invention is the
exquisite border, that the name of Raphael is half-breathed by the
thrilled observer. But if the artist is not yet certainly identified,
the name of the weaver is certain, for on the galloon he has left his
sign. It is none other than the celebrated Wilhelm de Pannemaker.
In addition to this is the shield and double B of the Brussels
workshop, which after 1528 was a requirement on all tapestries beyond
a certain small size. In 1544 the Emperor Charles V made a law that
the mark or name of the weaver and the mark of his town must be put in
the border. It was this same Pannemaker of the Blumenthal tapestries
who wove in Spain the _Conquest of Tunis_ for Charles V. (Plate facing
page 62.)
Mr. Blumenthal's tapestries must have carried with them some such
contract for fine materials as that which attended the execution of
the _Tunis_ set, so superb are they in quality. Indeed, gold is so
lavishly used that the border seems entirely made of it, except for
the delicate figures resting thereon. It is used, too, in an unusual
manner, four threads being thrown together to make more resplendent
the weave.
The beauty of the cartoon as a picture, the decorative value of the
broad surfaces of figured stuffs, the marvellous execution of the
weaver, all make the value of these tapestries incalculable to the
student and the lover of decorative art. Mr. Blumenthal has graciously
placed them on exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. Fortunate they who can absorb their beauty.
That treasure-house in Madrid which belongs to the royal family
contains a set which bears the same ear-marks as the Blumenthal
tapestries. It is the set called _The Loves of Vertumnus and Pomona_.
(Plates facing pages 72, 73, 74 and 75.) Here is the same manner of
dress, the same virility, the same fulness of decoration. Yet the
Mercury is drawn with finer art.
The delight in perfected detail belonging to the Italian school of
artists resulted in an arrangement of _grotesques_. Who knows that the
goldsmith's trade was not responsible for these tiny fantastics, as so
many artists began as apprentices to workers in gold and silver? This
evidence of talented invention must be observed, for it set the
fashion for many a later tapestry, notably the _Grotesque Months_ of
the Seventeenth Century. Mingled with verdure and fruit, it is seen in
work of the Eighteenth Century. But in its original expression is it
the most talented. There we find that intellectual plan of design,
that building of a perfect whole from a subtle combination of
absolutely irreconcilable and even fabulous objects. Yet all is done
with such beguiling art that both mind and eye are piqued and pleased
with the impossible blending of realism and imagination.
Bacchiacca drew a filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a
ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the
celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing
pages 84 and 85.) These men at that time (1550) had set their
Flemish looms in Italy.
[Illustration: TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED
Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid]
[Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
Carey, Esq., Boston]
And so it came that the Renaissance swept all before it in the world
of tapestry. More than that, with the increase of culture and of
wealth, with the increased mingling of the peoples of Europe after the
raid of Charles V into Italy, the demand for tapestries enormously
increased. They were wanted for furnishing of homes, they were wanted
as gifts--to brides, to monarchs, to ambassadors. And they were wanted
for splendid decoration in public festivals. They had passed beyond
the stage of rarity and had become almost as much a matter of course
as clothing.
Brussels being in the ascendency as a producer, the world looked to
her for their supply, and thereby came trouble. More orders came than
it was possible to fill. The temptation was not resisted to accept
more work than could be executed, for commercialism has ever a hold.
The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced
his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the
lessening of care in every department.
Gradually it came about that expedition in a tapissier, the ability to
weave quickly, was as great a desideratum as fine work. Various other
expedients were resorted to beside the Sixteenth Century equivalent of
"Step lively." Large tapestries were not set on a single loom, but
were woven in sections, cunningly united when finished. In this manner
more men could be impressed into the manufacture of a single piece. A
wicked practice was introduced of painting or dyeing certain woven
parts in which the colours had been ill-selected.
All these things resulted in constantly increasing restrictions by the
guild of tapissiers and by order of royal patrons. But fraud is hard
to suppress when the animus of the perpetrator is wrong. Laws were
made to stop one fault after another, until in the end the weavers
were so hampered by regulations that work was robbed of all enthusiasm
or originality.
It was at this time that Brussels adopted the low-warp loom. In other
words, after a brilliant period of prolific and beautiful production,
Brussels began to show signs of deterioration. Her hour of triumph was
past. It had been more brilliant than any preceding, and later times
were never able to touch the same note of purity coupled with
perfection. The reason for the decline is known, but reasons are of
scant interest in the face of the deplorable fact of decadence.
The Italian method of drawing cartoons was adopted by the Flemish
cartoonists at this time, but as it was an adoption and not a natural
expression of inborn talent, it fell short of the high standard of the
Renaissance. But that is not to say that we of to-day are not ready to
worship the fruit of the Italian graft on Flemish talent. A tapestry
belonging to the Institute of Art in Chicago well represents this
hybrid expression of drawing. (Plate facing page 78.) The principal
figures are inspired by such as are seen in the _Mercury_ of Mr.
Blumenthal's collection, or the _Vertumnus and Pomona_ series, but
there the artist stopped and wandered off into his traditional
Flemish landscape with proper Flemings in the background dressed in
the fashion of the artist's day.
[Illustration: BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art, Chicago]
[Illustration: MEETING OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Brussels Tapestry. Woven by Gerard van den Strecken. Cartoon
attributed to Rubens]
The border was evidently inspired by Raphael's classic figures and
arabesques, but the column of design is naively broken by the far
perspective of a formal garden. The Italian cartoonist would have
built his border, figure and arabesque, one above another like a
fantastic column (_vide_ Mr. Blumenthal's _Mercury_ border). The
Fleming saw the intricacy, the multiplied detail, but missed the
intellectual harmony. But, such trifles apart, the Flemish examples of
this style that have come to us are thrilling in their beauty of
colour, and borders such as this are an infinite joy. This tapestry
was woven about the last quarter of the Sixteenth Century by a weaver
named Jacques Geubels of Brussels, who was employed by Carlier, a
merchant of Antwerp.
As the fruit of the Renaissance graft on Flanders coarsened and
deteriorated, a new influence arose in the Low Countries, one that was
bound to submerge all others. Rubens appeared and spread his great
decorative surfaces before eyes that were tired of hybrid design. This
great scene-painter introduced into all Europe a new method in his
voluptuous, vigorous work, a method especially adapted to tapestry
weaving. It is not for us to quarrel with the art of so great a
master. The critics of painting scarce do that; but in the lesser art
of tapestry the change brought about by his cartoons was not a happy
one.
His great dramatic scenes required to be copied directly from the
canvas, no liberty of line or colour could be allowed the weaver. In
times past, the tapissier--with talent almost as great as that of the
cartoonist--altered at his discretion. Even he to whom the Raphael
cartoons were entrusted changed here and there the work of the master.
But now he was expected to copy without license for change. In other
words, the time was arriving when tapestries were changing from
decorative fabrics into paintings in wool. It takes courage to avow a
distaste for the newer method, seeing what rare and beautiful hangings
it has produced. But after a study of the purely decorative hangings
of Gothic and Renaissance work, how forced and false seem the later
gods. The value of the tapestries is enormous, they are the work of
eminent men--but the heart turns away from them and revels again in
the Primitives and the Italians of the Cinque Cento.
Repining is of little avail. The mode changes and tastes must change
with it. If the gradual decadence after the Renaissance was
deplorable, it was well that a Rubens rose in vigour to set a new and
vital copy. To meet new needs, more tones of colour and yet more, were
required by the weaver, and thus came about the making of woven
pictures.
As one picture is worth many pages of description, it were well to
observe the examples given (plate facing page 79) of the superb set of
_Antony and Cleopatra_, a series of designs attributed to Rubens,
executed in Brussels by Gerard van den Strecken. This set is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
CHAPTER VIII
ITALY
FIFTEENTH THROUGH SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
The history of tapestry in Italy is the story of the great families,
their romances and achievements. These families were those which
furnished rulers of provinces--kings, almost--which supplied popes as
well, and folk who thought a powerful man's pleasurable duty was to
interest himself seriously in the arts.
With the fine arts all held within her hand, it was but logical that
Italy should herself begin to produce the tapestries she was importing
from the land of the barbarians as those beyond her northern borders
were arrogantly called. First among the records is found the name of
the Gonzaga family which called important Flemish weavers down to
Mantua, and there wove designs of Mantegna, in the highest day of
their factory's production, about 1450.
Duke Frederick of Urbino is one of the early Italian patrons of
tapestry whose name is made unforgettable in this connexion by the
product of the factory he established toward the end of the Fifteenth
Century, at his court in the little duchy which included only the
space reaching from the Apennines to the Adriatic and from Rimini to
Ancona. The chief work of this factory was the _History of Troy_ which
cost the generous and enthusiastic duke a hundred thousand dollars.
The great d'Este family was one to follow persistently the art,
possibly because it habited the northern part of the peninsula and was
therefore nearer Flanders, but more probably because the great Duke of
Ferrara was animated by that superb pride of race that chafes at
rivalry; this, added to a wish to encourage art, and the lust of
possession which characterised the great men of that day.
It was the middle of the Sixteenth Century that Ercole II, the head of
the d'Este family, revived at Ferrara the factory of his family which
had suffered from the wars. The master-weavers were brought from
Flanders, not only to produce tapestries almost unequalled for
technical perfection, but to instruct local weavers. These two
important weavers were Nicholas and John Karcher or Carcher as it is
sometimes spelled, names of great renown--for a weaver might be almost
as well known and as highly esteemed as the artist of the cartoons in
those days when artisan's labour had not been despised by even the
great Leonardo. The foremost artist of the Ferrara works was chosen
from that city, Battista Dosso, but also active as designer was the
Fleming, Lucas Cornelisz. In Dosso's work is seen that exquisite and
dainty touch that characterises the artists of Northern Italy in their
most perfect period, before voluptuous masses and heavy scroll-like
curves prevailed even in the drawing of the human figure.
[Illustration: THE ANNUNCIATION
Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin A.
Ryerson, Esq., Chicago]
The House of Este had a part to play in the visit of the Emperor
Charles V when he elected to be crowned with Lombardy's Iron Crown, in
1530, at Bologna instead of in the cathedral at Monza where the relic
has its home. "Crowns run after me; I do not run after them," he
said, with the arrogance of success. At this reception at Bologna
we catch a glimpse of the brilliant Isabella d'Este amid all the
magnificence of the occasion. It takes very little imagination to
picture the effect of the public square at Bologna--the same buildings
that stand to-day--the square of the Palazzo Publico and the
Cathedral--to fancy these all hung with the immense woven pictures
with high lights of silk and gold glowing in the sun, and through this
magnificent scene the procession of mounted guards, of beautiful
ladies, of church dignitaries, with Charles V as the central object of
pomp, wearing as a clasp to the cope of state the great diamond found
on the field of Marat after the defeat of the Duke of Burgundy. The
members of the House of Este were there with their courts and their
proteges, their artists and their literati, as well as with their
display of riches and gaiety.
The manufactory at Ferrara was now allowed to sell to the public, so
great was its success, and to it is owed the first impetus given to
the weaving in Italy and the production of some of the finest hangings
which time has left for us to enjoy to-day. It is a sad commentary on
man's lust of novelty that the factory at Ferrara was ultimately
abandoned by reason of the introduction into the country of the
brilliant metal-illuminated leathers of Cordova. The factory's life
was comprised within the space of the years 1534 to 1597, the years in
which lived Ercole II and Alfonso II, the two dukes of the House of
Este who established and continued it.
It was but little wonder that the great family of the Medici looked
with envious eyes on any innovation or success which distinguished a
family which so nearly approached in importance its own. When Ercole
d'Este had fully proved the perfection of his new industry, the
weaving of tapestry, one of the Medici established for himself a
factory whereby he, too, might produce this form of art, not only for
the furtherance of the art, but to supply his own insatiable desires
for possession.
The _Arazzeria Medicea_ was the direct result of the jealousy of
Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574. It was established in
Florence with a success to be anticipated under such powerful
protection, and it endured until that patronage was removed by the
extinction of the family in 1737.
It was to be expected that the artists employed were those of note,
yet in the general result, outside of delicate grotesques, the drawing
is more or less the far-away echo of greater masters whose faults are
reproduced, but whose inspiration is not obtainable. After Michael
Angelo, came a passion for over-delineation of over-developed muscles;
after Raphael--came the debased followers of his favourite pupil,
Giulio Romano, who had himself seized all there was of the carnal in
Raphael's genius. But if there is something to be desired in the
composition and line of the cartoons of the Florentine factory, there
is nothing lacking in the consummate skill of the weavers.
[Illustration: ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas Karcher]
[Illustration: ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by G. Rost]
The same Nicholas Karcher who set the standard in the d'Este works,
gave of his wonderful skill to the Florentines, and with him was
associated John Rost. These were both from Flanders, and although
trade regulations for tapestry workers did not exist in Italy, Duke
Cosimo granted each of these men a sufficient salary, a habitat, as
well as permission to work for outsiders, and in addition paid them
for all work executed for himself.
The subjects for the set of tapestries had entirely left the old
method of pious interpretation and of mediaeval allegory and revelled
in pictured tales of the Scriptures and of the gods and heroes of
mystical Parnassus and of bellicose Greece, not forgetting those
dainty exquisite impossibilities called grotesques. It was about the
time of the death of Cosimo I (1574), the founder of the Medicean
factory, that a new and unfortunate influence came into the
directorship of the designs. This was the appointment of Stradano or
Johan van der Straaten, to give his Flemish name, as dominating
artist.
He was a man without fine artistic feeling, one of those whose eye
delighted in the exaggerations of decadence rather than in the
restraint of perfect art. He was inspired, not by past perfection of
the Italians among whom he came to live, but by those of the decline,
and on this he grafted a bit of Northern philistinism. His brush was
unfortunately prolific, and at this time the fine examples of weaving
set by Rost and Karcher had been replaced by quicker methods so that
after 1600 the tapestries poured out were lamentably inferior.
Florentine tapestry had at this time much pretence, much vulgar
display in its drawing, missing the fine virtues of the time when
Cosimo I dictated its taste, the fine virtues of "grace, gaiety and
reflectiveness."
Leo X, the great Medicean pope, was elected in 1513, he who ordered
the great Raphael set of the _Acts of the Apostles_, but it was before
the establishment of important looms in Italy, so to Flanders and Van
Aelst are due the glory of first producing this series which afterward
was repeated many times, in the great looms of Europe. Leo X emulated
in the patronage of the arts his father Lorenzo, well-named
Magnificent. What Lorenzo did in Florence, Leo X endeavoured to do in
Rome; make of his time and of his city the highest expression of
culture. His record, however, is so mixed with the corruption of the
time that its golden glory is half-dimmed. It was from the
licentiousness of cardinals and the wanton revels of the Vatican in
Leo's time that young Luther the "barbarian" fled with horror to nail
up his theses on the doors of the churches in Wittenberg.
The history of tapestry in Italy at the Seventeenth Century was all in
the hands of the great families. Italy was not united under a single
royal head, but was a heterogeneous mass of dukedoms, of foreign
invaders, with the popes as the head of all. But Italy had experienced
a time of papal corruption, which had, as its effect, wars of
disintegration, the retarding of that unity of state which has only
recently been accomplished. State patronage for the factories was not
known, that steady beneficent influence, changeless through changing
reigns. Popes and great families regulated art in all its
manifestations, and who shall say that envy and rivalry did not act
for its advancement.
[Illustration: ITALIAN VERDURE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
The desire to imitate the cultivation and elegance of Italy was
what made returning invaders carry the Renaissance into the rest of
Europe; and in a lesser degree the process was reversed when, in the
Seventeenth Century, a cardinal of the House of Barberini visited
France and, on viewing in the royal residences a superb display of
tapestries, his envy and ambition were aroused to the extent of
emulation. He could not, with all his power, possess himself of the
hangings that he saw, but he could, and did, arrange to supply himself
generously from another source. He was the powerful Francesco
Barberini, the son of the pope's brother (Pope Urban VIII, 1623-1644),
and it was he who established the Barberini Library and built from the
ruins of Rome's amphitheatres and baths the great palace which to-day
still dominates the street winding up to its aristocratic elegance. It
was to adorn this palace that Cardinal Francesco established ateliers
and looms and set artists and weavers to work. This tapestry factory
is of especial interest to America, for some of its chief hangings
have come to rest with us. _The Mysteries of the Life and Death of
Jesus Christ_, one set is called, and is the property of the Cathedral
of St. John, the Divine, in New York, donated by Mrs. Clarke.
Cardinal Francesco Barberini chose as his artists those of the school
of Pietro di Cortona with Giovanni Francesco Romanelli as the head
master. The director of the factory was Giacomo della Riviera allied
with M. Wauters, the Fleming.[13] The former was especially concerned
with the pieces now owned by the Cathedral of St. John, the Divine,
in New York, and which are signed with his name. Romanelli was the
artist of the cartoons, and his fame is almost too well known to dwell
upon. His portrait, in tapestry, hangs in the Louvre, for in Paris he
gained much fame at the Court of Louis XIV, where he painted portraits
of the Grand Monarch, who never wearied of seeing his own magnificence
fixed on canvas.
It was the hard fate of the Barberini family to lose power and wealth
after the death of their powerful member, Pope Urban VIII, in 1644.
Their wealth and influence were the shining mark for the arrows of
envy, so it was to be expected that when the next pope, Innocent X,
was elected, they were robbed of riches and driven out of the country
into France. This ended for a time the work of the tapestry factory,
but later the family returned and work was resumed to the extent of
weaving a superb series picturing scenes especially connected with the
glory of the family, and entitled _History of Urban VIII_.
Although Italy is growing daily in power and riches under her new
policy of political unity, there were dreary years of heavy expense
and light income for many of her famous families, and it was during
such an era that the Barberini family consented to let their
tapestries pass out from the doors of the palace they were woven to
decorate. In 1889, the late Charles M. Ffoulke, Esq., became the
possessor of all the Barberini hangings, and added them to his famous
collection. Thus through the enterprise and the fine artistic
appreciation of Mr. Ffoulke, is America able to enjoy the best
expression of Italian tapestry of the Seventeenth Century.
The part that Venice ever played in the history of tapestry is the
splendid one of consumer. In her Oriental magnificence she exhibited
in palace and pageant the superb products of labour which others had
executed. Without tapestries her big stone palaces would have lacked
the note of soft luxury, without coloured hangings her balconies would
have been but dull settings for languid ladies, and her water-parades
would have missed the wondrous colour that the Venetian loves. Yet to
her rich market flowed the product of Europe in such exhaustless
stream that she became connoisseur-consumer only, nor felt the need of
serious producing. Workshops there were, from time to time, but they
were as easily abandoned as they were initiated, and they have left
little either to history or to museums. Venice was, in the Sixteenth
Century, not only a buyer of tapestries for her own use, but one of
the largest markets for the sale of hangings to all Europe. Men and
monarchs from all Christendom went there to purchase. The same may be
said of Genoa, so that although these two cities had occasional
unimportant looms, their position was that of middleman--vendors of
the works of others. In addition to this they were repairers and had
ateliers for restoring, even in those days.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] E. Muentz, "La Tapisserie."
CHAPTER IX
FRANCE
WORKING UP TO GOBELINS FACTORY
In following the great sweep of tapestry production we arrive now in
France, there to stay until the Revolution. The early beginnings were
there, briefly rivalling Arras, but Arras, as we have seen, caught up
the industry with greater zeal and became the ever-famous leader of
the Fifteenth Century, ceding to Brussels in the Sixteenth Century,
whence the high point of perfection was carried to Paris and caused
the establishment of the Gobelins. The English development under James
I, we defer for a later considering.
Francis I stands, an over-dressed, ever ambitious figure, at the
beginning of things modern in French art. He still smacks of the
Middle Ages in many a custom, many a habit of thought; his men clank
in armour, in his chateaux lurk the suggestion of the fortress, and
his common people are sunk in a dark and hopeless oppression. Yet he
himself darts about Europe with a springing gait and an elegant
manner, the type of the strong aristocrat dispensing alike arts of war
and arts of the Renaissance.
Was it his visits, bellicose though they were, to Italy and Spain,
that turned his observant eye to the luxury of woven story and made
him desire that France should produce the same? The Sforza Castle at
Milan had walls enough of tapestry, the pageants of Leonardo da
Vinci, organised at royal command of the lovely Beatrice d'Este,
displayed the wealth of woven beauty over which Francis had time to
deliberate in those bad hours after the battle at Milan's noted
neighbour, Pavia.
[Illustration: THE FINDING OF MOSES
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin. The Louvre
Museum]
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF JUNO
Gobelins under Louis XIV.]
The attention of Francis was also turned much to Spain through envy of
that extraordinary man of luck and ability, the Emperor Charles V, and
from whom he made abortive and sullen efforts to wrest Germany, Italy,
anything he could get. In his imprisonment in Madrid, Francis had time
in plenty on which to think of many things, and why not on the
wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to
make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little
boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not
whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one
which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer
of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the
same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to
remember in regard to the class of designs of his own and succeeding
periods in France.
How he got his ideas we can reasonably trace, and the result of them
was that he established a royal tapestry factory in beautiful
Fontainebleau, which lies hid in grateful shade, stretching to
flowered fields but a reasonable distance from the distractions of
Paris.
It pleased Francis--and perhaps the beautiful Diane de Poitiers and
Duchesse d'Etampes--to critique plays in that tiny gem of a theatre at
the palace, or to feed the carp in the pool; but also it gave him
pleasure to wander into the rooms where the high-warp looms lifted
their utilitarian lengths and artists played at magic with the wools.
Alas, one cannot dress this patronage of art with too much of
disinterestedness, for these marvellous weavings were for the
adornment of the apartments of the very persons who caused their
productions.
The grand idea of state ateliers had not yet come to bless the
industry. For this reason the factory at Fontainebleau outlasted the
reign of its founder, Francis I, but a short time.
Nevertheless, examples of its works are still to be seen and are of
great beauty, notably those at the Museum of the Gobelins in Paris.
That a series called the _History of Diana_ was produced is but
natural, considering the puissance at court of the famous Diane de
Poitiers.
When Francis' son, Henri II, enfeebled in constitution by the Spanish
confinement, inherited the throne, it was but natural that he should
neglect the indulgences of his father and prefer those of his own. The
Fontainebleau factory strung its looms and copied its cartoons and
produced, too, certain hangings for Henri's wife, the terrible
Catherine de Medici, on which her vicious eyes rested in forming her
horrid plots; but Henri had ambitions of his own, small ambitions
beside those which had to do with jealousy of Charles Quint. He let
the factory of Francis I languish, but carried on the art under his
own name and fame.
To give his infant industry a home he looked about Paris and decided
upon the Hopital de la Trinite, an institution where asylum was found
for the orphans of the city who seem, in the light of the general
brutality of the time, to have been even in more need of a home than
the parentless child of modern civilisation. A part of the scheme was
to employ in the works such children as were sufficiently mature and
clever to work and to learn at least the auxiliary details of a craft
that is also an art.
In this way the sixty or so of the orphans of La Trinite were given a
means of earning a livelihood. Among them was one whose name became
renowned. This was Maurice du Bourg, whose tapestries surpassed all
others of his time in this factory--an important factory, as being one
of the group that later was merged into the Gobelins.
It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind
that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things
Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his
school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but
in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world
found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinite
that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an
underscoring. This set was composed of fifteen pieces illustrating in
sweeping design and gorgeous colouring the _History of Mausolus and
Artemisia_. Intense local and personal interest was given to the set
by making an open secret of the fact that by Artemisia, the Queen of
Halicarnassus, was meant the widowed Queen of France, Catherine de
Medici, who adored posing as the most famous of widows and adding
ancient glory to her living importance. To this _History_ French
writers accord the important place of inspirer of a distinctively
French Renaissance.
The weaver being Maurice du Bourg, the chief of the factory of La
Trinite, the artists were Henri Lerambert and Antoine Carron, but the
set has been many times copied in various factories, and Artemisia has
symbolised in turn two other widowed queens of France.
Into the throne of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under
the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was
filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at
last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that
grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his
place, and the habit being strong upon him, he was in eternal
conflict. Some there be who are developed by sympathy, but Henri IV
was developed by opposition, and thus it was that although opposed in
the matter by his Prime Minister, Sully, he established factories for
the weaving of tapestries in both high and low warps.
With the desire to see the arts of peace instead of evidences of war
throughout his kingdom just rescued from conflict, he took all means
to set his people in the ways of pleasing industry. The indefatigable
Sully was plucking the royal sleeve to follow the path of the plough,
to see man's salvation, material and moral, in the ways of
agriculture. But Henri favoured townspeople as well as country
people, and with the Edict of Nantes, releasing from the bondage of
terror a large number of workers, he showed much industry in
encouraging tapestry factories in and near Paris, and as these all
lead to Gobelins we will consider them.
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century]
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins Tapestry]
Henri IV, notwithstanding his Prime Minister Sully's opposition to
what he considered a favouring of vicious luxury, began to occupy
himself in tapestry factories as early in his reign as his people
could rise from the wounds of war. Taking his movements
chronologically we will begin with his establishment in 1597 (eight
years after this first Bourbon took the throne) of a high-warp
industry in the house of the Jesuits in the Faubourg St. Antoine,
associating here Du Bourg of La Trinite and Laurent, equally renowned,
and the composer of the St. Merri tapestries.[14]
Flemish workers in Paris were at this same time, about 1601,
encouraged by the king and under protection of his steward. These
Flemings were the nucleus of a great industry, for it was over them
that two famous masters governed, namely, Francois de la Planche and
Marc Comans or Coomans. In 1607 Henri IV established the looms which
these men were called upon to direct.
These two Flemings, great in their art, were men of family and of some
means, for their first venture in the manufacture of tapestry was a
private enterprise like any of to-day. They looked to themselves to
produce the money for the support of the industry. Combining
qualities of both the artist and the business man, they took on
apprentices and also established looms in the provinces (notably Tours
and Amiens) where commercialism was as prominent as in modern methods;
that is to say, that by turning off a lot of cheaper work for smaller
purses, a quick and ready market was found which supplied the money
necessary for the production of those finer works of art which are
left to delight us to-day.
This manner of procedure of De la Planche and Comans has an interest
far deeper than the mere financial venture of the men of the early
Seventeenth Century, because it forces upon us the fact that at that
time, and earlier, no state ateliers existed. It was Henri IV who
first saw the wisdom of using the public purse in advancing this
industry. He established Du Bourg in the Louvre. With Henri Laurent he
was placed in the Tuileries, in 1607, and that atelier lasted until
the ministry of Colbert in the reign of Louis XIV.
In about 1627 the great De la Planche died and his son, Raphael,
established ateliers of his own in the Faubourg St. Germain, turning
out from his looms productions which were of sufficient excellence to
be confused with those of his father's most profitable factory.
Chronologically this fact belongs later, so we return to the influence
of Henri IV and the master gentleman tapissiers, De la Planche and
Comans.
The very name of the old palace, Les Tournelles, calls up a crowd of
pictures: the death of Henri II at the tournament in honour of the
marriage of his son with Marie Stuart, the subsequent razing of this
ancient home of kings by Catherine de Medici, and its reconstruction
in its present form by Henri IV. It is here that Richelieu honoured
the brief reign of Louis XIII by a statue, and it is here that Madame
de Sevigne was born. But more to our purpose, it was here that, in
1607, Henri IV cast his kingly eye when establishing a certain
tapestry factory. It was here he placed as directors the celebrated
Comans and De la Planche. It happened in time, that the looms of Les
Tournelles were moved to the Faubourg St. Marceau and these two men
came in time to direct these and all other looms under royal
patronage.
Examples are not wanting in museums of French work of this time,
showing the development of the art and the progress that France was
making under Henri IV, whose energy without limit, and whose interests
without number, would to-day have given him the epithet of strenuous.
Under his reign we see the activity that so easily led France up to
the point where all that was needed was the assembling of the
factories under the direction of one great master. The factories
flourishing under Henri IV were La Trinite, the Louvre, the
Savonnerie, the Faubourg St. Marceau and one in the Tuileries. But it
needed the power of Louis XIV to tie all together in the strength of
unity.
The assassin Ravaillac, fanatically muttering through the streets of
Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest
month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal
coach, not only gave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these
industries that the king had cherished for his people against the
opposition of his prime minister. The tale of tapestry is like a vine
hanging on a frame of history, and frequent allusion therefore must be
made to the tales of kings and their ministers.
As it is not always a monarch, but often the power behind the throne
that rules, we see the force of Richelieu surging behind the reign of
the suppressed Louis XIII, whose rule followed that of the regretted
Henri IV. The master of the then new Palais-Royal had minor interests
of his own, apart from his generous plots of ruin for the Protestants,
for all the French nobility, and for the House of Austria to which the
queen belonged. Luxurious surroundings were a necessity to this man,
refined in the arts of cruelty and of living. It was no wonder that
under him tapestry weaving was not allowed to die, but was fostered
until that day when the Grand Monarch would organise and perfect.
In 1643, Louis XIV came to the throne under the guidance of Anne of
Austria, but it was many years before he was able to make his
influence appreciable. Meanwhile, however, others were fostering the
elegant industry. It was as early as 1647 that two celebrated tapestry
weavers came to Paris from Italy. They were Pierre Lefevre or Lefebvre
and his son Jean. The first of these was the chief of a factory in
Florence, whither he presently returned. Jean Lefebvre stayed in
Paris, won his way all the better for being released from parental
rule, and in time received the great honour of being appointed one
of the directors of the Gobelins, when that factory was finally
organised as an institution of the state.
[Illustration: GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
[Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
Quatre, Pau]
During the regency of Louis XIV there were also factories outside of
Paris. The high-warp looms of Tours were of such notable importance
that the great Richelieu placed here an order for tapestries of great
splendour with which to soften his hours of ease. Rheims Cathedral
still harbours the fine hangings which were woven for the place they
now adorn, an unusual circumstance in the world of tapestry. These
hangings (_The Story of Christ_) were woven at Rheims, where the
factory existed well known throughout the first half of the
Seventeenth Century. The church had previously ordered tapestries from
another town executed by one Daniel Pepersack, and so highly approved
was his work that he was made director of the Rheims factory.[15]
A factory which lasted but a few years, yet has for us a special
interest, is that of Maincy, founded in 1658. It is here that we hear
of the great Colbert and of Lebrun, whose names are synonymous with
prosperity of the Gobelins. For the factory at Maincy, Lebrun made
cartoons of great beauty, notably that of _The Hunt of Meleager_,
which now hangs in the Gobelins Museum in Paris. Louis Blamard was the
director of the workmen, who were Flemish, and who were afterwards
called to Paris to operate the looms of the newly-formed Gobelins, and
the reason of the transference forms a part of the history of the
great people of that day.
Richelieu in dying had passed over his power to Mazarin, who had used
it with every cruelty possible to the day. He had coveted riches and
elegance and had possessed himself of them; had collected in his
palace the most beautiful works of art of his day or those of a
previous time. After Mazarin came Foucquet, the great, the
iconoclastic, the unfortunate.
It was at Foucquet's estate of Vaux near Maincy that this tapestry
factory of short duration was established and soon destroyed. The
powerful Superintendent of Finance, with his eye for the beautiful and
desire for the luxury of kings, built for himself such a chateau as
only the magnificence of that time produced. It was situated far
enough from Paris to escape any sort of ennui, and was surrounded by
gardens most marvellous, within a beauteous park. It lay, when
finished, like a jewel on the fair bosom of France. The great
superintendent conceived the idea of pleasing the young king, Louis
XIV, by inviting the court for a wondrous fete in its lovely
enclosure.
Foucquet was a man of the world, and of the court, knew how to please
man's lighter side, and how to use social position for his own ends.
France calls him a "dilapidateur," but when his power and incidentally
the revenues of state, were laid out to produce a day of pleasure for
king and court, his taste and ability showed such a fete as could
scarce be surpassed even in those days of artistic fetes champetres.
The great gardens were brought into use in all the beauty of flower
and vine, of lawn and bosquet, of terrace and fountain. When the
guests arrived, weary of town life, they were turned loose in the
enchanting place like birds uncaged, and to the beauty of Nature was
added that of folk as gaily dressed as the flowers. The king was
invited to inspect it all for his pleasure, asked to feast in the
gardens, and to repose in the splendid chateau.
He was young then, in the early twenties, and luxury was younger then
than now, so he was pleased to spend the time in almost childish
enjoyments. A play _al fresco_ was almost a necessity to a royal
garden party, which was no affair of an hour like ours in the busy
to-day, but extended the livelong day and evening. Moliere was ready
with his sparkling satires at the king's caprice, and into the garden
danced the players before an audience to whom vaudeville and _cafe
chantant_ were exclusively a royal novelty arranged for their
delectation.
It is easy to see the elegant young king and his court in the setting
of a sophisticated out-of-doors, wandering on grassy paths, lingering
under arches of roses, plucking a flower to nest beside a smiling
face, stopping where servants--obsequious adepts, they were
then--supplied dainty things to eat and drink. Madame de Sevigne was
there, she of the observant eye, an eye much occupied at this time
with the figure of Superintendent Foucquet, the host of this glorious
occasion. This gracious lady lacked none of the appearance of
frivolity, coiffed in curls, draped in lace and soft silks, but her
mind was deeply occupied with the signs of the times. All the elegance
of the chateau, all the seductive beauty of terrace, garden, and
bosquet, all the piquant surprises of play and pyrotechnics, what were
they? Simply the disinterested effort of a subject to give pleasure
to His Majesty, the King.
There were those present who had long envied Foucquet, with his
ever-increasing power and wealth, his ability to patronise the arts,
to collect, and even to establish his tapestry looms like a king, for
his own palace and for gifts. This grand fete in the lovely month of
June did more than shower pleasure, more than gratify the lust of the
eye. In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming
men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an
incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin.
Among the observant guests at this wondrous fete champetre was
Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in
Foucquet's fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king.
Foucquet's downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by
ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches
their own. Foucquet's unequalled entertainment of the king was made to
count as naught. Louis, even before leaving for Paris, had begun to
ask whence came the money that purchased this wide fertile estate
stretching to the vision's limit, the money that built the chateau of
regal splendour, the money that paid for the prodigal pleasures of
that day of delights? Foucquet thought to have gained the confidence
and admiration of the king. But, on leaving, Louis said coldly, "We
shall scarce dare ask you to our poor palace, seeing the superior
luxury to which you are accustomed." A fearful cut, but only a straw
to the fate which followed, the investigations into the affairs of
Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and
then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with
the superintendent's life. Madame de Sevigne saw him in the beginning,
wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from his
weary years.
[Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
Quatre, Pau]
[Illustration: GOBELINS GROTESQUE
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris]
With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Chateau of Vaux
near Maincy, and so, too, came an end to the factory where so fine
results had been obtained in tapestry weaving. Yet the effort was not
in vain, for some of the tapestries remain and the factory was the
school where certain celebrated men were trained.
It may easily have been that Louis XIV discovered on that day at Vaux
the excellence of Lebrun whom he made director at the Gobelins in
Paris when they were but newly formed. Foucquet, wasting in prison,
had many hours in which to think on this and on the advancement of the
very man who had been keenest in running him to cover, the great
Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry
whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but
we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy
caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and
daring, qualities of which the world has ever need.
Foucquet's factory lasted three years. It was directed by Louis
Blamard or Blammaert of Oudenarde, and employed a weaver named Jean
Zegre, who came from the works at Enghien, works sufficiently known to
be remarked. Lebrun composed here and fell under the influence of
Rubens, an influence that pervaded the grandiose art of the day. The
earliest works of Lebrun, three pieces, were later used to complete a
set of Rubens' _History of Constantine_. _The Muses_ was a set by
Lebrun, also composed for the Chateau of Vaux. The charm of this set
is a matter for admiration even now when, alas, all is destroyed but a
few fragments.
The disgrace of Foucquet was the last determining cause of the
establishment of the Gobelins factory under Louis XIV, an act which
after this brief review of Paris factories (and an allusion to
sporadic cases outside of Paris) we are in position at last to
consider. Pursuit of knowledge in regard to the Gobelins factory leads
us through ways the most flowery and ways the most stormy, through
sunshine and through the dark, right up to our own times.
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE FETE
Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers]
FOOTNOTES:
[14] For the facts here cited see E. Muentz, "Histoire de la
Tapisserie," and Jules Guiffrey, "Les Gobelins."
[15] See Loriquet, "Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims."
CHAPTER X
THE GOBELINS FACTORY, 1662
Colbert saw the wisdom of taking direction for the king, Louis XIV, of
the looms of Foucquet's chateau. Travel being difficult enough to make
desirable the concentration of points of interest, Colbert transferred
the looms of Vaux to Paris. To do this he had first to find a habitat,
and what so suitable as the Hotel des Gobelins, a collection of
buildings on the edge of Paris by which ran a little brook called the
Bievre. The Sieur Leleu was then the owner, and the sale of the
buildings was made on June 6, 1662.
This was the beginning only of the purchase, for Louis XIV added
adjoining houses for the various uses of the large industries he had
in mind, for the development of arts and crafts of all sorts, and for
the lodging of the workers.
The story of the original occupants of the premises is almost too well
known to recount. The simple tale of the conscientious "dyers in
scarlet" is told on the marble plaque at the present entry into the
collection of buildings still standing, still open to visitors. It is
a tale with a moral, an obvious simple moral with no need of Alice's
Duchess to point it out, and it smacks strong of the honesty of a
labour to which we owe so much.
Late in the Fifteenth Century the brothers Gobelin came to the city
of Paris to follow their trade, which was dyeing, and their ambition,
which was to produce a scarlet dye like that they had seen flaunting
in the glowing city of Venice. The trick of the trade in those days
was to find a water of such quality that dyes took to it kindly. The
tiny river, or rather brook, called the Bievre, which ran softly down
towards the Seine had the required qualities, and by its murmuring
descent, Jean and Philibert pitched the tents of their fortune.
They succeeded, too, so well that we hear of their descendants in
later centuries as having become gentlemen, not of property only, but
of cultivation, and far removed from trades or bartering. Their name
is ever famous, for it tells not only the story of the two original
dyers, but of their subsequent efforts in weaving, and finally it has
come to mean the finest modern product of the hand loom. Just as Arras
gave the name to tapestry in the Fourteenth Century, so the Gobelins
has given it to the time of Louis XIV, even down to our own day--more
especially in Europe, where the word tapestry is far less used than
here.
The tablet now at the Gobelins--let us re-read it, for in some hasty
visit to the Latin Quarter we may have overlooked it. Translated
freely it reads, "Jean and Philibert Gobelin, merchant dyers in
scarlet, who have left their name to this quarter of Paris and to the
manufacture of tapestries, had here their atelier, on the banks of the
Bievre, at the end of the Fifteenth Century."
Another inscription takes a great leap in time, skips over the
centuries when France was not in the lead in this art, and
recommences with the awakening strength under the wise care of Henri
IV. It reads:
"April 1601. Marc Comans and Francois de la Planche, Flemish tapestry
weavers, installed their ateliers on the banks of the Bievre."
"September 1667, Colbert established in the buildings of the Gobelins
the manufacture of the furniture (_meubles_) of the Crown, under the
direction of Charles Lebrun."
The tablet omits the date that is fixed in our mind as that of the
beginning of the modern tapestry industry in France, the year 1662,
but that is only because it deals with a date of more general
importance, the time when the Gobelins was made a manufactory of all
sorts of gracious products for the luxury of palaces and chateaux, not
tapestries alone, but superb furniture, and metal work, inlay,
mounting of porcelains and all that goes to furnish the home of
fortunate men.
In that year of 1667 was instituted the ateliers supported by the
state, not dependent upon the commercialism of the workers. This made
possible the development of such men as Boulle with his superb
furniture, of Riesner with his marquetry, of Caffieri with his marvels
in metal to decorate all _meubles_, even vases, which were then coming
from China in their beauty of solid glaze or eccentric ornament.
Here lies the great secret of the success of Louis XIV in these
matters, with the coffers of the Crown he rewarded the artists above
the necessity of mere living, and freed each one for the best
expression of his own especial art. The day of individual financial
venture was gone. The tapestry masters of other times had both to work
and to worry. They had to be artists and at the same time commercial
men, a chimerical combination.
The expense of maintaining a tapestry factory was an incalculable
burden. A man could not set up a loom, a single one, as an artist sets
up an easel, and in solitude produce his woven work of art. Other
matters go to the making of a tapestry than weaving, matters which
have to do with cartoons for the design, dyes, wools, threads, etc.;
so that many hands must be employed, and these must all be paid. The
apprentice system helped much, but even so, the master of the atelier
was responsible for his finances and must look for a market for his
goods.
What a relief it was when the king took all this responsibility from
the shoulders and said to the artists and artisans, "Art for Art's
sake," or whatever was the equivalent shibboleth of that day. Here was
comfort assured for the worker, with a housing in the Gobelins, or in
that big asylum, the Louvre, where an apartment was the reward of
virtue. And now was a market assured for a man's work, a royal market,
with the king as its chief, and his favourites following close.
The ateliers scattered about Paris were allied in spirit, were all the
result of the encouragement of preceding monarchs, but it remained for
Le Grand Monarque to gather all together and form a state solidarity.
Kings must have credit, even though others do the work. It was the
labour of the able Colbert to organise this factory. He was in favour
then. It was after his acuteness had helped in deposing the splendid
brigand Foucquet, and his power was serving France well, so well that
he brought about his head the inevitable jealousy which finally threw
him, too, into unmerited disgrace.
Colbert, then, although a Minister of State, head of the Army of
France, and a few other things, had the fate of the Gobelins in his
hand. As the ablest is he who chooses best his aids, Colbert looked
among his countrymen for the proper director of the newly-organised
institution. He selected Charles Lebrun.
The very name seems enough, in itself. It is the concrete expression
of ability, not only as an artist, but as a leader of artists, a
director, an assembler, a blender. He called to the Gobelins, as
addition to those already there, the apprentices from La Trinite, the
weavers from the Faubourg St. Germain, and from the Louvre. He
established three ateliers of high-warp under Jean Jans, Jean Lefebvre
and Henri Laurent; also two ateliers of low-warp under Jean Delacroix
and Jean-Baptiste Mozin. When charged with the decoration of
Versailles he had under his direction fifty artists of differing
scopes, which alone would show his power of assembling and leading, of
blending and ordering. Workers at the Gobelins numbered as many as two
hundred fifty, and apprentices were legion.
Ten or twelve important artists composed the designs for tapestries,
yet the mind of Lebrun is seen to dominate all; his genius was their
inspiration. It was he whose influence pervaded the decorative art of
the day. More than any others in that grand age he influenced the
tone of the artistic work. We may say it was the king, we may have
styles named for the king, but it was Lebrun who made them what they
were. The spirit of the time was there, monarch and man made that, but
it was Lebrun who had the talent to express it in art. It was a time
when France was fully awake, more fully awake than Italy who had, in
fact, commenced the somnolence of her art; she was strong with that
brutal force that is recently up from savagery, and she took her
grandeur seriously.
At least that was the attitude of the king. No lightness, no
effervescing cynical humour ever disturbed the heavy splendour of his
pose. And this grand pose of the king, Lebrun expressed in the heavy
sumptuousness of decoration. The tapestries of that time show the mood
of the day in subject, in border and in colour. All is superb,
grandiose.
Rubens, although not of France, dominated Europe with his magnificence
of style, a style suited to the time, expressing force rather than
refinement, yet with a splendid decorative value in the art we are
considering. Flanders looked to him for inspiration, and his lead was
everywhere followed. His virile work had power to inspire, to transmit
enthusiasm to others, and thus he was responsible for much of the
improvement in decorative art, the re-establishment of that art upon
an intellectual basis. Designs from his hands were full, splendid and
self-assertive; harmony and proportion were there. A study of the
_Antony and Cleopatra_ series and of the plates given in this volume
will establish and verify this.
[Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]
[Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]
Lebrun's century was the same as that of Rubens, but the former had
the fine feeling for art of the Latin, who knows that its first
province is to please. A comparison between the two men must not be
carried too far, for Rubens was essentially a painter, attacking the
field of decoration only with the overflow of imagination, while
Lebrun's life and talent were wholly directed in the way of
beautifying palaces and chateaux. Yet Rubens' work gave a fresh
impulse to tapestry weaving in Brussels while Lebrun was inspiring it
in France.
Lebrun had, then, to direct the talent and the labour of an army of
artists and artisans, and to keep them working in harmony. It was no
mean task, for one artist alone was not left to compose an entire
picture, but each was taken for his specialty. One artist drew the
figures, another the animals, another the trees, and another the
architecture; but it was the director, Lebrun, who composed and
harmonised the whole. Thus, although the number of tapestries actually
composed by him is few, it was his great mind that ordered the work of
others. He was the leader of the orchestra, the others were the
instruments he controlled.
It was while at Vaux that Lebrun had more time for his own
composition. He there produced a series called _Les Renommes_,
masterpieces of pure decorative composition. These were designed as
portieres for the Chateau of Maincy. They came to be models for the
Gobelins, and were woven to hang at royal doors, the doors of Foucquet
being at this time dressed with iron bars.
The Gobelins wove seventy-two sets after this beautiful model which
had made Lebrun's debut as an artist. Foucquet had given him a more
pretentious work; it was to complete a suite, the _History of
Constantine_, after Raphael. Rubens had given a fresh flush of
popularity to this subject, which again became the mode. The _History
of Meleager_ was begun at Vaux and finished at the Gobelins. Later,
Vaux forgotten, or at least a thing of the past, Lebrun's decorative
genius found expression in the series called _The Months_ or _The
Royal Residences_, of which there were twelve hangings.
In these last the scheme is the perfection of decoration, with the
subject well subdued, yet so subtly placed that notwithstanding its
modesty, the eye promptly seeks it. The castle in the distance, the
motive holding aloft the sign of the Zodiac, are seen even before the
splendid columns and the foliage of the middle-ground.
Such a hanging has power to play pretty tricks with the imagination of
him who gazes upon it. The columns, smooth and solid, declare him at
once to be in a place of luxury. Beyond the foreground's columns, but
near enough for touching, are trees to make a pleasant shade, and
beyond, in the far distance, is the chateau set in fair gardens, even
the chateau where the lovely Louise de la Valliere held her court
until conscience drove her to the convent.
The set of most renown, woven under Lebrun's generalship, was that
splendid advertisement of the king's magnificence known as the
_History of the King_. Louis demanded above all else that he should
appear splendidly before men. He was jealous of the magnificence of
all kings and emperors, whether living or dead. Even Solomon's
glory was not to typify greater than his. With this end in view, pomp
was his pleasure, ceremony was his gratification. Add to these an
insatiable vanity that knows not the disintegrating assaults of a
sense of humour, and we have a man to be fed on profound adulation.
[Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. DESIGN BY RUBENS
Royal Collection, Madrid]
The subjects for the _History of the King_ were chosen from official
solemnities during the first twelve years of his reign. Lebrun's task,
into which he threw his whole soul, was to celebrate the power and the
glory of his master, to show the king in perpetual picture as the
greatest living personage, and to still his fears with regard to long
defunct royal rivals. His life as a man was pictured, his marriage,
his treaties with other nations, and his actions as a soldier in the
various battles or military conquests. In the latter affairs he had
not even been present, but poet's license was given where the
glorification of the king was concerned. The flattery that surrounds a
king thus gave him reason to think that his persecutions in the
Palatinate and his constant warfare were greatly to his glory.
It is the tapestry in this set that is called _Visit of Louis XIV to
the Gobelins_ that interests us strongly, as being delightfully
pertinent to our subject. The picture shows the king in chary
indulgence standing just within the court of the Royal Factory, while
eager masters of arts and crafts strenuously heap before him their
masterpieces. (Plate facing page 114.)
The borders of these sumptuous hangings are to be enjoyed when the
original set can be seen, for the borders are Lebrun's special care.
The three pieces added late in the reign are drawn with different
borders, and no stronger example of deteriorating change can be given,
the change in the composition of the border which took place after the
passing of Lebrun. The pieces in the set of the _Life of the King_
numbered forty; with the addition of the later ones, forty-three. They
were repeated many times in the succeeding years, but on low-warp,
reduced in size, and without the superb decorative border which was
composed by Lebrun's own hand for the original series.
Francois de la Meulen was Lebrun's able coadjutor in the direction of
this famous set. Eight artists accustomed to the work were charged
with the cartoons, but Lebrun headed it all. It is interesting to note
that the temptation to sport in the fields of pure decoration, led him
into the personal composition of the border. These borders are the
very acme of perfection in decoration, full of strength, of grace, and
of purity. They suggest the classic, yet are full of the warm blood of
the hour; they are Greek, yet they are French, and they foreshadow the
centuries of beautiful design which France supplies to the world.
The colouring of these tapestries seems to us strong, but it is not a
strength of tone that offends, rather it adds force to the subject. The
charge is made that in this suite the deplorable change had taken place
which lifted tapestries from their original intent and made of them
paintings in wool. That change certainly did come later, as we shall
see and deplore, but at present the colours kept comparatively low
in number. The proof of this was that only seventy-nine tones were
discoverable when the Gobelins factory in recent years examined this
hanging for the purposes of reproducing it.
[Illustration: LOUIS XIV VISITING THE GOBELINS FACTORY
Gobelins Tapestry, Epoch Louis XIV]
Lebrun's task in this series seems to us far more simple in point of
picturesqueness than it did to him, for the affairs of the time were
those depicted. They were the events of the moment, and the personages
taking part in them were given in recognisable portraiture. Figure a
tapestry of to-day depicting the laying of a cornerstone by our
National President, every one in modern dress, every face a portrait,
and Lebrun's task appears in a new light. Yet he was able to
accomplish it in a way which gratified the overfed vanity of Louis and
which more than gratifies the art lover of to-day.
The set called the _History of Alexander_ is one of Lebrun's famous
works. In subject it departs from the affairs of the time of the Sun
King, to portray the Greek Conqueror, to whom Louis liked to be
compared. For us the classic dress is less piquant than the gorgeous
toilettes of France in the Seventeenth Century, and the battle of the
Granicus is less engaging than scenes from the life of Louis XIV. But
this is a famous set, and paintings of the same may be found in the
Louvre.
Originally the tapestries were but five, but the larger ones having
been divided into three each, the number is increased. The Gobelins
factory wove several sets, and, the model becoming popular, it was
copied many times in Brussels and elsewhere, often with distressing
alterations in drawing, in border, and in colour.
There were other suites produced at the Gobelins at this wonderful
time of co-operation between Colbert, the minister, and Lebrun, the
artist. Colbert, in his wisdom of state economy, had repaired the
ravages of the previous ministry, and had the coffers full for the
government's necessities and the king's indulgences. Well for the
liberal arts, that he counted these among the matters to be fostered
in this wonderful time, which rises like a mountain ridge between
feudal savagery and modern civilisation.
But Colbert, powerful as was his position, had yet to suffer by reason
of the despotism of the absolute monarch who ruled every one within
borders of bleeding France. Louis began, before youth had left him,
the terrible persecution of the people in the name of religion, and
established also an indulgent left-hand court. The prodigious
expenditures for these were bound to be liquidated by Colbert.
Faithful to his master, he produced the money.
The charm of royalty surrounded Louis, he was idealised by a people
proud of his position as the most magnificent monarch of Europe; but
Colbert was denounced as a tax collector and a persecutor, yet
suffered in silence, if he might protect his king. Before he died,
Louvois had undermined his credit even with the king, and his funeral
at night, to avoid a mob, was a pathetic fact. France has now
reinstated him, say modern men--but that is the irony of fate.
CHAPTER XI
THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)
Colbert died most inopportunely in 1684 and was succeeded by his
enemy, and for that matter, the enemy of France, the man of jealousy
and cruelty, Louvois. He had long hated Colbert for his success,
counting as an affront to himself Colbert's marvellous establishment
of a navy which he felt rivalled in importance the army, over which
the direction was his own.
On finding Colbert's baton in his hand, it was but human to strike
with it as much as to direct, and one of his blows fell upon the head
of the Gobelins, Lebrun. Thus history is woven into tapestry. Lebrun
was not at once deposed; first his magnificent wings were clipped, so
that his flights into artistic originality were curtailed. This petty
persecution had a benumbing effect. New models were not encouraged.
Strangely enough, the scenes that glorified the king were no longer
reproduced, nor those of antique kings like Alexander, whose greatness
Louis was supposed to rival.
It is not possible to tell the story of tapestry without telling the
story of the times, for the lesser acts are but the result of the
greater. There are matters in the life of Louis XIV that are
inseparable from our account. These are the associating of his life
with that of the three women whom he exalted far higher than his
queen, Marie Therese, the well-known, much-vaunted mesdames, de la
Valliere, de Montespan and de Maintenon.
Even before the death of Colbert, Louvois, with his army, had
encouraged the religious persecutions and wars of the king, and
shortly after, the widow of the poet Scarron became the royal spouse.
Relentless, indeed, were the persecutions then. It was in the same
year of the marriage that Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, through
the hand of the weak Le Tellier, an action which gave Louvois ample
excuse for depleting the state coffers. Making military expense an
excuse, he turned his blighting hand toward
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