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Title: The Tapestry Book
Author: Candee, Helen Churchill Hungerford, Mrs., 1861-1949
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 BAILLÉE 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. Musée de Cluny, Paris
THE LADY AND THE UNICORN 45
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musée 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 CÆSAR 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.
Château Henri Quatre, Pau
CHILDREN GARDENING 102
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century.
Château Henri Quatre, Pau
GOBELINS GROTESQUE 103
Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV 104
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York
THE VILLAGE FÊTE 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) CRAMOISÉE. STYLE LOUIS XV 137
HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS 146
Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent
HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTRÉES 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 naïve 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 château
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'être_ 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 _fêtes champêtres_ at lovely châteaux. 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 mediæval 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 Cæsar, 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 Müntz, "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 naïve 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 Müntz, "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
cortége 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 château 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 Comité 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 _prés salés_ 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 Liége, 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 cortége, 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 Téméraire--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 naïveté 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 à
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 château to château, 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 Très 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
château 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 Baillée 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 BAILLÉE 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. Musée de Cluny, Paris]
[Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musée 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 façades and
bridges in fêtes.
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 naïve 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 Liége, the battles of which conflict were
perpetuated in tapestries. Let us trust that no Liégois 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 fêtes 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
Téméraire 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 naïve 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 naïveté 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 Mediæval 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, Liége 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 Téméraire (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 façade
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 CÆSAR
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 rôle 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 æsthetics, 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 naïvely 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
protégés, 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 mediæval 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. Müntz, "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 châteaux 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'Étampes--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 Hôpital de la Trinité, 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 Trinité 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 Trinité
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
Trinité, 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 Trinité 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, François 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 Sevigné 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 Trinité, 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 Lefèvre 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. Château 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 château 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 fête 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 fête as could
scarce be surpassed even in those days of artistic fêtes champêtres.
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 château.
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. Molière 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 _café
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 Sevigné 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 château, 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 fête 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 fête champêtre 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 château 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 Sevigné 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. Château Henri
Quatre, Pau]
[Illustration: GOBELINS GROTESQUE
Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris]
With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Château 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
Zègre, 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 Château 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 FÊTE
Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers]
FOOTNOTES:
[14] For the facts here cited see E. Müntz, "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 château. 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
Bièvre. 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 Bièvre, 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
Bièvre, 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 François de la Planche, Flemish tapestry
weavers, installed their ateliers on the banks of the Bièvre."
"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 châteaux, 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 Trinité, 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 châteaux. 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 Renommés_,
masterpieces of pure decorative composition. These were designed as
portières for the Château 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 début 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 château set in fair gardens, even
the château where the lovely Louise de la Vallière 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.
François 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 Thérèse, the well-known, much-vaunted mesdames, de la
Vallière, 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 the Gobelins and
restricted the director, Lebrun, even to denying him the golden
threads so necessary for the production of the sumptuous tapestries.
And so for a time the productions of the looms lacked their accustomed
elegance. Under Madame de Maintenon, the spirit of a morose religion
pervaded the court. All France was suffering under it, and in its name
unbelievable horrors were perpetrated in every province. Paris was not
too well informed of these to interfere with bourgeois life, but at
court the hypocritical soul of Madame de Maintenon made
self-righteousness a virtue.
An almost laughable result of this pious rectitude was a certain order
given at the Gobelins. Madame de Maintenon had thrust her leading nose
between the doors of the factory and had scented outraged modesty in
the reproduction there of the tapestries woven from models of Raphael,
Giulio Romano and the classicists, cartoons in great favour after the
hampering of Lebrun's imagination. The naked gods from Olympus must
be clothed, said this pious and modest lady.
This was very well for her rôle, as her influence over the king lay
deep-rooted in her pose of heavy virtue; but at the Gobelins, the
tapestry-makers must have laughed long and loud at the prudery which
they were set to further by actually weaving pictured garments and
setting them into the hangings where the lithe limbs of Apollo, and
Venus' lovely curves, had been cut away. The hanging called _The
Judgment of Paris_ is one of those altered to suit the refinement of
the times.
Louvois' dominance lasted as long as Lebrun, so the genius of the
latter never reasserted itself in the factory. Two methods of supply
for designs came in vogue, and mark the time. One was to turn to the
old masters of Italy's high Renaissance for drawings. This brought a
quantity of drawings of fables and myths into use, so that palace
walls were decorated with Greek gods instead of modern ones. Raphael,
as a master in decoration, was carefully copied, also other men of his
school. The second source of cartoons was chosen by Louvois, who
searched among previous works for the most celebrated tapestries and
had them copied without change.
Thus came the Gobelins to reproduce hangings that had not originated
in their ateliers. All this traces the change that came from the
clipping of Lebrun's wings of genius. Identification marks they are,
when old tapestries come our way.
Pierre Mignard succeeded Lebrun as director of the Gobelins after the
death of the greatest genius of decoration in modern times. Lebrun
had seen such prosperity of tapestry weaving that eight hundred
workers had scarcely been enough to supply the tapestries ordered.
When Mignard came for his five years of direction, things had mightily
changed, and he did nothing to revive or encourage the work. He owed
his appointment entirely to Louvois, whose protégé he had long been.
The same year, 1691, saw the death of them both.
Until 1688 the factory was at its best time of productiveness,
reaching the perfection of modern drawing in its cartoons, and, in its
weaving, equalling the manner of Brussels in the early Sixteenth
Century.
From then on began the decline, for the reasons so forcibly written on
pages of history. The French king's ambition to conquer, his
animosity--jealousy, if you will--toward Holland, his unceasing
conflict with England, added to his fierce attacks on religionists,
especially in the Palatinate--all these things required the most
stupendous expenditures. The Mississippi was now discovered, the
English colonists were in conflict with the French, here in America,
and the New World was becoming too desirable a possession for Louis to
be willing to cede his share without a struggle; and thus came the
expense of fighting the English in that far land which was at least
thirty days' sail away.
Perhaps Mignard worked against odds too great for even a strong
director. Such drains on the state treasury as were made by the
self-indulgent court, and by the political necessities, demanded not
only depriving the Gobelins of proper expensive materials, but in the
department of furniture and ornaments, demanded also the establishment
of a sinister melting pot, a hungry mouth that devoured the precious
metals already made more precious by the artistic hands of the
gold-working artists.
Mignard's futile work was finished by his demise in 1695. Such was
then the pitiable conditions at the Gobelins that it was not
considered worth while to fill his place. Thus ended the first period
of that beautiful conception, art sustained by the state, artists
relieved from all care except that of expressing beauty.
The ateliers were closed; the weavers had to seek other means of
gaining their living. The busy Gobelins, a very Paradise of workers,
an establishment which felt itself the pride of Paris and the pet of
the king, full of merry apprentices and able masters, this happy
solidarity fell under neglect. The courtyards were lonely; the Bièvre
rippled by unused; the buildings were silent and deserted. Some of the
workers were happy enough to be taken in at Beauvais, some returned to
Flanders, but many were at the miserable necessity of dropping their
loved professions and of joining the royal troops, for which the
relentless ambition of the king had such large and terrible use.
The time when the factory remained inactive were the dolorous years
from 1694 to 1697. It was in the latter year that peace was signed in
the Holland town of Ryswick, which ended at least one of Louis' bloody
oppressions, the fierce attacks in the Palatinate.
The place of Colbert was never filled, so far as the Gobelins was
concerned. Louvois had not its interests in his hard hands, nor had
his immediate followers in state administrations up to 1708, which
included Mansard (of the roofs) and the flippity courtesan, the Duc
d'Antin. But power was later given to Jules Robert de Cotte to raise
the fallen Gobelins by his own wise direction, assisted by his
father's political co-operation (1699-1735). Once again can we smile
in thinking of the factory where the wares of beauty were produced. Of
course, the artists flocked to the centre, eager to express
themselves. The one most interesting to us was Claude Audran. Others
there were who contributed adorable designs and helped build up the
most exquisite expressions of modern art, but, alas, their modesty was
such that their names are scarce known in connexion with the art they
vivified.
The aged Louis was ending his forceful reign in increasing weakness,
deserted at the finish by all but the rigid de Maintenon; and
four-year-old Louis, the grandson of the Grand Dauphin, was succeeding
under the direction of the Regent of Orleans. New monarchs, new
styles, the rule was; for the newly-crowned must have his waves of
flattery curling about the foot of the throne. Louis XIV, the Grand
Monarque, lived to his pose of heavy magnificence even in the
furnishing and decorating of the apartments where he ruled as king and
where he lived as man. Sumptuous splendour, expressed in heavy design,
in deep colouring, with much red and gold, these were the order of the
day, and best expressed the reign.
But with Philip as regent, and the young king but a baby, a gayer mood
must creep into the articles of beauty with which man self-indulgently
decorates his surroundings. Pomp of a heavy sort had no place in the
regent's heart. He saw life lightly, and liked to foster the belief
that a man might make of it a pretty play.
Thus, given so good excuse for a new school of decoration, Claude
Audran snatched up his talented brush and put down his dainty
inspirations with unfaltering delicacy of touch. He wrote upon his
canvas poems in life, symphonies in colour, created a whole world of
tasteful fancy, a world whose entire intent was to please. He left the
heavy ways of pomp and revelled in a world where roses bloom and
ribbons flutter, where clouds are strong to support the svelte deity
upon them, and where the rudest architecture is but an airy trellis.
The classic, the Greek, he never forgot. It was ever his inspiration,
his alphabet with which he wrote the spirit of his composition, but it
was a classic thought played upon with the most talented of
variations. Pure Greek was too cold and chaste for the temper of the
time in which he lived and worked and of which he was the creature;
and so his classic foundation was graced with curves, with colour,
with artful abandon, and all the charming fripperies of one of the
most exquisite periods of decoration. Gods and goddesses were a
necessary part of such compositions, and a continual playing among
amorini, but such deities lived not upon Olympus, nor anywhere outside
France of the Eighteenth Century. The heavy human forms made popular
by the inflation of the Seventeenth Century were banished to some dark
haven reserved for by-gone modes, and these new gods were exquisite
as fairies while voluptuous as courtesans. They were all caught young
and set, while still adolescent and slender, in suitable niches of
delicate surroundings.
The talent of Audran, not content with figures alone, was lavishly
expended on those ingenious decorative designs which formed the frame
and setting of the figures, the airy world in which they lived and in
the borders that confined the whole.
Only a study of tapestries or their photographs can show the radical
depth of the change from the styles prevailing under the influence of
Madame de Maintenon to those produced by Audran and his school under
the regence. The difference in character of the two dominations is the
very evident cause. It is as though the severe moral pose of de
Maintenon had suppressed a whole Pandora's box of loves and graces
who, when the lid was lifted by the Regent, flew, a happy crew, to fix
themselves in dainty decorative effect, trailing with them their
complement of accessory flowers, butterflies, clouds and tempered
grotesques.
Philippe d'Orleans, under the influence of the corrupt cleverness of
Cardinal du Bois, celebrated the few years of his regency by
bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the
time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by
returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's
mate--with war as the natural result of that insult.
But he also let artists have their way, and the style that they
supplied him, shows a talented invention unsurpassed. Audran we will
place at the top, but only to fix a name, for there was a whole army
of men composing the tapestry designs that so delighted the people of
those days and that have gone on thrilling their beholders for two
hundred years, and which distinguish French designs from all
others--which give them that indefinable quality of grace and softness
that we denominate French. Wizards in design were the artists who
developed it and those who continue it in our own times.
CHAPTER XII
THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)
Audran had in his studio André Watteau, whose very name spells
sophisticated pastorals of exceeding loveliness. Watteau worked with
Audran when he was producing his most inspired set of tapestry, on
which we must dwell for a bit for pure pleasure. This set is called
the _Portières des Dieux_.
That they were portières, only door-hangings, is a fact too important
to be slipped by. It denotes one of the greatest changes in tapestries
when the size of a hanging comes down from twenty or thirty feet to
the dimensions of a doorway. It speaks a great change in interiors,
and sets tapestries on a new plane. Later on, they are still further
diminished. But the sadness of noting this change is routed by the
thrills of pleasure given by the exquisite design, colour and weave.
The _Portières of the Gods_ was, then, a series of eight small
hangings, four typifying the seasons and four the elements, with an
appropriate Olympian forming the central point of interest and the
excuse for an entourage of thrilling and graceful versatility. This
set has been copied so many times that even the most expert must fail
in trying to identify the date of reproduction. Two hundred and thirty
times this set is known to have been reproduced, and such talented
weavers were given the task as Jans and Lefebvre.
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XV]
In this exquisite period, which might be called the adolescence of
the style Louis XV, Audran and his collaborators produced another
marvellous and inspired set of portières. These were executed for the
Grand Dauphin, to decorate his room in the château at Meudon, and were
called the _Grotesque Months in Bands_. The most self-sufficient of
pens would falter at a description of design so exquisite, which is
arranged in three panels with a deity in each, a composition of
extraordinary grace above and below them, and a bordering band of
losenge or diaper, on which is set the royal double L and the
significant dolphin who gave his name to kings' sons. The exquisite
art of Audran and of the regence cannot be better seen than in this
set of tapestries which was woven but once at the royal factory,
although repeated many times elsewhere with the border altered,
Audran's being too personal for other chambers than that of the prince
for whom it was composed. Recently copies have been made without
border.
The name of the artist, Charles Coypel, must not be overlooked, for it
was he who composed the celebrated suite of _Don Quixote_.
Twenty-eight pieces composed the series, and they were drawn with that
exquisite combination of romantic scenes and fields of pure decorative
design that characterised the charm of the regence. In the centre of
each piece (small pieces compared to those of Louis XIV) was a scene
like a painting representing an incident from the adventure of the
humorously pathetic Spanish wanderer; and this was surrounded with so
much of refined decoration as to make it appear but a medallion on
the whole surface. This set was so important as to be repeated many
times and occupied the factory of the Gobelins from 1718 to 1794.
Charles Coypel was but twenty when he composed the first design for
this suite. Each year thereafter he added a new design, not supplying
the last one until 1751. But, while all honour is due Coypel, Audran
and Le Maire and their collaborators must be remembered as having
composed the borders, the pure decorative work which expresses the
tender style of transition, the suggestive period of early spring that
later matured into the fulsome Rococo. America is enriched by five of
these exquisite pieces through Mr. Morgan's recent purchase.
But while artists were producing purity in art, those in political
power were, with ever-increasing effect, plunging morals into the mud.
Philippe, the Regent, died, the corrupt Duke of Bourbon took the place
of minister, and poor Louis XV was still but thirteen years old, and
unavoidably influenced by the lives of those around him. Even the
Gobelins was under the hand of the shallow Duke d'Antin. Yet even when
the king matured and became himself a power for corruption, the
artists of the Gobelins reflected only beauty and light. It is to
their credit.
It is an ungrateful task to pick flaws with a period so firmly
enthroned in the affections as that of the regence and the early years
of the reign of Louis XV. The beauties of its pure decoration lead us
into Elysian fields that are but reluctantly left behind. But the
designs and tapestry weavers of that time left us two distinct
classes of production, and to be learned in such matters, the amateur
contemplates both. This second style is ungrateful because it trains
us away from art, delicate and ingenious, and plants us before
enormous woven paintings.
Now it never had been the intention of tapestry to replace painting.
Whenever it leaned that way a deterioration was evident. It was by the
lure of this fallacy that Brussels lost her pre-eminence. It was
through this that the number of tones was increased from the twenty or
more of Arras to the twenty thousand of the Gobelins. It was through
this that the true mission of tapestry was lost, which was the mission
of supplying a soft, undulating lining to the habitat of man, and
flashes of colour for his pageants.
Under Louis XIV the pictures came thick and fast, as we have seen, but
in deep-toned, simple colour-scheme. Now, with the De Cottes as
directors at the Gobelins, and with a new reign begun, more pictures
were called for.
The splendid _History of the King_ of Louis XIV could not be
forgotten; the history of his successor must be similarly represented,
and what could this be but a series of woven paintings. The flower of
the time was an exquisitely complicated decoration on a small scale.
The larger expression was not spontaneous.
Louis XV, poor boy, was not old enough to have had many events outside
the nursery, so it took imagination--perhaps that of the elegant
profligate, Duke d'Antin--to suggest an occasion of appropriate
splendour and significance. The official reception of the Turkish
ambassador in 1721 was the subject chosen, and under the direction of
Charles Parrocel became a superb work, full of court magnificence of
the day and a valuable portrayal to us of the boyhood of the king.
The same type of big picture was continued in the series of _Hunts of
Louis XV_, lovely forest scenes wherein much unsportsmanlike elegance
displays itself in the persons of noble courtiers. The Duc d'Antin
favoured these and they were reproduced until 1745.
It is probable that the Bible fell into neglect in those days, too
heavy a volume for pointed, perfumed fingers accustomed to no books at
all. Bossuet, Voltaire, were they not obliged to set to the sonorous
music of their voices the reforming and satirical attacks on manners
and morals of the aristocrats at a time when books lay all unread? But
at the Gobelins ateliers the Bible, wiped clean of dust, was much
consulted for inspiration in cartoons. Charles Coypel dipped into the
Old Testament, and Jouvenet into the New, with the result of several
suites of tapestries of great elegance--all of which might much better
have been painted on canvas and framed.
Charles Coypel, the talented member of a talented family of painters,
also made popular the heroine _Armide_, who seemed almost to come of
the Bible, since Tasso had set her in his Christian _Jerusalem
Delivered_. The seductive palace and entrancing gardens where Renaud
was kept a prisoner, gave opportunity for fine drawing in this set.
[Illustration: HUNTS OF LOUIS XV
Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry]
[Illustration: ESTHER AND AHASUERUS SERIES
Gobelins, about 1730. Cartoon by J. F. de Troy; G. Audran, weaver]
The Iliad of Homer came in for its share of consideration at the hands
of Antoine and Charles Coypel, who made of it a set of five scenes. It
was Romanelli, the Italian, who painted a similar set, a hundred
years before, for Cardinal Barberini, which set came to America in the
Ffoulke collection. After the death, in 1730, of the Duke d'Antin,
that interesting son of Madame de Montespan, several directors had the
management of the Gobelins in hand, the Count of Vignory and the Count
of Angivillier being the most important prior to the Revolution. These
were men who held the purse-strings of the state, and could thereby
foster or crush a state institution, but the direction of the Gobelins
itself, as a factory, was in the hands of architects, beginning with
the able De Cotte. As the factory had many ateliers, these were each
directed by painters, among whom appear such interesting men of talent
as Oudry, Boucher, Hallé.
Although d'Antin was dead when it commenced, he is accredited with
having inspired and ordered the important hanging known as the
_History of Esther_. (Plate facing page 131.) The first piece, from
cartoons by Jean François de Troy, was sent to the weavers in 1737,
and the last piece, which was painted in Rome, was finished in 1742.
This set shows as ably as any can, the magnificent style of production
of the period. It had from the beginning an immense popularity and was
copied many times. Even now it is a favourite subject for those whose
perverted taste leads them into the dubious art of copying tapestry in
paints on cloth.
The serious accusation against this set, which in composition seems
much like the tableaux in grand opera, is that it invades the art of
painting. And that is the fault of woven art at that period. The
decline in tapestry in Paris began when both weavers and painters
struggled for the same results, the weavers quite forgetting the
strength and beauty that were peculiar to their art alone.
This fault cannot be laid to the weavers only, who numbered such men
as Neilson the able Scot, and Cozette, who, with wondrous touch, wove
the set of _Don Quixote_; nor were the artists at fault, for they
included such men as Audran and Boucher. No, it was the director who
blighted and subverted talent, and the vitiated public taste that
shifted restlessly and demanded novelty. The novelty that came in
large hangings was a suppressing of the delicate subjects that delight
the imagination by their playful grace, their association of human
life with all that is gaily exquisite. The mode was for leaving the
land of idealised mythology, for discarding the flowers, the scrolls,
the happy loves and charming crew that lived among them, and for
plunging into Roman history, real and ugly, enwrapped in drapings too
full, cumbered with forced accessory, or into such mythology as is
represented in _Cupid and Psyche_. (Plate facing page 132.)
The _History of Esther_ illustrates the loss of imagination sustained
by the border which had come to be a mere woven imitation, in shades
of brown and yellow, of a carved and gilded, wooden frame. At the
close of the reign of Louis XV, borders were frankly abandoned
altogether. Compare this state of things with the days when Audran and
Coypel were producing the sets of _The Seasons_, _The Months_, and
_Don Quixote_. It is aridness compared to talented invention.
[Illustration: CUPID AND PSYCHE
Gobelins Tapestry. Eighteenth Century. Design by Coypel]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE OF RUSSIA
Gobelins under Louis XVI.]
The top note of the imitation of painting was struck when the Gobelins
set the task of becoming a portrait maker. (Plate facing page 133.)
The work was done, it was bound to be, as royalty backed the demand.
Portraits were woven of Louis XV (to be seen now at Versailles), and
his queen, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and others less well
known. A better scheme for limiting the talent of the weaver could not
have been suggested by his most ingenious enemy. He was a man of
talent or his art had not reached so high, and as such must be
untrammelled; but here was given him a work where personal discretion
was not allowed, where he must copy tone for tone, shade by shade, the
myriad indefinite blendings of the brush.
It is this practice, pursued to its end, that has made of the tapestry
weaver a mere part of a machine, and tapestry-making a lost art, to
remain in obscurity until weavers return to the time before the French
decadence.
The temper of those who hold in their hands the direction of the
people, these are the determining causes of the products of that age.
If d'Angivillier was responsible for displacing a transcendent art
with a false one, if he routed a dainty mythology and its accessories
with the heavy effort and paraphernalia of the Romans, on whom shall
we place the entirely supportable responsibility of diminishing
tapestries from noble draperies down to mere furniture coverings?
The result came happily, with much fluttering of fans, dropping of
handkerchiefs, with powder, patches, intrigues, naughty sports, and a
general necessity for a gay company to divide itself into groups of
four or two--a lady and a cavalier, forsooth--the inevitable man and
maid. In the time of the preceding king, Louis XIV, the court lived in
masses. Life was a pageant, a grand one, moving in slow dignity of
gorgeous crowds, but a pageant on which beat the fierce light of a
throne jealous of its grandeur. No chance was here for sweet escape
and no chance for light communing.
But all that saw a change. The needs of the lighter court and the
lighter people, were for reminders that life is a merry dance in which
partners change often, and sitting-out a figure with one of them is
part of the game.
Perhaps the huge apartments were not to the taste of Regent Philippe,
and certainly they were not convenient to the life of the king when he
came to man's estate. So, down came the ceiling's height, and closer
drew the walls, until the model of the Petit Trianon was reached and
considered the ideal--if that were not indeed the miniature Swiss
Cottage.
What place had an acre of tapestry in these little rooms? How could
yards of undulating colour hang over walls that were already overlaid
with the most exquisite low relief in wood that has ever been carved
this side of the Renaissance in Italy? No place for it whatever. So,
out with it--the fashions have changed.
But there was the furniture. That, too, was smaller than hitherto. But
this was the day of artists skilled in small design, and they must
fill the need.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)
And so it came about that tapestry fell from the walls, shrunk like a
pricked balloon and landed in miniature on chairs, sofas and screens.
How felt the artists about this domesticating of their art? We are not
told of the wry face they made when, with ideals in their souls, they
were set to compose chair-seats for the Pompadour. Her preference was
for Boucher. Perhaps his revenge showed itself by treating the
bourgeoise courtisane to a bit of coarseness now and then, slyly hid
in dainties.
The artist, Louis Tessier, appeased himself by composing for furniture
a design of simple bouquets of flowers thrown on a damask background;
but, with such surety of hand, such elegance, are these ornaments
designed and composed, that he who but runs past them must feel the
power of their exquisite beauty.
In this manufacture of small pieces the Gobelins factory unhappily put
itself on the same footing as Beauvais and much confusion of the
products has since resulted. The dignity of the art was lowered when
the size and purpose of tapestries were reduced to mere furniture
coverings. The age of Louis XV, looked at decoratively, was an age of
miniature, and the reign that followed was the same. When small
chambers came into vogue, furniture diminished to suit them, and not
only were walls too small for tapestries to hang on, but chairs, sofas
and screens offered less space than ever before for woven designs, now
preciously fine in quality and minutiæ.
Tapestry weaving now entered the region of fancy-work for the
drawing-room's idle hour, and we see even the king himself, lounging
idly among his favourite companions, working at a tiny loom, his
latest pretty toy. Compare this trifling with the attitude of Henri IV
and Louis XIV toward tapestry weaving, and we have the situation in a
nutshell.
Louis XV passed from the scene, likewise the charming bits of
immorality who danced through his reign. However much we may
disapprove their manner of life, we are ever glad that their taste
sanctioned--more than that--urged, the production of a decorative
style almost unsurpassed. To the artists belong the glory, but times
were such that an artist must die of suppression if those in power
refuse to patronise his art. So we are glad that Antoinette Poisson
appreciated art, and that Jeanne Verbernier made of it a serious
consideration, for, what was liked by La Pompadour and Du Barry must
needs be favoured by the king.
When Louis XVI came to the throne, the return to antiquity for
inspiration had already begun, but did not fully develop until later
on, when David became court painter under Napoleon. Yet the tonic note
of decoration was classic. Designs were still small and details were
from Greek inspiration. As tapestries were still but furniture
coverings, this was not to be regretted, for nothing could be
better suited to small spaces, nor could drawing be more exquisitely
pure and chaste than when copied from Greek detail.
[Illustration: CHAIR OF TAPESTRY. STYLE OF LOUIS XV]
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY (DETAIL) CRAMOISÉE. STYLE LOUIS XV]
Count d'Angivillier kept the Gobelins factory from all originality,
sanctioned only the small wares for original work, and forced a
slavish copying of paintings for the larger pieces. It is not deniable
that some beautiful hangings were produced, but the sad result is that
pieces of so many tones lose in value year by year, through the
gentle, inexorable touch of time; and, more deplorable yet, the
ambition and the originality of the master-weavers was deprived of its
very life-blood, and in time was utterly atrophied.
In the time of Louis XVI, when Marie Antoinette was in the flower of
her inconsiderate elegance, the note of the day was for art to be
small, but perfect; the worth of a work of art was determined by its
size--in inverse ratio. It was a time lively and intellectual and
frivolous, and its art was the reflection of its desire for
concentrated completeness.
In the reign of Louis XVI ripened, not the art of Louis XIV, but the
political situation whose seeds he had planted. The idea of revolution
which started in the little-considered American colonies, took hold of
the thinkers of France, even to the king of little power. But instead
of being a theory of remedy for important men to discuss, it acted as
a fire-brand thrown among the inflammable, long-oppressed Third
Estate--with results deplorable to the art which occupies our
attention.
The Gobelins was already suffering at the début of the Revolution.
Its management had been relegated to men more or less incapable; its
art standards had been forced lower and lower. Added to that its
operatives were engaged at lessened rates and often had to whistle for
their pay at that. The contractors asked for nothing better than to be
engaged as masters of ateliers at fixed rates.
Then came the full force of the Revolution with such deplorable and
tragic results for the Gobelins. In the madness of the time the
workers here were not exempt from the terrible call of Robespierre.
The almoner of the factory was arrested, and at the end of two months
not even a record existed of his execution, which took place among the
daily feasts of La Guillotine. A high-warp weaver named Mangelschot
met the same fate. Jean Audran, once contractor for high-warp, then
placed at the head of the factory, was arrested, but escaped with
imprisonment only.
During his absence he was replaced as head by Augustin Belle, whose
respect for the Republic and for his head made him curry favour with
the mob in a manner most deplorable. He caused the destruction by fire
of many and many a superb tapestry at the Gobelins, giving as his
reason that they contained emblems of royalty, reminders of the hated
race of kings. The amateur can almost weep in thinking of this
ruthless waste of beauty.
It was a celebrated bonfire that was built in the courtyard of the
Gobelins when, by order of the Committee on Selection, all things
offensive to an over-sensitive republican irritability were heaped for
the holocaust. As the Gobelins was instituted by a king, patronised by
kings, its works made in the main for palaces and pageants after the
taste of kings, it was only too easy to find tapestries meet for a
fire that had as object the destruction of articles displaying
monarchical power.
During the four horrid years when terror reigned, the workers at the
Gobelins continued under a constant threat of a cessation of work. Not
only was their pay irregular, but it was often given in paper that had
sadly depreciated in value. Then the decision was made to sell certain
valuable tapestries and pay expenses from this source of revenue. But,
alas, in those troublous times, who had heart or purse to acquire
works of art. A whole skin and food to sustain it, were the serious
objects of life.
Under the Directory, funds were scarce in bleeding France, and all
sorts of ways were used to raise them. In the past times when Louis
XIV had by relentless extravagance and wars depleted the purse, he
caused the patiently wrought precious metals to be melted into
bullion. Why not now resort to a similar method? So thought a minister
of one of the Two Chambers, and suggested the burning of certain
tapestries of the royal collection in order that the gold and silver
used in their weaving might be converted into metal.
Sixty pieces, the most superb specimens of a king's collection, were
transported to the court of La Monnaie, and there burned to the last
thread the wondrous work of hundreds of talented artists and artisans.
The very smoke must have rolled out in pictures. The money gained was
considerable, 60,000 livres, showing how richly endowed with metal
threads were these sumptuous hangings. The commission sitting by,
judicial, dispassionate, presided with cold dignity over the
sacrifice, and pronounced it good.
A hundred workers only remained at the Gobelins which had once been a
happy hive of more than eight times that number, and these were
constrained to follow orders most objectionable and restrictive.
Models to copy were chosen by a jury of art, and such were its
prejudices that but little of interest remained. Ancient religious
suites, and royal ones were disapproved. New orders consisted of
portraits. But if we thought it a prostitution of the art to weave
portraits of Louis XV in royal costume, or Marie Antoinette in the
loveliness of her queenly fripperies, what can be said of the low
estate of a factory which must give out a portrait of Marat or
Lepelletier, even though the great David painted the design to be
copied. The hundred men at the Gobelins must have worked but sadly and
desultorily over such scant and distasteful commissioning.
There were works upon the looms when the Commission began inspecting
the works of art to see if they were proper stuff for the newly-made
Republic to nurse upon. In September, 1794, they found and condemned
twelve large pieces on the looms unfinished, and on which work was
immediately suspended. Of three hundred and twenty-one models
examined, which were the property of the factory, one hundred and
twenty were rejected. In fact, only twenty were designated as truly
fit for production, not falling under the epithets "anti-republican,
fanatic or insufficient." The latter description was applied to all
those exquisite fantasies of art that make the periods Louis XV and
Louis XVI a source of transcendent delight to the lover of dainty
intellectual design, and include particularly the work of Boucher.
The mental and moral workings of the commission on art may be tested
by quoting from their own findings on the _Siege of Calais_, a hanging
by Berthélemy, depicting an event of the Fourteenth Century. This is
what the temper of the times induced the Commission--among whom were
artists too--to say: "Subject regarded as contrary to republican
ideas; the pardon accorded to the people of Calais was given by a
tyrant through the tears and supplications of the queen and child of a
despot. Rejected. In consequence the tapestry will be arrested in its
execution."
The models allowed in this benumbing period were those of hunting
scenes, and antique groups such as the _Muses_, or scenes from the
life of Achilles.
A vicious system of pay was added to the vicious system of art
restriction. And so fell the Gobelins, to revive in such small manner
as was accorded it in the Nineteenth Century.
Its great work was done. It had lifted up an art which through
inflation or barrenness Brussels had let train on the ground like a
fallen flag, and it had given to France the glory of acquiring the
highest period of perfection.
To France came the inspiration of gathering the industry under the
paternal care of the government, of relieving it from the exigencies
of private enterprise which must of necessity fluctuate, of keeping
the art in dignified prosperity, and of devoting to its uses the
highest talent of both art and industry.
The Revolution and the Directory both hesitated to kill an institution
that had brought such glory to France, that had placed her above all
the world in tapestry producing. But what deliberate intent did not
accomplish, came near being a fact through scant rations. Operators at
the Gobelins were irregularly paid, and the public purse found onerous
the burden of support.
But with the coming of Napoleon the personal note was struck again. A
man was at the head, a man whose ambition invaded even the field of
decoration. The Emperor would not be in the least degree inferior in
splendour to the most magnificent of the hereditary kings of France.
The Gobelins had been their glory, it should add to his.
Louis David was the painter of the court, he whose head was ever
turned over his shoulder toward ancient Greece and Rome, who not only
preferred that source of inspiration, but who realised the flattery
implied to the Emperor by using the designs of the countries he had
conquered. It was a graceful reminder of the trophies of war.
So David not only painted Josephine as a lady of Pompeii elongated on
a Greek lounge, but he set the classic style for the Gobelins factory
when Napoleon gave to the looms his imperial patronage. It was David
who had found favour with Revolutionary France by his untiring efforts
to produce a style differing fundamentally from the style of kings,
when kings and their ways were unpopular. Technical exactness, with
classic motives, characterises his decorative work for the Gobelins.
The Emperor was hot for throne-room fittings that spoke only of
himself and of the empire he had built. David made the designs,
beautiful, chaste, as his invention ever was, and dotted them with the
inevitable bees and eagles. Percier, the artist, helped with the
painting, but the throne itself was David's and shows his talent in
the floating Victory of the back and the conventionalised wreaths of
the seat. The whole set, important enough to mention, embraced eight
arm chairs and six smaller ones, besides two dozen classic seats of a
kingly pattern, and screens for fire and draughts, all with a red
background on which was woven in gold the pattern of wreaths and
branches of laurel and oak.
The Emperor made the Gobelins his especial care. He committed it to
the discretion of no one, but was himself the director, and allowed no
loom to set up its patterns unsanctioned by his order. Even his
campaigns left this order operative. Is it to his credit as a genius,
or his discredit as a tyrant, that the chiefs of the Gobelins had to
follow him almost into battle to get permission to weave a new
hanging?
Portraits were woven--but let us not dwell on that. That portraits
were woven at the Gobelins (portraits as such, not the resemblance of
one figure out of a mass to some great personage) brings ever a sigh
of regret. It is like the evidence of senility in some grand statesman
who has outlived his vigour. It is like the portrait of your friend
done in butter, or the White House at Washington done in a paste of
destroyed banknotes. In other words, there is no excuse for it while
paint and canvas exist.
Napoleon's own portrait was made in full length twice, and in bust ten
times. The Empress was pictured at full length and in bust, and the
young King of Rome came in for one portrait. The summit of bad art
seemed reached when it was proposed to copy in wool a painting of
portrait busts, carved in marble. This work was happily unfinished
when the empire gave place to the next form of government.
It is unthinkable that Napoleon would not want his reign glorified in
manner like to that of hereditary kings with pictured episodes, the
conquests of his life, dramatic, superb. David the court painter,
supplied his canvas _Napoleon Crossing the Alps_, and others followed.
Copying paintings was the order at the Gobelins, remember, and that
kind of work was done with infinite skill. Numbers of grand scenes
were planned, some set up on the looms, but the great part were not
done at all. Napoleon's triumph was full but brief; the years of his
reign were few. He interrupted work on large hangings by his
impatience to have the throne-room furniture ready for the reception
of Europe's kings and ambassadors. And when the time came that another
man received in that room, the big series of hangings which were to
picture his reign, even as the _Life of the King_ pictured that of
Louis XIV, were scarcely begun.
CHAPTER XIV
BEAUVAIS
Another name to conjure with, after Gobelins is Beauvais. In general
it means to us squares of beautiful foliage,--foliage graceful,
acceptably coloured, and of a pre-Raphaelite neatness. But it is not
limited to that class of work, nor yet to the chair-coverings for
which the factory of Beauvais is so justly celebrated. This factory
has woven even the magnificent series of Raphael, the designs without
which the Sistine Chapel was considered incomplete. But this is
anticipating, and an inquiry into how these things came about is a
pleasure too great to miss.
The factory at Beauvais was founded by Colbert, under Louis XIV, in
1664. In that respect it resembles the Gobelins factory, but there
existed an enormous difference which had to do with the entire fate of
the enterprise. The Gobelins was founded for the king; Beauvais was
founded for commerce. The Gobelins was royally conceived as a source
of supply for palaces and châteaux of royalty and royalty's friends.
Beauvais was intended to supply with tapestry any persons who cared to
buy them, to the end that profit (if profit there were) should be to
the good of the country.
So the factory was founded at Beauvais as being convenient to Paris,
although it was not known as a place where the industry had
flourished hitherto, notwithstanding the old tapestries still in the
cathedral which are accorded a local origin in the first half of the
Sixteenth Century. And the king granted it letters patent, and large
sums of money to start the enterprise, which had to be given a
building, and men to manage it and to work therein, and materials to
work with, in fact, the duplicate in less degree of the appropriations
for the Gobelins, except that the furniture department was omitted.
The idea was practically the same as that in the mind of the paternal
Henri IV when he united the scattered factories with royal interest
and patronage, but with always the large end in view of benefiting his
people financially, as well as in the province of art. With our modern
republican views we can criticise the disinterestedness of a monarch
who maintains a factory at enormous public expense exclusively for the
indulgence of kings.
And yet, it seems impossible to make both an artistic and commercial
success of a tapestry factory--at least this is the conclusion to
which one is forced in a study of the Beauvais factory.
Louis Hinart was the man appointed to construct the buildings and to
stock them, and the royal appropriation therefor, was 60,000 livres.
He was to engage a hundred workers for the first year, more to be
added; and special prizes were temptingly offered for workmen coming
from other countries, and to the contractor for each tapestry sold for
exportation.
[Illustration: HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS
Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent]
[Illustration: HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTRÉES
Design by Vincent]
Thus was trade to be encouraged, and the venture put on its feet
commercially. But alas, the factory was not a success. Tapestries were
woven, hundreds of them, and they delight us now wherever we can find
them, whether low warp or high, whether large pieces with figures or
smaller pieces almost entirely verdure of an entrancing kind. But the
orders for large hangings, the heavy patronage from outside France,
was of the imagination only, and the verdures for home consumption did
not meet the expenses of the factory. After twenty years of struggle,
Hinart was completely ruined and ceded the direction of the factory to
a Fleming of Tournai, Philip Béhagle. As most of the workers were
Flemish, this was probably not disagreeable to them.
Béhagle, more energetic than Hinart, with a gift for initiative, set
the high-warp looms to work with extraordinary activity. As though he
would rival the great Gobelins itself, he reproduced the most
ambitious of pieces, the Raphael series, _Acts of the Apostles_, and a
long list of ponderous groups wherein oversized gods disport
themselves in a heavy setting of architecture and voluminous
draperies. He also produced some contemporary battle scenes which are
now in the royal collection of Sweden.
Not content with copying, Béhagle set up a school of design in the
factory, realising that the base of all decorative art was design. Le
Pape was the artist set over it. From this grew many of the lovely
smaller patterns which have made the factory famous. Its garlands have
ever been inspired, and its work on borders is of exquisite conception
and execution.
It is considered a great fact in the history of the factory that the
king paid it a visit in 1686; that he paraded and rested his important
person under the shade of the living verdure in its garden. But it
seems more to the point that Béhagle made for it a success both
artistic and commercial, and this continued as long as he had breath.
Also was it a feather in his cap that at the time when the Gobelins
factory was sighing and dying for lack of funds, the provincial
factory of Beauvais not only remained prosperous, but opened its doors
to many of the starving operatives from the Gobelins ateliers, thus
saving them from the horrid fate of joining the Dragonades, as some of
their fellows had done.
But the followers of the able Béhagle had not his capability. After
his twenty years of prosperity the factory languished under the
direction of his widow and sons, and that of the brothers Filleul, and
Micou, up to the time when the Regent Philip was fumbling the reigns
of government, and when everything but scepticism and Les Precieuses
was sinking into feeble disintegration. The factory became a financial
failure from which the regent had not power to lift it.
Again we see the name of the son of Madame de Montespan, the Duke
d'Antin, who was at this time director of buildings for the crown and
in this capacity had the power of choosing the directors of both the
Gobelins and Beauvais. The place of director at Beauvais was empty;
d'Antin must have the credit of filling it wisely with the painter
Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we
are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high
place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais
from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to its most brilliant
flowering.
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]
It is only as the history of a factory touches us that we are
interested in its changes. The result of Oudry's direction is one that
we see so frequently in a small way that it is agreeable to recognise
its cause. Oudry was pre-eminently a painter of animals. Add to this
the tendency to draw cartoons in suites and the demand for furniture
coverings, and at once we have the _raison d'être_ of the design seen
over and over again nowadays on old tapestried chairs, the designs
picturing the _Fables of La Fontaine_. These were the especial work of
Oudry who composed them, who put into them his best work as animal
painter, and who set them on the looms of Beauvais many times.
They had a success immediate. They became the fashion of the day, and
the pride of the factory. If the artist had drawn with inspiration,
the weavers copied with a fidelity little short of talent. So it is
not surprising that a set of sofa and chairs on which these tapestries
are displayed brings now an average of a thousand dollars a piece,
even though the furniture frames are not excessively rich.
Beauvais set the fashion for this suite, but as success has imitators
who hope for success, many factories both in and out of France copied
this series. How shall we know the true from the false? By that sixth
sense that has its origin in a taste at once instinctive and
cultivated.
Oudry drew hangings for the small panelled spaces of the walls, to
accompany this set of _Fables_. He also painted scenes from Molière's
comedies, which at least show him master of the human figure as well
as of the lines of animals.
We are now, it must be remembered, in the time of Louis XV, the time
of beautiful gaiety and light sarcasm, of epigramme, and miniature,
and of all that declared itself _multum in parvo_. Therefore it was
that even wall-hangings were reduced in size and polished, so to
speak, to a perfection most admirable. Paintings were copied, actually
copied, on the looms, but however much the fact may be deplored that
tapestry had wandered far from its original days of grand simplicity,
it were unjust not to recognise the exquisite perfection of the manner
in vogue in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, and of the
perfection of the craftsman.
The pieces of Beauvais that are accessible to us are indeed charming
to live with, especially the verdures of Oudry on which he left the
trace of his talent, never omitting the characteristic fox or dog, or
ducks, or pheasants that give vital interest to a peep into the
enchanted woodland. At the same time the factory of Aubusson, and
looms in Flanders, were throwing upon the market a quantity of
verdures, of which the amateur must beware. Oudry verdures or outdoor
scenes are but few in model, and beautifully woven.
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
In the prosperity of Beauvais, ambition carried Oudry into a gay
rivalry with the Gobelins. Charles Coypel had gained fame by a set of
hangings in which scenes were taken from Don Quixote. Oudry asked
himself why he should not rival them at Beauvais. The result was a
similar series, but composed by Charles Natoire, the artist who had
drawn a set of _Antony and Cleopatra_ for the Gobelins. The same idea
extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well
as to the _Fables_. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us
nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand
of the past accords to the seeker after the ancient.
Exquisite indeed are the hangings by the great interpreter of the
spirit of his time, François Boucher. His designs broke from the limit
of the Gobelins, and were woven at Beauvais with the care and skill
required for proper interpretation of his land of mythology. Such
flushed skies of light, such clean, soft trees waving against them and
such human elegance and beauty grouped beneath, have seldom been
reproduced in tapestry, and almost make one wonder if, after all, the
weavers of the Eighteenth Century were not right in copying a finished
painting rather than in interpreting a decorative cartoon. But such
thoughts border on heresy and schism; away with them.
Casanova, Leprince, and a host of others are tacked onto the list of
artists who painted models. We can no longer call them cartoons, so
changed is the mode for Beauvais. But Oudry and Boucher are
pre-eminent.
To the former, who was director as well as artist, is attributed the
fame of the factory and the resulting commercial success. The factory
had a house for selling its wares under the very nose of the Gobelins;
had another in the enemy's country, Leipzig. And kings were the
patrons of these, as we know through the royal collections in Italy,
and Stockholm, where the King of Sweden was an important collector.
It was in 1755 that Beauvais found itself without the support of its
leaders. Both Oudry and his partner in business matters, Besnier, had
died. And we are well on toward the time when kingly support was a
feeble and uncertain quantity. The factory lacked the inspiration and
patronage to continue its importance.
In a few years more fell the blight of the Revolution. The factory was
closed.
It re-opened again under new conditions, but its brilliant period was
past. Will the conditions recur that can again elevate to its former
state of perfection this factory that has given such keen delight,
whose ancient works are so prized by the amateur? It has given us
thrilling examples of the highly developed taste of tapestry weaving
of the Eighteenth Century, it has left us lovable designs in
miniature. We repulse the thought that these things are all of the
past. The factory still lives. Will not the Twentieth Century see a
restoration of its former prestige?
If it were only for the reproduction of the sets of furniture of the
style known as Louis XVI, the Beauvais loom would have sufficient
reason for existing at the present day. Scenes from Don Quixote,
however, and the pictured fables of La Fontaine which we see on old
chairs, seem to need age to ripen them. These sets, when made new,
shown in all the freshness and unsoiled colour, and unworn wool, and
unfaded silk do not give pleasure.
[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY]
[Illustration: CHAIR COVERING
Beauvais Tapestry. First Empire]
But the familiar garlands and scrolls adapted from the Greek, that
were woven for the court of Marie Antoinette, these are ever old and
ever new, like all things vital. On a background of solid colour, pale
and tawny, is curved the foliated scroll to reach the length of a
sofa, and with this is associated garlands or sprays of flowers that
any flower-lover would worship. Nothing more graceful nor more
tasteful could be conceived, and by such work is the Beauvais factory
best known, and on such lines might it well continue.
CHAPTER XV
AUBUSSON
Perhaps because of certain old and elegant carpets lying under-foot in
the glow and shadows of old drawing-rooms that we love, the name of
Aubusson is one of interesting meaning. And yet history of tapestry
weaving at Aubusson lacks the importance that gilds the Gobelins and
Beauvais.
It just escaped that _sine qua non_, the dower of a king's favour. But
let us be chronological, and not anticipate.
If antiquity is the thing, Aubusson claims it. There is in the town
this interesting tradition that when the invincible Charles Martel
beat the enemies of Christianity and hammered out the word peace with
his sword-blade, a lot of the subdued Saracens from Spain remained in
the neighbourhood. It was at Poitiers in 732 that the final blow was
given to show the hordes of North Africa that while a part of Spain
might be theirs, they must stop below the Pyrenees.
When swords are put by, the empty hand turns to its accustomed crafts
of peace. Poitiers is a weary journey from Africa if the land ways are
hostile, and all to be traversed afoot. Rather than return, the
conquered Saracens stayed, so runs the legend of Aubusson, and quite
naturally fell into their home-craft of weaving. They had a pretty
gift indeed to bestow, for at that time, as in ages before, the
world's best fabrics came from the luxurious East. And so the
Saracens, defeated at Poitiers by Charles Martel, wandered to nearby
Aubusson, wove their cloths and gave the town the chance to set its
earliest looms at a date far back in the past.
The centuries went on, however, without much left in the way of
history-fabric or woven fabric until we approach the time when
tapestry-history begins all over France, like sparse flowers glowing
here and there in the early spring wood.
When the Great Louis, with Colbert at his sumptuous side, was by way
of patronising magnificently those arts which contributed to his own
splendour, he set his all-seeing eye upon Aubusson, and thought to
make it a royal factory.
He was far from establishing it--that was more than accomplished
already, not so much by the legendary Saracens as by the busy populace
who had as early as 1637 as many as two thousand workers. Going back a
little farther we find a record of four tapestries woven there for
Rheims.
It was, perhaps, this very prosperity, this ability to stand alone
that made Louis and Colbert think it worth while to patronise the
works at Aubusson. But it must be said that at this time (1664) the
factory was deteriorating. Tapestry works are as sensitive as the
veriest exotic, and without the proper conditions fail and fade. The
wrong matter here was primarily the cartoons, which were of the
poorest. No artist controlled them, and the workers strayed far from
the copy set long before. Added to that, the wool was of coarse,
harsh quality and the dyeing was badly done. All three faults
remediable, thought the two chief forces in the kingdom.
So Louis XIV announced to the sixteen hundred weavers of Aubusson that
he would give their works the conspicuous privilege of taking on the
name of the Royal Manufactory at Aubusson. And, moreover, he declared
his wish to send them an artist to draw worthily, and a master of the
important craft of dyeing fast and lovely colours.
Colbert drew up a series of articles and stipulations, long papers of
rules and restrictions which were considered a necessary part of fine
tapestry weaving. These papers are tiresome to read--the constitution
of many a nation or a state is far less verbose. They give the
impression that the craft of tapestry weaving is beset with every sort
of small deceit, so protection must be the arrangement between master
and worker, and between the factory and the great outside world, lying
in wait to tear with avaricious claws any fabric, woven or written,
that this document leaves unprotected. You get, too, the impression
that weavers took themselves a little too seriously. There must have
been other arts and crafts in the world than theirs, but if so these
men of long documents ignored it.
Aubusson, then, took heart at the encouragement of the king and his
prime minister, enjoyed their fine new title to flaunt before the
world which lacked it, pored over their new Articles of Faith, and
awaited the new artist and the new alchemist of colours.
But Louis XIV was a busy man, and Paris presented enough activity to
consume all his hours but the scant group he allowed himself for
sleep. So Aubusson was forgot. Wars and pleasures both ravaged the
royal purse, and no money was left for indulgences to a tapestry
factory lying leagues distant from Paris and the satisfying Gobelins.
Then came the agitation of religious conflict during which Louis XIV
was persuaded, coerced, nagged into the condition of mind which made
him put pen to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the document
that is ever playing about the fortunes of tapestry weaving. This was
in 1685. Aubusson had struggled along on hope for twenty years, under
its epithet Royal, but now it had to lose its best workers to the
number of two hundred. The Protestants had ever been among the best
workers in Louis' kingdom, and by his prejudice he lost them. Germany
received some of the fugitives, notably, Pierre Mercier.
Near Aubusson were Felletin and Bellegarde, the three towns forming
the little group of factories of La Marche. When the king's act
brought disaster to Aubusson, her two neighbours suffered equally.
There was also another reason for a sagging of prosperity. Beauvais
was rapidly gaining in size and importance under the patronage of the
king and the wise rule of its administrators. Beauvais with her
high- and low-warp looms, her artists from Paris and her privilege to
sell in the open market, lured from Aubusson the patronage that might
have kept her strong.
Thus things went on to the end of the Seventeenth Century and the
first quarter of the Eighteenth. Then in 1731 came deliverers in the
persons of the painters, Jean Joseph du Mons and Pierre de Montezert,
and an able dyer who aided them. Prosperity began anew. Not the
prosperity of the first half of the Seventeenth Century, which was its
best period, but a strong, healthy productiveness which has lasted
ever since. Two articles of faith it adheres to--that the looms shall
be invariably low, and that the threads of the warp shall be of wool
and wool only.
Large quantities of strong-colour verdures from La Marche and notably
from Aubusson are offered to the buyer throughout France. They are as
easily adapted to the wood panels of a modern dining-room as is stuff
by the yard, the pattern being merely a mass of trees divisible almost
anywhere. The colour scheme is often worked out in blues instead of
greens; a narrow border is on undisturbed pieces, and the reverse of
the tapestry is as full of loose threads as the back of a cashmere
rug. For the most part these fragments are the work of the Eighteenth
Century. Older ones, with warmer colours introduced bring much higher
prices.
CHAPTER XVI
SAVONNERIE
Those who hold by the letter, leave out the velvety product of La
Savonnerie from the aristocratic society of hangings woven in the
classic stitch of the Gobelins. They have reason. Yet, because the
weave is one we often see in galleries, also on furniture both old and
new, it is as well not to ignore its productions in lofty silence.
Besides, it is rather interesting, this little branch of an exotic
industry that tried to run along beside the greater and more artistic.
It never has tried to be much higher than a man's feet, has been
content for the most part to soften and brighten floors that before
its coming were left in the cold bareness of tile or parquet. It crept
up to the backs and seats of chairs, and into panelled screens a
little later on, but never has it had much vogue on the walls.
When we go back to its beginnings we come flat against the Far East,
as is usual. The history of the fabric which is woven with a pile like
that of heavy wool velvet, and which is called Savonnerie, runs
parallel to the long story of tapestry proper, but to make its scant
details one short concrete chronicle it is best to put them all
together.
From the East, then, came the idea of weaving in that style of which
only the people of the East were masters. Oriental rugs as such were
not attempted in either colour or design, but one of the rug stitches
was copied.
We have to run back to the time of Henri IV, a pleasing time to turn
to with its demonstration of how much a powerful king loved the
welfare of his people. When he interested himself in tapestry, one of
the three important existing factories was stationed in the Louvre.
This was primarily for the hangings properly called tapestry, but in
the same place were looms for the production of work "after the
fashion of Turkey." Sometimes it was called work of "long wool"
(_longue laine_) and sometimes also "_a la façon de Perse, ou du
Levant_," as well as "of the fashion of Turkey,"--all names giving
credit to the East from whence the stitch came by means of crusades,
invasions and other storied movements of the people of a dim past.
How long ago this stitch came, is as uncertain as most things in the
Middle Ages. We know how persistently the cultivated venturesome East
overflowed Eastern Europe, and how religious Europe thrust itself into
the East, and on these broad bases we plant our imaginings.
Away back in Burgundian times there are traces of the use of this
velvet stitch. Tapestries of Germany also woven in the Fifteenth
Century, use this stitch to heighten the effect of details.
But the formation of an actual industry properly set down in history
and dignified by the name of its directors, comes in the very first
years of the Seventeenth Century when Henri IV of France was living up
to his high ideals.
Pierre Dupont is the name to remember in this connexion. He is styled
the inventor of the velvet pile in tapestry, but it were better to
call him the adaptor. The name of Savonnerie came from the building in
which the first looms were set up, an old soap factory, and thus the
velvet pile bears the misnomer of the Savonnerie.
Pierre Dupont (whose book "La Stromaturgie" might be consulted by the
book-lover) was one of the enthusiasts included by Henri IV along with
the best high-and low-warp masters of France at that time. Being
placed under royal patronage, the Savonnerie style of weaving acquired
a dignity which it has ever had trouble in retaining for the simple
reason that the legitimate place for its products seems to be the
floor.
The Gobelins factory finally absorbed the Savonnerie, but that was
after it had been established in the Louvre. Pierre Dupont who was
director of tapestry works under Henri IV even goes so far as to vaunt
the works of French production over those of "La Turquie." The taste
of the day was doubtless far better pleased with the French colour and
drawing than with the designs of the East.
At any rate, this pretty wool velvet found such favour with kings that
even Louis XIV encouraged its continuance, gathering it under the roof
of the all-embracing Gobelins.
A large royal order embraced ninety-two pieces, intended to cover the
Grand Galerie of the Louvre. Many of these pieces are preserved to-day
and are conserved by the State.
If Savonnerie has never produced much that is noteworthy in the line
of art, at least it has given us many pretty bits of an endearing
softness, bits which cover a chair or panel a screen, to the delight
of both eye and touch. The softness of the weave makes it especially
appropriate to furniture of the age of luxurious interiors which is
represented by the styles of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Portraits in this style of weave were executed at a time when
portraits were considered improved by translation into wool, but
except as curiosities they are scarcely successful. An example hangs
in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Plate facing page 162.)
In the Gobelins factory of to-day are four looms for the manufacture
of Savonnerie.
[Illustration: SAVONNERIE. PORTRAIT SUPPOSABLY OF LOUIS XV
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
[Illustration: VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York]
CHAPTER XVII
MORTLAKE
1619-1703
The three great epochs of tapestry weaving, with their three
localities which are roughly classed as Arras in the Fifteenth
Century, Brussels in the Sixteenth Century, and Paris in the
Seventeenth, had, as a matter of course, many tributary looms. It is
not supposable that a craft so simple, when it is limited to
unambitious productions, should not be followed by hundreds of modest
people whose highest wish was to earn a living by providing the market
with what was then considered as much a necessity as chairs and
tables.
To take a little retrospective journey through Europe and linger among
these obscurer weavers would be delectable pastime for the leisurely,
and for the enthusiast. But we are all more or less in a hurry, and
incline toward a courier who will point out the important spots
without having to hunt for them. Artois had not only Arras; Flanders
had not only Brussels; France had not only the State ateliers of Paris
and Beauvais; but all these countries had smaller centres of
production. The tapestries from some of these we are able to identify,
even to weave a little history about them. These products are
recognisable through much study of marks and details and much digging
in learned foreign books, where careful records are kept--a congenial
business for the antiquary.
But even though we may neglect in the main the lesser factories, there
is one great development which must have full notice. It is the
important English venture known as Mortlake.
Sully, standing at the elbow of Henri IV of France, called James I of
England the wisest fool in Europe. A part of his wisdom was the
encouraging in his own kingdom the royal craft of tapestry-making. To
this end he followed the example set by that grand Henri of Navarre,
and gave the crown's aid to establish and maintain works for tapestry
production.
The elegance of the Stuart came to the front, desiring gratification;
but craftiness had a hand in the matter, too. After the introduction
of Italian luxury into England by Henry VIII, and the continuance of
art's revival through the brilliant period of Elizabeth, it is not
supposable that no tapestry looms existed throughout the length and
breadth of the land at the time that James came down from Scotland.
They were there; documents prove it. But they were not of such
condition as pleased the fastidious son of Marie Stuart, who needs
must import his weavers and his artists. And therein was shown his
craftiness, for he had coaxed secretly from Flanders fifty expert
weavers before the canny Dutch knew their talented material was thus
being filched away. Every weaver was bound to secrecy, lest the Low
Countries, knowing the value of her clever workmen, put a ban upon
their going before the English king had his full quota for the new
venture.
Wandering about old London, one can identify now the place where the
king's factory had habitat. The buildings stood where now we find
Queen's Court Passage, and near by, at Victoria Terrace, was the house
set aside for the limners or artists who drew and painted for the
works.
To copy Henri IV in his success was dominant in the mind of James I.
To the able Sir Francis Crane he gave the place of director of the
works, and made with him a contract similar to that made with François
de la Planche and Marc Comans in Paris by their king.
If to James I is owed the initial establishment, to Crane is owed all
else at that time. It was in 1619 that the works were founded and Sir
Francis took charge. He was a gentleman born, was much seen at Court,
had ambitions of his own, too, and was cultivated in many ways of mind
and taste. Besides all this, he had a head for business and an
enthusiasm rampant, which could meet any discouragement--and needed
this faculty later, too.
The king then gave him the management of the venture, started him with
the royal favour, which was as good as a fortune, with a building for
the looms, with imported workers who knew the tricks of the trade, and
with a pretty sum of money to boot.
Prudence was born with the enterprise; so the men from the Low
Countries were advised to become naturalised to make them more likely
to stay, and to bring other workers over, Walloons, malcontents,
religious fugitives, or whatever, so long as the hands were skilful.
Down in Kent, they say those cottages were built for weavers,--those
lovable nests of big timbers, curved gables and small leaded panes
which we are so keen to restore and live in these days.
To swell the number of workers, and to have an eye for the future,
there must be apprentices. The king looked about among the city's
"hospitals" and saw many goodly boys living at crown expense, with no
specified occupation during their adolescence. These he put as
apprentices, for a term of seven years, to work under the fifty
Flemish leaders. They were happy if they fell under the care of Philip
de Maecht, he of Flanders, who had wandered down to Paris and served
under De la Planche and Comans, and now had been enticed to the new
Mortlake. He has left his visible mark on tapestries of his
production--his monogram, P.D.M. (Plate facing page 70.)
A designer for the factory, one who lived there, was an inseparable
part of it. And thus it came that Francis Clein (or Cleyn) was
permanently established. He came from Denmark, but had taken an
enlightening journey to Italy, and had a fine equipment for the work,
which he carried on until 1658. His name is on several tapestries now
existing.
Even kings tire of their fulfilled wishes. James wanted royal tapestry
works, yet, when they were an established fact, he wearied of the
drafts on his purse for their support. It was the old story of
unfulfilled obligations, of a royal purse plucked at by too many vital
interests to spend freely on art.
And Sir Francis Crane bore the brunt of the troubles. Contracts with
the king counted but lightly in face of his enthusiasm. He continued
the work, paid his men the best he could, and let the king's debt to
him stand unsued.
In a few years--a very few, as it was then but 1623--he was obliged to
petition the king. His private fortune was gone by the board, the
workmen were clamouring for wages past due, and the factory trembled.
Then it was the Prince of Wales showed the value of his interest in
the tapestries that were demonstrating the artistic enterprise of
England. The Italian taste was the ultimate note in England as well as
elsewhere--the Italy of the Renaissance; and from Italy the prince had
ordered paintings and drawings. What was more to the purpose at this
hour of leanness, he ordered paid by the crown a bill of seven hundred
pounds, which covered their expense. The king, unwillingly,--for needs
pressed on all sides--paid also Sir Francis Crane in part for moneys
he had expended, but left him struggling against the hard conditions
of a ruined private purse and a thin royal one.
At this juncture, 1625, James I died, and his son reigned in his
stead. The Prince of Wales was now become that beribboned,
picturesque, French-spirited monarch, whose figure on Whitehall
eternally protests his tragic death.
As Charles I, he had the power to foster the elegant industry which
now grew and flowered to a degree that brought satisfaction then, and
which yields a harvest of delight in our own times. Sir Francis Crane
was at last to get the reward of enthusiasm and fidelity. Too much
reward, said the envious, who tried in all ways, fair and foul, to
drive him from what was now a lucrative and conspicuous post. The
money he had advanced the factory came back to him, and more also.
Ever a well-known figure at court, he now even aspired to closer
relations with royalty, and built a magnificent country home, which
was large enough to accommodate a visiting court. He even persuaded
the king to visit the Mortlake factory, that the royal presence might
enhance the value of art in the occult way known only to the subjects
of kings.
Debts from the crown were not always paid in clinking coin, but often
in grants of land, and by these grants Sir Francis Crane became rich.
But the prosperity of Crane was not worth our recording were it not
that it evidenced the prosperity of Mortlake. From the death of James
I in 1625 for a period of ten years, the factory flowered and fruited.
Its productions were of the very finest that have ever been produced
in any country.
The reasons for this superiority were evident. First of all, Mortlake
was the pet of the king; next, Crane was an able and devoted minister
of its affairs; its artistic inspiration came from the home of the
highest art--Italy--and its weavers were from that locality of sage
and able weavers--Flanders. Add to this, tapestries were the fashion.
Every man of wealth and importance felt them a necessary chattel to
his elegance. And add to this, too, that Mortlake had almost a clean
field. It was nearly without rival in fine tapestry-making at that
time. Brussels had declined, and the Gobelins was not formed in its
inspired combination.
[Illustration: VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York]
[Illustration: VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York]
Besides this, were not the materials for the industry found best
within the confines of the kingdom? What sheep in all the world
produced such even, lustrous wool as the muttons huddling or wandering
on the undulating _prés salés_ of Kent; and was not wool, par
excellence, the ideal material for picture-weaving, better than silk
or glittering gold?
The hangings made then were superb. Thanks to destiny, we have some
left on which to lavish our enthusiasm. The cartoons preferred came
from Italy's great dead masters. First was Raphael. The Mortlake would
try its hand at nothing less than the great series made to finish and
soften the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. And so the _Acts of the
Apostles_ were woven, and in such manner as was worthy of them. They
can be seen now in the Garde Meuble. Van Dyck, the great Hollander,
made court painter to the king, drew borders for them, and was proud
to do it, too. Van Dyck's other work here was a portrait of Sir
Francis Crane and one of himself.
Rubens likewise associated his great decorative genius with the
factory and gave to it his suite of six designs for the _Story of
Achilles_. Cleyn, the Mortlake art-director, furnished a _History of
Hero and Leander_, which found home among the marvellous tapestries of
the King of Sweden.
There were other classic subjects, and the months as well, but of
especial interest to us is the _Story of Vulcan_. Several pieces of
this series have been lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, by their owners, Mrs. von Zedlitz, and Philip Hiss, Esq. Thus,
without going far from home, thousands have been able to see these
delightful examples of the highest period of England's tapestry
production. The series was woven for Charles I when he was Prince of
Wales, from cartoons by Francis Cleyn, and woven by the master, Philip
de Maecht. The borders are especially interesting, and carry the
emblematic three feathers of the prince, as well as his monogram, in
Mrs. von Zedlitz's example, _The Expulsion of Vulcan_. (Coloured plate
facing page 170.)
It was this same series of _Vulcan_ that was used as a text by Crane's
enemy to prove to the king, in 1630, that Crane was profiting unduly
and dishonestly from the land grants given him in payment for arrears.
The plaintiff speaks of this set as being "the foundation of all good
tapestries in England." We are fortunate in having pieces from it in
America.
Only by actual contact with the tapestry itself can the beauty of the
colour and the work be known. We well believe the superior quality of
the English wool when it lies before us in smooth expanse of subtle
colour. And as for even weaving, it is there unsurpassed. Every inch
declares the talent and patience of the craftsman. As for colour, it
is on a low scale that makes blues seem like remembrance of the sea,
and reds like faint flushings planned in warm contrast, while over all
is thrown a veil of delicate mist that may be of years, or may have
been done with intent, but is there to give poetic value to the whole
of the artist's scheme.
[Illustration: THE EXPULSION OF VULCAN FROM OLYMPUS]
Sir Francis Crane died in 1636, and Captain Richard Crane succeeded
him. And then began the decline of a factory which should have lived
to save us deep regret. This second Crane could not carry on the work,
and besought the king to relieve him by taking over the factory, which
was thenceforth known as King's Works.
But civil wars came on in 1642 and other matters were more urgent than
the production of works of art. So evil days fell upon the weavers.
Then came the black day when Charles was beheaded. The Commonwealth,
to do it justice, tried to keep alive the industry. They put at its
head a nobleman, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and, to inspire the workers,
brought a new model for design.
They went to Hampton Court and took from there _The Triumph of Cæsar_,
by Mantegna, to serve as new models. Some hope, too, lay in the
weavers of the hour, clever Hollanders taken prisoners in the war; and
all this while Cleyn directed.
But there were too many circumstances in the way, too many hard knocks
of fate. People were too poor to buy good tapestries, and loose-woven,
cheaper ones were heavily imported--to the amount of $500,000
yearly--from France and the Low Countries. Anti-Catholic feeling
displayed hatred toward the able Catholic weavers, who were forced out
of the country by proclamation.
The sad end of this story is that in 1702 a petition was placed before
the king asking permission to discontinue the Mortlake works. It was
granted in 1703, and thus ended the English royal venture in England.
CHAPTER XVIII
IDENTIFICATIONS
Identifying tapestries is like playing a game, like the solving of a
piquant problem, like pursuing the elusive snark. I know of no keener
pleasure than that of standing before a tapestry for the first time
and giving its name and history from one's own knowledge, and not from
a museum catalogue or a friend's recital. The latter sources of
information may be faulty, but your own you can trust, for by
delightful association with tapestries and their literature you have
become expert. The catalogue is to be read, the friend is to be heard,
in all humility, because these supply points that one may not know;
but, who shall not say that an intensely human gratification is
experienced when the owner of a tapestry with the Brussels mark tells
you that it is a Gobelins, or one with the _History of Alexander_
tells you it is the only set of that series ever woven, and you know
better.
The first thing that strikes the eye and the intelligence is the
drawing, the general school to which it belongs. There is matter for
placing the piece in its right class. It might be said to place it in
its right century or quarter century, but that tapestries were so
often repeated in later times, the cartoon having no copyright and
therefore open to all countries in all centuries. Next, then, to fix
it better, comes a study of the border, for therein lies many a
secret of identity, and borders were of the epoch in which the weaving
was done, even though the cartoon for the centre came from an earlier
time.
Last, as a finishing touch, come the marks in the galloon. This is put
last because so often they are absent, and so often unknown, the sign
of some ancient weaver lost in the mists of years, although a
well-known mark so instantly identifies, that study of other details
is secondary.
But under these three generalising heads comes all the knowledge of
the savant, for the truth about tapestries is most elusive. Knowledge
is to be gained only by a lover of the objects, a lover willing to
spend long hours in association with his love, prowling among
collections, comparing, handling, studying designs, discerning
colours, searching for details, and indulging withal a nice feeling
for textures, a vision that feels them even without touch of the hand.
If the study of design has not given a keen scent for the vague
quality which we call "feeling," the eye would better be trained still
further, for herein lies the secret of success in difficult places,
and not only that, but if he have not this sense he is deprived of one
of the most subtile thrills that the arts can excite.
But this sense is not a matter of untrained intuition. It is the
flower of erudition, the flame from a full heart, or whatever dainty
thing you choose to call it. It has its origin primarily in keen
observation of the various important schools of design that have
interested the world for centuries. We unconsciously augment it even
in following the side-path of history in this modest volume. Our
studies here are but those of a summer morn or a winter eve, yet they
are in vain if they have not set up a measuring standard or two within
the mind.
GOTHIC DRAWING
First, and dearest to the lover of designs, comes the Gothic, the
style practised by those conscientious romantic children-in-art, the
Primitives. Their characteristics in tapestry are much the same as in
painting, as in sculpture; for, weavers, painters, book-makers,
sculptors, were all expressing the same matter, all following the same
fashion. Therefore, to one's help comes any and every work of the
primitive artists. Making allowance for the difference in medium, the
same religious feeling is seen in the Burgundian set of _The
Sacraments_ in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, as is found
in stone carving of the time which decorated churches and tombs.
The figures in the Gothic tapestries show a dignified restraint, a
solemnity of pose, recalling the deadly seriousness with which
children play the game of grown-ups. The artists of that day had to
keep to their traditions; to express without over-expression, was
their difficult task (as it is ours), but they had behind them the
rigidity of the Byzantine and Early Christian, so that every free
line, every vigorous pose or energetic action, was forging ahead into
a new country, a voyage of adventure for the daring artist. Quite
another affair was this from modern restraint which consists in
pruning down the voluptuous lines following the too high Renaissance.
Faces are serious, but not animated. Dress reveals charming matter
concerning stuffs and modes in that far time. But apart from these
characteristics is the one great feature of the arrangement of the
figures, almost without perspective. And therein lies one immense
superiority of the ancient designs of tapestries over the modern as
pure decorative fabric. Men and women are placed with their
accessories of furniture or architecture all in the foreground, and
each man has as many cubits to his stature as his neighbour, not being
dwarfed for perspective, but only for modesty, as in the case of the
Lady's companion in the _Unicorn_ series--but that series is of a
later Gothic time than the early works of Arras.
A noticeable feature is that the centre of vision is placed high on
the tapestry. The eye must look to the top to find all the strength of
the design. The lower part is covered with the sweeping robes or
finished figures of the folk who are playing their silent parts for
the delight of the eye. This covers well the space with large and
simple motive. No recourse is had to such artifice as distant lands
seen in perspective, nor angles of rooms, but all is flat, brought
frankly into intimate association with the room that is lived in, so
that these people of other days seem really to enter into our very
presence, to thrust vitally their quaint selves into our company. This
feature of simple flatness is in so great contrast to later methods of
drawing that one becomes keenly conscious of it, and deeply satisfied
with its beauty. The purpose of decoration and of furnishing seems to
be most adequately met when the attention is retained within the
chamber and not led out of it by trick of background nor lure of
perspective, no matter how enticing are the distant landscapes or how
noble the far palace of royalty. Thus the Primitives struck a more
intimately human note than the artists of later and more sophisticated
times.
The more archaic the tapestry, the simpler the motive, is the rule.
The early weavers of Arras and of France were telling stories as
naturally as possible, perhaps because the ways of their times were
simple, and brushed aside all filigree with a directness almost
brutal; but also, perhaps, because technique was not highly developed,
either in him who drew with a pencil or him who copied that drawing in
threads of silk and wool and gold. Whatever the cause, we can but
rejoice at the result, which, alas, is shown to us by but lamentably
few remnants outside of museums. These very archaic simple pieces are,
for the most part, work of the latter part of the Fourteenth Century
and the first part of the Fifteenth, and as the history of tapestry
shows, were almost invariably woven in France or in Flanders. At the
end of the time mentioned, designs, while retaining much the same
characteristics already described, became more ambitious, more
complicated, and introduced many scenes into one piece. This is easily
proved by a comparison of the illustration of _The Baillée des Roses_,
or _The Sacraments_, with _The Sack of Jerusalem_, all in the
Metropolitan Museum.
The idea in the earliest Gothic cartoons--if the word may be allowed
here, was to make a single picture, a unified group. Into the later
cartoons came the fashion of multiplying these groups on one field, so
that a tapestry had many points of interest, many scenes where
tragedies or comedies were being enacted. Ingenious were the ways of
the early artist to accomplish the separation between the various
scenes, which were sometimes divided merely by their own attitudes, as
folk dispose themselves in groups in a large drawing-room; and
sometimes were divided by natural obstructions, like brooks and trees,
or by columns.
Later yet, all the antique eccentricities passed away, and the laws of
perspective and balance were fully developed in an art which has an
unspeakable charm. All the things that modern art has decreed as crude
or childish has passed away, and the sweet flower of the Gothic
perfection unfolded its exquisite beauty. This Gothic perfection was
the Golden Age of tapestry.
ARCHITECTURAL DETAIL
The use of architecture in the old Gothic designs makes a pleasing
necessity of fastening our attention upon it. In the very oldest
drawing the sole use is to separate one scene from another, in the
same hanging. For this purpose slender columns are used. It is
intensely interesting to note that these are the same variety of
column that meets us on every delightful prowl among old relics of
North Europe, relics of the days when man's highest and holiest energy
expressed itself at last in the cathedral. Those slender stems of the
northern Gothic are verily the stems of plants or of aspiring young
trees, strong when grouped, dainty when alone, and forming a refined
division for the various scenes in a picture. It must be confessed
that in the medium of aged wool they sometimes totter with the effect
of imminent fall, but that they do not fall, only inspires the
illusion that they belong to the marvellous age of fairy-tale and
fancy.
The careful observer takes a keen look at these columns as a clue to
dates. The shape of the shaft, whether round or hectagonal, the
ornament on the capitals, are indications. It is not easy to know how
long after a design is adopted its use continues, but it is entirely a
simple matter to know that a tapestry bearing a capital designed in
1500 could not have been made prior to that time.
The columns, later on, took on a different character. They lifted
slender shafts more ornamented. It is as though the restless men of
Europe had come up from the South and had brought with them
reminiscences of those tender models which shadowed the art of the
Saracens, the art which flavoured so much the art of Southern Europe.
The columns of many a cloister in Italy bear just such lines of
ornament, including the time when the brothers Cosmati were
illuminating the pattern with their rich mosaic.
Then, later still, the columns burst into the exquisite bloom of the
early Renaissance, their character profoundly different, but their use
the same, that of dividing scenes from one another on the same woven
picture. But as any allusion to the Renaissance seems to thrust us far
out onto a radiant plain, let us scamper back into the mysterious wood
of the Gothic and pick up a few more of its indicative pebbles, even
as did Hans and Gretel of fairyland.
A use of Gothic architectural detail gives a religious look to
tapestry, quite other than the later introduction of castles. These
castle strongholds of the Middle Ages wasted no daintiness of
construction, nor favoured light ornament, nor dainty hand. They were,
par excellence, places of defence against the frequent enemy; so, in
bastion and tower they were piled in curving masses around the scenes
of the later Gothic tapestries. Even more, they began to play an
important part in the _mise en scène_, and were drawn on tiny scale as
habitations of the actors in the play who thrust heads from windows no
larger than their throats, or who gathered in gigantic groups on
disproportioned tessellated roofs.
Occasionally a lovely lady in distress is seen in fine raiment praying
high Heaven for deliverance from the top of a feudal pile not half as
high as her stately figure. Laws of proportion are quite lost in this
naïve way of telling a story, and one wonders whether the wise old
artist of other times, with his rigid solemnity was heroically
overcoming difficulties of traditional technique, or whether he was
smiling at the infantile taste of his wealthy patrons. The past
fashion in history was to record only the lives and expressions of
those great in power. The artist is ever the servant of such, but may
he not have had his own private thoughts, unpurchaseable, unsold, and
therefore only for our divining. There must have been a sense of
humour then as now, and twinkling eyes with which to see it.
GOTHIC FLOWERS
Always, in studying a Gothic tapestry, we find flowers. The flowers of
nature, they are, a simple nature at that, and never to be thought of
in the same day as the gorgeous, expansive, proud flowers of the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decoration. Those splendid later
blossoms flaunt their richness with assured swagger and demand of man
his homage, quite forgetting it is the flower's best part to give.
Botticelli had not outgrown the Gothic flowers when he sprinkled them
on the ambient air and floating robe of his chaste and dreamy _Venus_,
nor when he set them about the elastic tripping feet of the _Spring_.
He knew their simple power, and so do we. Scarce a Gothic tapestry is
complete without them, happily for those bent on identification, for
rarely can one discover them without the same thrill that accompanies
the discovery of the first violets and snowdrops in the awakening
woods.
The old weavers set them low in the picture, used them as
space-fillers wherever space lay happily before them, and they never
exaggerated their size, a virtue of which the full Renaissance cannot
boast. They are the simplest sort of flowers, the corolla of petals
turning as frankly toward the observer as the sunflower turns toward
her god, and little bells hanging as regularly as a chime. These are
their characteristics, easily recognisable and expressing the
unsophisticated charm of the creations of honest childish hands.
Irrelevancy is theirs, too. They spring from stones or pavement as
well as from turf or garden, and thus express the more ardently their
love for man and for close association with him. When they are seen
after this manner, it is sure that the early men have set them, just
as Shakespeare, at the same epoch, set violets blue and daisies pied,
cowslip, rosemary "for remembrance," and other familiar dainties, in
the grim foundation stones of his tragedies.
A comparison of the different hangings available to the amateur, or of
the pictured examples given in this book, will reveal more than can be
well set down with the pen. The use of flowers in the set of _The
Baillée des Roses_ is exceptional, in that here the flowers form a
harmonious decorative scheme and are at the same time an important
part of the story which is pictured.
In other earliest examples they playfully peep within the limits of
the hanging. Important use is, however, made of them in that
altogether entrancing set of _The Lady and the Unicorn_, where they
indicate the beauties of a fascinating park in which the delicate lady
and her attendant led a wondrous life guarded by two beasts as
fabulous as faithful, and the whole region of leaves and petals but
serving as a paradise for delectable white rabbits and piquant
monkeys. Could any modern indicate by sophistry of brush or brain so
intoxicating a fairyland, so gracious a field of dear delights?
COSTUMES
A minute study of all the details of costume and accessories is one of
the measuring sticks with which we count the years of a tapestry's
life. This applies more particularly to the work prior to the
Renaissance, to the time when all characters were dressed in the mode
of the day--another evidence of that ingenuousness that delights us
who have passed the period where it is possible.
As we have noted before, a costume cannot be used before its time, so,
as much as anything can, the study of its details prevents us from
going too far back with its date. When one has reached the point of
identifying a Gothic tapestry to where the exact decade is questioned,
the century having been ascertained, a careful study of costumes
outside the region of tapestries is necessary. This leads one into a
department all by itself and means delightful hours in libraries
poring over illustrated books on costume. It means to learn in what
manner our gods and heroes of fact and fancy habited themselves, how
Berengaria wore her head-dress and Jehane de Bourgogne her brocades,
and how the eternally various sleeve differed in its fashioning for
both men and women.
Head-dresses were of such size and variety that they form a study in
themselves, and dates have been fixed by these alone. The turban in
its evolution is an interesting study, and makes one wonder if that,
too, did not wander north from the Moorish occupancy of Spain and the
wave of inspiration which flowed unceasingly from the Orient in the
years when Europe created little without inspiration from outside.
A patriarchal bearded man in sacerdotal robes of costly elegance
seriously impresses his fellows all through the Gothic tapestries, and
his rival is a swaggering, important person, clean-shaven, in full
brocaded skirt, fur-bound, whose attitude declares him royal or near
it. The first of these is the model nowadays for stage kings, and even
a woman's toilet must vaunt itself to get notice beside his gorgeous
array. He wears about his waist a jewelled girdle of great splendour,
and on his head some impressive matter of either jewels or draping.
His face is usually full-bearded, but even when smooth, youth is not
expressed upon him. Youths of the same time are more _débonnaire_, are
springing about, clean-faced, clad in short, belted pelisse, showing
sprightly legs equally ready to step quickly towards a lovely lady or
to a field of battle.
Soldiers--let a woman hesitate to speak of their dress and arms in any
tone but that of self-depreciating humility. Suffice it to say that in
the early work they wore the armour of the time, whether the scene
depicted were an event of history cotemporaneous, or of the time of
Moses. Fashions in dress changed with deliberation then, and it is to
the arms carried by the men that we must sometimes look for exactness
of date.
LETTERING
The presence of letters is often noticed in hangings of the
Fourteenth, Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries. It was a fashion
eminently satisfactory, a great assistance to the observer. It helped
tell the story, and, as these old pictures had always a story to tell,
it was entirely excusable--at least, so it seems to one who has stood
confounded before a modern painting without a catalogue or other
indication as to the why of certain agitated figures.
The lettering was, in the older Gothic, explicit and unstinted, in
double or quadruple lines, in which case it counts as decoration
banded across top or bottom. Again, it is as trifling as a word or two
affixed to the persons of the play to designate them. This lettering
may be French or Latin.
EARLY BACKGROUNDS
Backgrounds of the early Fifteenth Century deal much in
conventionalised, flat patterns, but fifty or sixty years later, when
figures began to be more crowded, there was but little space left
unoccupied by the participants in the allegory, and this was filled by
the artifices of architecture or herbage that formed the divisions
into the various scenes. Later the designing artists decided to let
into the picture the light of distant fields and skies, and thus was
introduced the suggestion of space outside the limit of the canvas.
LATER DRAWING
After the Gothic drawing, came the avalanche of the Renaissance. That
altered all. The Italian taste took precedence, and from that time on
the cartoons of tapestries represent modern art, trailing through its
various fashions or modes of the hour. The purest Renaissance is
direct from the Italian artist, in tapestry as well as in painting,
but it is interesting to see the maladroitness of the Flemish hand
when left to draw cartoons for himself after the new manner.
After the Renaissance came exaggeration and lack of sincerity; then
the improvement of the Seventeenth Century, notably in France, and
after that the dainty fancies of the Eighteenth Century, and here we
are dealing with art so modern that it needs no elucidation. The
drawing in tapestries is a subject as fascinating as it is
inexhaustible, but, however much one may read on it, nothing equals
actual association with as many tapestries as are available, for the
eye must be trained by vision and not by intellectual process alone.
CHAPTER XIX
IDENTIFICATIONS (_Continued_)
If the amateur can have the fortune to see in the same hour a tapestry
of the early Fifteenth Century, and one a hundred years later, and
then one about 1550, from Brussels, drawn by an Italian artist, he has
before him an exposition of tapestry weaving in its golden age when it
sweeps through its greatest periods and phases to marvellous
perfection. The earliest example gives acquaintance with that almost
fabled time of the Gothic primitives in art; the second shows the
highest development of that art under the influence of civilisation,
and the third shows the obsession of the new art of the Renaissance.
It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that after the revival of classic
art the power of producing spontaneous Gothic was lost forever. From
that time on, every drawing has had certain characteristics, certain
sophistications that the artist cannot escape except in a deliberate
copy.
Modern art, we call it. In tapestry it began with a freedom of drawing
in figures, and an adoption of classic ornament and architecture. In
this connexion it is interesting to note the introduction of Greek or
Roman detail in the columns that divide the scenes, to see saints
gathered by temples of classic form instead of Gothic. If Renaissance
details appear in a hanging called Gothic, it is easy to see that the
piece was woven after Europe was infected with modern art, and this is
an assistance in placing dates; at least, it checks the tendency to
slip back too far in antiquity, a tendency of which we in a new
country are entirely guilty.
Lest too long a lingering on the subject of design become wearisome, a
mention of later designs is made briefly. The simplicity of the early
Renaissance, the perfection of the high Renaissance, are both shown in
tapestry as well as in paintings, and so, too, is exemplified the
inflation that ended in tiresome exuberance.
After the fruit was ripe it fell into decay. After Sixteenth Century
perfection, Seventeenth Century designs fell of their own overweight,
figures were too exaggerated, draperies billowed out as in a perpetual
gale, architecture and landscapes were too important, and tapestries
became frankly pictures to attract the attention. To this class of
design belong all those monstrosities which reflected and distorted
the art of Raphael, and which have been intimately associated with
Scriptural subjects down to our own times.
After Raphael, Rubens. Familiarity with this heroic painter is the key
to placing all the magnificent designs similar to the set of _Antony
and Cleopatra_ (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).
Then came the easily recognisable designs of the French ateliers of
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. These are so frequently
brought before us as to seem almost like products of our own day. The
earlier ones seem (as ever) the purer art, the less sensual,
appealing to the more impersonal side of man, dealing in battles and
in classic subjects. Later, the drawings, becoming more directly
personal, in the time of Louis XIV portrayed events in the _Life of
the King_; in the next reign, slipping into the pleasures of the
_Royal Hunts_, from which the descent was easy into depicting nothing
higher than the soft loveliness of the fantastic life of the time as
led by those of high estate. From Lebrun to Watteau one can trace the
gradual seductive decline, where heroic ideal lowers softly in
alluring decadence into a mere tickling of the senses. And at this
time the productions of great tapestries stopped.
Before leaving the review of drawing or design, it is well to recall
that the fleeting fashions of the day usually set the models, not in
the manner of treatment which we have been considering broadly, but in
the subject of designs. For example, the tendency to religious and
morality subjects in the Gothic, the love for Greek gods and heroes in
the Renaissance, the glorification of kings and warriors at all times,
and the portrayal of royal pleasures in modern times. The months of
the year were woven in innumerable designs and formed an endless theme
for artists' ingenuity during and after the Renaissance.
BORDERS
It is but natural that, with the expansion in drawing, the freedom
given the pencil, imagination leaped outside the pictured scene and
worked fantastically on the border, and it is to the border that we
turn for many a mark of identification. The subject being a full one,
it has longer consideration in a separate chapter. First there is the
simple outlying tape, then the designed border. The early Gothic was
but a narrow line of flowers and berries; the later more sophisticated
Gothic enlarged and elaborated this same motive without introducing
another. The blossoms grew larger, the fruit fuller and the modest
cluster of berries was crowded by pears, apples and larger fruit,
until a general air of full luxury was given. The design was at first
kept neatly within bordering lines of tape, but later, overleaped them
with a flaunting leaf or mutinous flower.
Ribbons appeared early, then came fragmentary glimpses of dainty
columns which gave nice reasons for the erect upstanding of so heavy a
decoration. These all were Gothic, but what came after shows the
riotous imagination of the Renaissance. It seemed in that fruitful
time, space itself were not large enough to hold the designs within
the artist's brain. Certainly no corner of a tapestry could be left
unfilled, and not that alone, but filled with perfect pictures instead
of with a simple repeated scheme of decoration. It was in this rich
time of production that the borders of tapestries grew to exceeding
width, and were divided into squares, each square containing a scene.
These scenes were often of sufficient importance in composition to
serve as models for the centre of a tapestry, each one of them, which
thought gives a little idea of the fertility of the artists in that
untired period.
It was the delight of the great Raphael himself to expend his talent
on the border of his cartoons. From this artist others took their cue
with varying skill, but with fine effect, and with unlimited interest
to us. Those who run have time to remark only the great central
picture in a hanging; but, to those who live with it, this added line
of exquisite panorama is an unceasing delight for the contemplative
hours of solitude. From this rich departure from Gothic simplicity the
artists grew into the same fulness of design that ended in decadence.
The border became almost obnoxious in its inflated importance and from
voluptuous elegance changed to coarse overweight; and by these signs
we know the early inspired work from its rank and monstrous
aftergrowth in the Eighteenth Century.
A quick glance at the plates showing the work of tapestry's next
highwater mark, the hundred years of the Gobelins' best work,
illustrates the difference between that time and others, and shows
also the gradual drop into the border which is merely a woven
representation of a gilded wood frame to enclose the woven picture as
a painted one would be framed. The plate of _Esther and Ahasuerus_
illustrates this sort of border in the unmistakable lines of Louis XV
ornament.
POINT OF INTEREST
Allusion has been made to the placing of the point of interest in a
tapestry, but this is a matter to be studied by much exercise of the
eye. Perhaps the amateur knows already much about it, an unconscious
knowledge, and needs only to be directed to his own store of
observations. As much as anything this change of design depended on
the uses the varying civilisation made of the hangings. So much
interest lies in this that I find myself ever prone to recapitulate
the very human facts of the past; the lining of rude stone walls and
the forming of interior doors, which was the office of the early
tapestries, and the loose full draping of the same; then the gradual
increase of luxury in the finish of dwellings themselves, until
tapestries were a decoration only; and then the minimising of grandeur
under Louis XV when everything fell into miniature and tapestries were
demanded only in small pieces that could be applied to screens or
chairs--a prostitution of art to the royal demand for prettiness.
Keeping these general ideas of the uses of tapestries in mind, it is
easy to reason out the course of the point of interest in the design.
The Gothic aim was to make warm and comfortable the austere apartment;
the Renaissance sought to produce big decorative pictures to hang in
place of frescoes; and the French idea--beginning with that same
ideal--fell at last into the production of something that should
accompany the other arts in making minutely ornate the home of man.
Therefore, the Gothic artist placed the point of interest high; the
artists of the Renaissance followed the rules of modern painting (even
to the point of becoming academic); and the last good period of the
Gobelins dropped into miniature and decoration.
COLOURS
Colours we have not yet considered, in this chapter of review for
identification's sake. They follow the same line, have the same
history, and this makes the beauty, the logic and the consistency of
our work, the work of tracing to their source the products of other
men and other times.
Colours in the early Gothic--of what do they remind one so strongly as
of the marvels of old stained glass, that rich, pure kaleidoscope
which has lived so long in the atmosphere of incense ascending from
censer and from heart. The same scale, rich and simple, unafraid of
unshaded colour, characterise both glass and tapestry.
The dyeing of colours in those days was a religion, a religion that
believed in holding fast to the forefathers' tenets. Red was known to
be a goodly colour, and blue an honest one; yellow was to conjure
with, and brown to shade; but beyond twelve or perhaps twenty colours,
the dyer never ventured. To these he gave the hours of his life, with
these he subjugated the white of Kentish wool, and gave it honest and
soft into the hand of the artist-weaver who, we must add, should have
been thankful for this brief gamut. To say the least, we of to-day are
grateful, for to this we owe the effect of cathedral glass seen in old
tapestries like that of _The Sacraments_. The Renaissance having more
sophisticated tales to tell, a higher intellectual development to
portray, demanded a longer scale of colour, so more were introduced to
paint in wool the pictures of the artists. At first we see them pure
and true, then muddy, uncertain, until a dull confusion comes, and the
hanging is depressing. When, at the last, it came that a tapestry was
but a painting in wool, with as many thousand differently united
threads as would reproduce the shading of brush-blended paint, the
whole thing fell of its own weight, and we of to-day value less the
unlimited pains of the elaborate dyer and weaver than we do the
simpler work. The reason is plain. Time fades a little even the
securest dyes, and that little is just enough to reduce to flat
monotones a work in which perhaps sixty thousand tones are set in
subtle shading.
HAUTE LISSE
The worker on tapestries, the modern restorer--to whom be much
honour--finds a sign of identification in the handling of old
tapestries that is scarcely within the province of the amateur, but is
worth mentioning. It is the black tracing on the warp with which
high-warp weavers assist their work of copying the artist's cartoon.
Where this is present, the work is of the prized haute lisse or
high-warp manufacture, instead of the basse lisse or low-warp. But the
latter is not to be spoken of disparagingly, for in the admirable time
of French production about the time of the formation of the Gobelins,
low-warp work was almost as well executed as high-warp, and as much
valued. Brussels made her fame by haute-lisse, but in France the
low-warp was dubbed "_á la façon de Flandres_"; and as Flanders stood
for perfection, the weavers did their best to make the low-warp
production approach in excellence the famed work of the ateliers to
the north, which had formerly so prospered.
To find this black line is to establish the fact that the tapestry was
woven on a high-warp loom, if nothing more. But that in itself means,
as is explained in the chapter on looms and _modus operandi_, that a
superior sort of weaver, an artist-artisan, did the work, and that he
had enormous difficulties to overcome in his patient task.
A black outline woven in the fabric is one which artists prior to the
Seventeenth Century used to give greater strength to figures. It was
the habit thus to trace the entire human form, to lift it clearly from
its background, after the "poster" manner of to-day. It is as though a
dark pencil had outlined each figure. This practice stopped in later
years, and is not seen at all in the softer methods of the Gobelins.
THE WEAVE
The materials of tapestries we know to be invariably wool, silk and
metal threads, yet the weaving of these varies with the talent of the
craftsman. The manner of the oldest weavers was to produce a fabric
not too thick, flexible rather--for was it not meant to hang in
folds?--and of an engagingly even surface. It was not too fine, yet
had none of the looseness associated with the coarse, hurried work of
later and degenerate times. It was more like the even fabric we
associate with machine work, yet as unlike that as palpitating flesh
is like a graven image. It was the logical production of honest
workmen who counted time well spent if spent in taking pains.
This ability, to take detail as a religion, has left us the precious
relics of the exquisite period immediately before the Italian artists
had their way in Brussels. Notice the weave here. See the pattern of
the fabrics worn by the personages of high estate. You could almost
pluck it from the tapestry, shake out its folds, measure it flat, by
the yard, and find its delicate, intelligent pattern neat and
unbroken. Wonderful weaver, magic hands, infinite pains, were those to
produce such an effect on our sated modern vision, all with a few
threads of silk and wool and gold.
Then there is the human face--it takes an artist to describe the
various faces with their beauty of modelling, their infinite variety
of type, their subtlety of expression. You can almost see the flushing
of the capillaries under the translucent skin, so fine are the mediums
of silk and wool under the magic handling of the talented weavers in
brilliant epochs. Not a detail in one of these older canvases of the
highest Gothic development has been neglected.
The modern places his point of interest, and, knowing the observer's
eye is to obediently linger there, he splashes the rest of his drawing
into careless subserviency. But these careful older drawings showed in
every inch of their execution a conscience that might put the Puritan
to shame. Note, even, the ring that is being handed to the lady in the
Mazarin tapestry of Mr. Morgan's (if yours is the happy chance to see
it). It was not sufficient for the weaver that it be a ring, but it
must be a ring set with a jewel, and that jewel must be the one
celebrated ever for its value; so in the canvas glows a carefully
rounded spot of pigeon-blood.
This exquisitely fine weaving of the period which trembled between the
Gothic and the Renaissance made possible the execution of the later
work--and yet, and yet, who shall say that the later is the superior
work? Vaunted as it is, one turns to it because one must, but with
entire fidelity of heart for the preceding manner.
In the high period of Brussels production, when the Renaissance was
well established there, through the cartoons of the Italian artists,
it is interesting to note the richness given to surfaces solidly
filled in with gold by throwing the thread in groups of four. The
light is thus caught and reflected, almost as though from a heap of
cut topaz. This characterises the tapestries of the _Mercury_ series
in the Blumenthal collection.
Naturally, the evenness of the weaving has much to do with the value
of the piece--otherwise the pains of the old weavers would have been
futile. The surface smooth, free from lumps or ridges, strong with the
even strength of well-matched threads, this is the beauty that
characterises the best work this side of the Fifteenth Century.
It is the especial prerogative of the merchant to touch with his own
hands a great number of tapestries. It is by this handling of the
fabric that he acquires a skill in determining the make of many a
tapestry. There is an indefinable quality about certain wools, and
about the manner of their weaving that is only revealed by the touch.
Not all hands are wise to detect, but only those of the sympathetic
lover of the materials they handle--and I have found many such among
the merchant collector. But even he finds identification a task as
difficult as it is interesting, and spends hours of thought and
research before arriving at a conclusion--and even then will retract
on new evidence.
COPIES
There are certain pitfalls into which one may so easily fall that they
must never be out of mind. The worst of these, the pit which has the
most engaging and innocent entrance, is that of the copy, the modern
tapestry copied from the old a few decades ago.
It is easy to find by reference to the huge volumes of French writers
on tapestry just when certain sets of cartoons were first woven. Take,
for example, the _Acts of the Apostles_ by Raphael; Brussels, 1519, is
the authentic date. But after that the Mortlake factory in England
wove a set, and others followed. This instance is too historic to be
entirely typical, but there are others less known. It was the habit of
factories that possessed a valuable set of cartoons to repeat the
production of these in their own factory, and also to make some
arrangement whereby other factories could also produce the same set of
hangings.
In the evil days that fell upon Brussels after her apogee, copying her
own works took the place of new matters. Also, in the French factories
in their prime, the same set was repeated on the same looms and on
different ones, _vide_ _The Months_, _The Royal Residences_, _History of
Alexander_, etc., and the gorgeous _Life of Marie de Medici_. If these
notable examples were copied it is safe to conclude that many others
were.
The study of marks is left for another chapter, for, by this time,
even the enthusiast is wearying. There seems so much to learn in this
matter of investigating and identifying, and, after all, everything is
uncertain. One looks about at identified pieces in museums and private
collections, even among the dealers, and the discouraging thought
comes that other people can tell at a glance. But this is very far
from being true.
Even the savant studies long and investigates much before he gives a
positive classification of a piece that is not "pedigreed." Here is a
Flemish piece, here is a French, he will declare, and for the life of
you you cannot see the ear-marks that tell the ancestry. And so in all
humility you ask, "How can you tell with a glance of the eye?" But he
does not. No one can do that in every case. He must spend days at it,
reflecting, reading, handling, if the piece is evidently one of value.
He will show you, perhaps, as an honest dealer-collector showed me, a
set of five fine pieces which he could not identify at all. "The
weave," said he, "is Mortlake, the design in part German, these are
Italian _putti_--yet when all is told, I put down the work as an
Eighteenth Century copy of decadent Renaissance. But I am far from
sure."
If a dealer, surrounded by experienced helpers, can thus be
nonplussed, there is little cause for humiliation on the part of the
amateur who hesitates. It is not expected that one can know at a
glance whether a piece of work was executed in France, or in Flanders
at a given epoch. But the more difficult the work of identification,
the keener the zest of the hunt. It is then that one calls into
requisition all the knowledge of art that the individual has been
unconsciously accumulating all the years of his life. The applied
arts reflect the art feeling of the age to which they belong, and the
diluted influence of the great artists directs them. This is true of
drawing and of colour.
History has ever its reflection on arts and crafts, but perhaps it has
in tapestry its most intentional record. It is a forced and deliberate
piece of egoism when a monarch or a conqueror has a huge picture drawn
exhibiting his grandeur in battle or his elegance at home. In some
hangings modesty limits to the border of an imaginary and decorative
scene the monogram of the heroine of history for whose apartments the
tapestry was woven. And so history is given a grace, a delicate
meaning, a warm interest, which is one of the side-gardens of delight
that show from the long path of identification study.
This little book has as its aim the gentle purpose of pointing the way
to a knowledge that shall be a guide in knowing gold from--not from
dross, that is too simple, but gold from gold-plating let us say, for
the mad lover of tapestries will not admit that any hand-woven
tapestry is on the low level of dross. Any work which human hands have
touched and lingered on in execution is deserving of the respect of
the modern whose life must of necessity be lived in hasty execution.
Every chapter, then, is but a caution or a counsel, and this one but a
briefer statement of the same matter. If onto the fringe of the main
thought hangs much of history, it is history inseparable from it, for
history of nations gives the history of great men, and these regulate
the doings of all the lesser ones below them.
Identification, pure and simple, is for the rapt lover of art who
pursues his game in museums and has his quiet delights that others
little dream of. But in general, to the practical yet cultivated
American, it is a means to expend wisely the derided dollars that we
impress upon other nations to the artistic enrichment of our own
country.
CHAPTER XX
BORDERS
If the artists of tapestries had never drawn nor ever woven anything
but the borders that frame them, we would have in that department
alone sufficient matter for happy investigation and acutely refined
pleasure. I even go so far as to think that in certain epochs the
border is the whole matter, and the main design is but an enlargement
of one of the many motives of which it is composed. But that is in one
particularly rich era, and in good time we shall arrive at its joys.
First then--for the orderly mind grows stubborn and confused at any
beginning that begins in the middle--we must hark back to the earliest
tapestries. Tracing the growth of the border is a pleasant pastime, a
game of history in which amorini, grotesques and nymphs are the
personages, and garlands of flowers their perpetual accessories, but
first comes the time when there were no borders, the Middle Ages.
There were none, according to modern parlance, but it was usual to
edge each hanging with a tape of monotone, a woven galloon of quiet
hue, which had two purposes; one, to finish neatly the work, as the
housewife hems a napkin; the other, to provide space of simple
material for hanging on rude hooks the big pictured surface.
This latter consideration was one of no small importance, as we can
readily see by sending the thought back to the time when tapestries
led a very different life (so human they seem in their association
with men that the expression must be allowed) from that of to-day,
when they are secured to stretchers, or lined, or even framed behind
glass like an easel painting.
In those other times of romance and chivalry a great man's tapestries
were always en route. Like their owner, they were continually going on
long marches, nor were they allowed to rest long in one place. From
the familiar castle walls they were taken down to line the next
habitat of their owner, and that might be the castle of some other
lord, or it might be the tent of an encampment. Again, it might be
that an open-air exposition for a pageant, was the temporary use.
The tapestries thus bundled about, forever hung and unhung on hooks
well or ill-spaced, handled roughly by unknowing varlets or dull
soldiers, these tapestries suffered much, even to the point of
dilapidation, and thus arose the need for a tape border, and thus it
happens also that the relics of that time are found mainly among the
religious pieces. These last found safe asylum within convent walls or
in the sombre quiet of cathedral shades, and like all who dwell within
such precincts were protected from contact with a rude world.
One day, sitting solitary at his wools, it occurred to the weaver of
the early Fifteenth Century to spill some of his flowers out upon the
dark galloon that edged his work. The effect was charming. He
experimented further, went into the enchanted wood of such a design as
that of _The Lady and the Unicorn_ to pluck more flowers, and of them
wove a solid garland, symmetrical, strong, with which to frame the
picture. To keep from confounding this with the airy bells and starry
corollas of the tender inspiring blossoms of the work, he made them
bolder, trained them to their service in solid symmetric mass, and
edged the whole, both sides, with the accustomed two-inch line of
solid rich maroon or blue.
It is easy to see the process of mind. For a long time there had been
gropings, the feeling that some sort of border was needed, a division
line between the world of reality and the world of fable. Examine the
Arras work and see to what tricks the artist had recourse. The
architectural resource of columns, for example; where he could do so,
the artist decoyed one to the margin. Thus he slipped in a frame, and
broke none of the canons of his art, and no more beautiful frame could
have been devised, as we see by following up the development and use
of the column. Once out from its position in the edge of the picture
into its post in the border, it never stops in its beauty of growth
until it reaches such perfection as is seen in the twisted and
garlanded columns which flank the Rubens series, and those superb
shafts in _The Royal Residences_ of Lebrun at the Gobelins under Louis
XIV.
The other trick of framing in his subject which was open to the Arras
weaver whom we call Gothic, was to set verses, long lines of print in
French or Latin at top or bottom.
But his first real legitimate border was made of the same flowers and
leaves that made graceful the finials and capitals of Gothic carving.
Small clustered fruit, like grapes or berries, came naturally mixed
with these, as Nature herself gives both fruit and flowers upon the
earth in one fair month.
Simplicity was the thing, and a continued turning to Nature, not as to
a cult like a latter-day nature-student, but as a child to its mother,
or a hart to the water brook. As even in a border, stayed between two
lines of solid-coloured galloon, flowers and fruit do not stand
forever upright without help, the weaver gave probability to his
abundant mass by tying it here and there with a knot of ribbon and
letting the ribbon flaunt itself as ribbons have ever done to the
delight of the eye that loves a truant.
By this time--crawling over the top of the Fourteen Hundreds--the
border had grown wider, had left its meagre allowance of three or four
inches, and was fast acquiring a foot in width. This meant more
detail, a broader design, coarser flowers, bigger fruit, and these
spraying over the galloon, and all but invading the picture. It was
all in the way of development. The simplicity of former times was
lost, but design was groping for the great change, the change of the
Renaissance.
The border tells quickly when it dawned, and when its light put out
all candles like a glorious sun--not forgetting that some of those
candles would better have been left burning. By this time Brussels was
the centre of manufacture and the cartoonist had come to influence all
weavings. Just as carpenters and masons, who were the planners and
builders of our forefathers' homes, have now to submit to the
domination of the _École des Beaux Arts_ graduates, so the man at the
loom came under the direction of Italian artists. And even the border
was not left to the mind of the weaver, but was carefully and
consistently planned by the artist to accompany his greater work, if
greater it was.
Raphael himself set that fashion. He was a born decorator, and in
laying out the borders of his tapestries unbridled his wonderful
invention and let it produce as many harmonies as could be crowded
into miniature. He set the fashion of dividing the border into as many
sections as symmetry would allow, dividing them so daintily that the
eye scarce notes the division, so purely is it of the intellect. In
the border for the _Acts of the Apostles_, this style of treatment is
the one he preferred. This set has no copy in America, but an almost
unrivalled example of this style of border is in the private
collection of George Blumenthal, Esq., the _Herse and Mercury_.[16]
Here picture follows picture in charming succession, in that purity
and perfection of design with which the early Renaissance delights us.
The classic note set by the subject of the hanging is never forgotten,
but on this key is played a varied harmony of line and colour. For
dainty invention, this sort of border reaches a very high expression
of art.
If Raphael set the fashion, others at least were not slow in seizing
the new idea and from that time on, until a period much later--that of
the Gobelins under Louis XV--it was the fashion to introduce great and
distracting interest into the border. Even the little galloon became a
twist of two ribbons around a repeated flower, or a small reciprocal
pattern, so covetous was design of all plain spaces.
Lesser artists than Raphael also divided the border into squares and
oblongs, and with charming effect. The sides were built up after the
same fashion, but instead of the delicate architectural divisions he
affected, partitions were made with massed fruit and flowers, vines
and trellises. The scenes were surprisingly dramatic, Flemish artists
showing a preference for such Biblical reminders as Samson with his
head being shorn in Delilah's lap, while Philistines just beyond
waited the enervating result of the barber's work; or, any of the
loves and conflicts of the Greek myths was used.
The colouring--too much cannot be seen of the warm, delicate
blendings. There is always the look of a flowerbed at dawn, before
Chanticleer's second call has brought the sun to sharpen outlines,
before dreams and night-mist have altogether quitted the place. Plenty
of warm wood colours are there, of lake blues, of smothered reds.
Precious they are to the eye, these scenes, but hard to find now
except in bits which some dealer has preserved by framing in a screen
or in the carved enclosure of some nut-wood chair.
For a time borders continued thus, all marked off without conscious
effort, into countless delicious scenes. Then a change begins. After
perfection, must come something less until the wave rises again. If in
Raphael's time the border claimed a two-foot strip for its imaginings,
it was slow in coming narrower again, and need required that it be
filled. But here is where the variance lay: Raphael had so much to
say that he begged space in which to portray it; his imitators had so
much space to fill that their heavy imagination bungled clumsily in
the effort. They filled it, then, with a heterogeneous mass of
foliage, fruit and flowers, trained occasionally to make a bower for a
woman, a stand for a warrior, but all out of scale, never keeping to
any standard, and lost absolutely in unintelligent confusion.
The Flemings in their decadence did this, and the Italians in the
Seventeenth Century did more, they introduced all manner of cartouche.
The cartouche plays an important part in the boasting of great
families and the sycophancy of those who cater to men of high estate,
for it served as a field whereon to blazon the arms of the patron, who
doubtless felt as man has from all time, that he must indeed be great
whose symbols or initials are permanently affixed to art or
architecture. The cartouche came to divide the border into medallions,
to apportion space for the various motives; but with a far less subtle
art than that of the older men who traced their airy arbours and
trailed their dainty vines and set their delicate grotesques, in a
manner half playful and wholly charming.
But when the cartouche appeared, what is the effect? It is as though a
boxful of old brooches had been at hand and these were set,
symmetrically balanced, around the frame, and the spaces between
filled with miscellaneous ornament on a scale of sumptuous size.
Confusing, this, and a far cry from harmony. Yet, such are the
seductions of tapestry in colour and texture, and so caressing is the
hand of time, that these borders of the Seventeenth Century given us
by Italy and Flanders, are full of interest and beauty.
The very bombast of them gives joy. Who can stand before the Barberini
set, _The Mysteries of the Life and Death of Jesus Christ_, bequeathed
to the Cathedral of St. John, the Divine, in New York, by Mrs. Clarke,
without being more than pleased to recognise in the border the
indefatigable Barberini bee? We are human enough to glance at the
pictures of sacred scenes as on a tale that is told, but that potent
insect makes us at once acquainted with a family of renown, puts us on
a friendly footing with a great cardinal of the house, reminds us of
sundry wanderings of our own in Rome; and then, suddenly flashes from
its wings a memory of the great conqueror of Europe, who after the
Italian campaign, set this bee among his own personal symbols and
called it Napoleonic. Yes, these things interest us enormously,
personally, for they pique imagination and help memory to fit together
neatly the wandering bits of history's jigsaw puzzle. Besides this,
they help the work of identifying old tapestries, a pleasure so keen
that every sense is enlivened thereby.
When decorative design deserts the Greek example, it strays on
dangerous ground, unless Nature is the model. The Italians of the
Seventeenth Century, tired of forever imitating and copying, lost all
their refinement in the effort to originate. Grossness, sensuality
took the place of fine purity in border designs. Inflation, so to
speak, replaced inspiration.
Amorini--the word can hardly be used without suggesting the gay babes
who tumble deliciously among Correggio's clouds or who snatch flowers
in ways of grace, on every sort of decoration. In these later
drawings, these tapestry borders of say 1650, they are monsters of
distortion, and resemble not at all the rosy child we know in the
flesh. They are overfed, self-indulgent, steeped in the wisdom of a
corrupt and licentious experience. I cannot feel that anyone should
like them, except as curiosities of a past century.
Heavy swags of fruit, searching for larger things, changed to
pumpkins, melons, in the gross fashion of enlarged designs for
borders. Almost they fell of their own weight. Cornucopias spilled
out, each one, the harvest of an acre. And thus paucity of imagination
was replaced by increase in the size of each object used in filling up
the border's allotted space.
After this riot had continued long enough in its inebriety, the
corrective came through the influence of Rubens in the North and of
Lebrun in France. These two geniuses knew how to gather into their
control the art strength of their age, and to train it into
intellectual results. Mere bulk, mere space-filling, had to give way
under the mind force of these two men, who by their superb invention
gave new standards to decorative art in Flanders and in France.
Drawings were made in scale again, and designs were built in harmony,
constructed not merely to catch the eye, but to gratify the logical
mind.
The day was for the grandiose in borders. The petite and _mignonne_ of
Raphael's grotesques was no longer suited to the people, or, to put
it otherwise, the people were not such as seek expression in
refinement, for all art is but the visible evidence of a state of mind
or soul.
The wish to be sumptuous and superb, then, was a force, and so the art
expressed it, but in a way that holds our admiration. A stroll in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shows us better than words the
perfection of design at this grandiose era. There one sees _Antony and
Cleopatra_ of Rubens--probably. On these hangings the border has all
the evidences of genius. If there were no picture at all to enclose,
if there were but this decorative frame, a superb inspiration would be
flaunted. From substantial urns at right and left, springs the design
at the sides which mounts higher and higher, design on design, but
always with probability. That is the secret of its beauty, its
probability, yet we are cheated all the time and like it. No vase of
fruit could ever uphold a cupid's frolic, nor could an emblematic bird
support a chalice, yet the artist makes it seem so. Note how he hangs
his swags, and swings his amorini, from the horizontal borders. He
first sets a good strong architectural moulding of classic
egg-and-dart, and leaf, and into this able motive thrusts hooks and
rings. From these solid facts he hangs his happy weight of fruit and
flower and peachy flesh. Nothing could be more simple, nothing could
be more logical. The cartouche at the top, he had no choice but to put
it there, to hold the title of the picture, and at the bottom came a
tiny landscape to balance. So much for fashion well executed.
Colours were reformed, too, at this time, for we are now at the era
when tapestry had its last run of best days, that is to say, at the
time when France began her wondrous ascendency under Louis XIV. In
Italy colours had grown garish. Too much light in that country of the
sun, flooded and over-coloured its pictured scenes. Tints were too
strong, masses of blue and yellow and red glared all in tones purely
bright. They may have suited the twilight of the church, the gloom of
a palace closed in narrow streets, but they scourge the modern eye as
does a blasting light. The Gothic days gave borders the deep soft
tones of serious mood; the Renaissance played on a daintier scale; the
Seventeenth Century rushed into too frank a palette.
It remained for Rubens and Lebrun to find a scheme both rich and
subdued, to bring back the taste errant. Here let me note a
peculiarity of colour, noticeable in work of Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Century borders. The colour tone varies in different pieces
of the same set, and this is not the result of fading, but was done by
deliberate intent, one side border being light and another dark, or
one entire border being lighter than others of the same set.
Lest in speaking of borders, too much reference might be made to the
history of tapestry in general, I have left out Simon Vouet and Henri
Lerambert as inspired composers of the frame which enclosed their
cartoons; but it is well to say briefly that these men at least had
not followed false gods, and were not guilty of the flagrant offence
to taste that put a smirch on Italian art. These are the men who
preceded the establishment of State ateliers under Louis XIV and who
made productive the reign of Henri IV.
If Rubens kept to a style of large detail, that was a popular one and
had many followers in a grandiose age. Lebrun in borders harked back
to the classics of Greece and Rome, thus restoring the exquisite
quality of delicacy associated with a thousand designs of amphoræ,
foliated scrolls and light grotesques. But he expressed himself more
individually and daringly in the series called _The Months_ and _The
Royal Residences_. This set is so celebrated, so delectable, so
grateful to the eye of the tapestry lover, that familiarity with it
must be assumed. You recollect it, once you have seen no more than a
photograph of one of its squares. But it cannot be pertinent here, for
it has no important border, say you. No, rather it is all border. Look
what the cunning artist has done. His problem was to picture twelve
country houses. To his mind it must have seemed like converting a room
into an architect's office, to hang it full of buildings. But genius
came to the front, his wonderful feeling for decoration, and lo, he
filled his canvas with glorious foreground, full of things man lives
with; columns, the size appropriate to the salon they are placed in;
urns, peacocks, all the ante-terrace frippery of the grand age,
arranged in the foreground. Garlands are fresh hung on the columns as
though our decorator had but just posed them, and beyond are clustered
trees--with a small opening for a vista. Way off in the light-bathed
distance stands the faithfully drawn château, but here, here where the
observer stands, is all elegance and grace and welcome shade, and
close friendship with luxury.
This work of Lebrun's is then the epitome of border. Greater than this
hath no man done, to make a tapestry all border which yet so
intensified the value of the small central design, that not even the
royal patron, jealous of his own conspicuousness, discovered that art
had replaced display.
After that a great change came. As the picture ever regulates the
border, that change was but logical. After the "Sun King" came the
regency of the effeminate Philippe, whom the Queen Mother had kept
more like a court page than a man. Artists lapped over from the
previous reign, and these were encouraged to develop the smaller,
daintier, more effeminate designs that had already begun to assert
their charm. Borders took on the new method. And as small space was
needed for the curves and shells and latticed bands, the border
narrower grew.
Like Alice, after the potent dose, the border shrank and shrank, until
in time it became a gold frame, like the _encadrement_ of any easel
picture. And that, too, was logical, for tapestries became at this
time like painted pictures, and lost their original significance of
undulating hangings.
The well-known motives of the Louis XV decoration rippled around the
edge of the tapestry, woven in shades of yellow silk and imitated well
the carved and gilded wood of other frames, those of chairs and
screens and paintings. There are those who deplore the mode, but at
least it seems appropriate to the style of picture it encloses.
And here let us consider a moment this matter of appropriateness. So
far we have thought only of tapestries and their borders as
inseparable, and as composed at the same time. But, alas, this is the
ideal; the fact is that in the habit which weavers had of repeating
their sets when a model proved a favourite among patrons, led them
into providing variety by setting up a different border around the
drawing. As this reproducing, this copying of old cartoons was
sometimes done one or two hundred years after the original was drawn,
we find an anachronism most disagreeable to one who has an orderly
mind, who hates to see a telephone in a Venus' shell, for instance.
The whole thing is thrown out of key. It is as though your old family
portrait of the Colonial Governor was framed in "art nouveau."
The big men, the almost divine Raphael, and later Rubens, felt so
keenly the necessity of harmony between picture and frame, that they
were not above drawing their own borders, and it is evident they
delighted in the work. But Raphael's cartoons went not only to
Brussels, but elsewhere, and somehow the borders got left behind; and
thus we see his celebrated suite of _Acts of the Apostles_ with a
different entourage in the Madrid set from what it bears in Rome.
There is another matter, and this has to do with commerce more than
art. An old tapestry is of such value that mere association with it
adds to the market price of newer work. So it is that sometimes a
whole border is cut off and transferred to an inferior tapestry, and
the tapestry thus denuded is surrounded with a border woven nowadays
in some atelier of repairs, copied from an old design.
Let such desecrators beware. The border of a tapestry must appertain,
must be an integral part of the whole design for the sake of artistic
harmony.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] Frontispiece.
CHAPTER XXI
TAPESTRY MARKS
Regardless of what a man's longing for fame may have been in the
Middle Ages, he let his works pass into the world without a sign upon
them that portrayed their author. This is as true of the lesser arts
as of the greater. It was not the fashion in the days of Giotto, nor
of Raphael, to sign a painting in vermillion with a flourished
underscore. The artist was content to sink individuality in the
general good, to work for art's sake, not for personal fame.
This was true of the lesser artists who wove or directed the weaving
of the tapestries called Gothic, not only through the time of the
simple earnest primitives, but through the brilliant high development
of that style as shown at the studio of Jean de Rome, of the Brussels
ateliers, through the years lying between the close of the Fifteenth
Century and the Raphael invasion.
Even that important event brought no consequence of that sort. The
freemasonry among celebrities in those days showed its perfection by
this very lack of signed work. Everybody knew the man by his works,
and the works by their excellence.
Tapestry marks were non-existent as a system until the Brussels edict
of 1528 made them compulsory in that town. Documents and history have
been less unkind to those early workers, and to those of us who like
to feel the thrill of human brotherhood as it connects the artist and
craftsman centuries dead with our own strife for the ideal. Nicolas
Bataille in 1379 cannot remain unknown since the publishing of certain
documents concerning his Christmas task of the _Apocalypse_, and there
are scores of known master weavers reaching up through the ages to the
time when marks began.
The Brussels mark was the first. It was a simple and appropriate
composition, a shield flanked with two letters B. These were capitals
or not. One was reversed or not, with little arbitrariness, for the
mark was legible and unmistakable in any case, even though the weaver
took great liberties--as he sometimes did. The place for this mark was
the galloon, and it was usually executed in a lighter colour, but a
single tone.
[Illustration: BRUSSELS]
So much for the town mark, which has a score or more of variations. In
addition to this was the mark of the weaver or of the merchant who
gave the commission. A pity it was thus to confound the two, to give
such confusion between a gifted craftsman and a mere dealer. One was
giving the years of his life and the cunning of his hand to the work,
while the other did but please a rich or royal patron with his wares.
But so it was, and we can but study over the symbols and glean at
least that the tapestry was considered a worthy one, reached the high
standard of the day, or it would have had no mark at all.
For it was thus that the marks were first adopted. They were for the
protection of every one against fraud. High perfection made Brussels
famous, but fame brought with it such a rush of patronage that only by
lessening the quality of productions could orders be filled in such
hot haste.
Tricks of the trade grew and prospered; there were tricks of dyeing
after a tapestry was finished, in case the flesh tints or other light
shades were not pleasing. There was a trick of dividing a large square
into strips so that several looms might work upon it at once. And
there was all manner of slighting in the weave, in the use of the comb
which makes close the fabric, in the setting of the warp to make a
less than usual number of threads to the inch. In fact, men tricked
men as much in those days as in our own.
The fame of the city's industry was in danger. It was the province of
the guild of tapestry-makers to protect it against its own evils.
Thus, in 1528, a few years after the weaving of the Raphael
tapestries, the law was made that all tapestries should bear the
Brussels mark and that of the weaver or the client. Small tapestries
were exempt, but at that time small tapestries were not frequent, or
were simple verdures, and, charming as they are, they lacked the same
intellectual effort of composition.
The Brussels guild stipulated the size at which the tapestry should be
marked. It was given at six ells, a Flemish ell being about 27½
inches. Therefore, a tapestry under approximately thirteen feet might
escape the order. But that was the day of large tapestries, the day
of the Italian cartoonists, and important pieces reached that measure.
The guild of the tapissiers in Brussels, once started on restrictions,
drew article after article, until it seemed that manacles were put on
the masters' hands. To these restrictions the decadence of Brussels is
ascribed, but that were like laying a criminal's fault to the laws of
the country. Primarily must have been the desire to shirk, the intent
to do questionable work. And behind that must have been a basic cause.
Possibly it was one of those which we are apt to consider modern, that
is, the desire to turn effort into the coin of the realm. All of the
enormous quantity of orders received by Brussels in the days of her
highest prosperity could not have been accepted had not the master of
the ateliers pressed his underlings to highest speed.
Speed meant deterioration in quality of work, and so Brussels tried by
laws to prevent this lamentable result, and to protect the fair fame
of the symbol woven in the bordering galloon. The other sign which
accompanied the town mark, of the two letters B, should have had
excellent results, the personal mark of the weaver that his work might
be known.
In spite of this spur to personal pride, the standard lessened in a
few years, but not until certain weavers had won a fame that thrills
even at this distance. Unfortunately, a great client was considered as
important as a weaver, and it was often his arbitrary sign that was
woven. And sometimes a dealer, wishing glory through his dealings,
ordered his sign in the galloon. And thus comes a long array of signs
which are not identifiable always. In general, one or two initials
were introduced into these symbols, which were fanciful designs that
any idle pencil might draw, but in the lapse of years it is not
possible to know which able weaver or what great purveyor to royalty
the letter A or B or C may have signified.
Happily the light of Wilhelm de Pannemaker could not be hid even by
piling centuries upon it. His works were of such a nature that, like
those of Van Aelst, who had no mark, they would always be known for
their historic association. In illustration, there is his set of the
_Conquest of Tunis_ (plate facing page 62), woven under circumstances
of interest. Even without a mark, it would still be known that the
master weaver of Brussels (whom all acknowledged Pannemaker to be) set
up his looms, so many that it must have seemed to the folk of Granada
that a new industry had come to live among them. And it is a matter of
Spanish history that the great Emperor Charles V carried in his train
the court artist, Van Orley, that his exploits be pictured for the
gratification of himself and posterity.
But Wilhelm de Pannemaker lived and worked in the time of marks, so
his tapestries bear his sign in addition to the Brussels mark. Of
symbols he had as many as nine or ten, but all of the same general
character, taking as their main motive the W and the P of his name.
[Illustration: WILHELM DE PANNEMAKER]
Incorporated into his sign, as into many others of the period, was a
mark resembling a figure 4. Tradition has it that when this four was
reversed, the tapestry was not for a private client, but for a dealer.
One set of the _Vertumnus and Pomona_ at Madrid (plates facing pages
72, 73, 74, 75) bears De Pannemaker's mark, while others have a
conglomerate pencilling.
The sign of Jacques Geubels is, like W. de Pannemaker's, made up of
his initials combined with fantastic lines which doubtless were full
of meaning to their inventor, little as they convey to us. The example
of Jacques Geubels' weaving given in the plate is from the Chicago
Institute of Art. His time was late Sixteenth Century.
The _Acts of the Apostles_ of Raphael, the first set, was woven by
Peter van Aelst without a mark, but the set at Madrid bears the marks
of several Brussels weavers, some attributed to Nicolas Leyniers.
The desirability of distinguishing tapestries by marks in the galloon
appealed to other weaving centres, and the method of Brussels found
favour outside that town. Presently Bruges adopted a sign similar to
that of her neighbour, by adding to the double B and shield a small b
traversed by a crown.
[Illustration: JACQUES GEUBELS]
[Illustration: NICOLAS LEYNIERS]
[Illustration: BRUGES]
In Oudenarde, that town of wonderful verdures, the weavers, as though
by trick of modesty, often avoided such clues to identity as a woven
letter might be, and adopted signs. However significant and famous
they may have been in the Sixteenth Century, they mean little now. The
town mark with which these were combined was distinctly a striped
shield with decoration like antennæ.
[Illustration: OUDENARDE]
Enghien is one of the tapestry towns of which we are gradually
becoming aware. Its products have not always been recognised, but of
late more interest is taken in this tributary to the great stream of
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
The famous Peter or Pierre van Aelst, selected from all of Flanders'
able craftsmen to work for Raphael and the Pope, was born in this
little town, wove here and, more yet, was known as Pierre of Enghien.
Yet it is the larger town of Brussels which wore his laurels.
[Illustration: ENGHIEN]
The Enghien town marks are an easy adaptation of the arms of the
place, and the weavers' marks are generally monograms.
Weavers' marks, after playing about the eccentricities of cipher,
changed in the Seventeenth Century to easily read initials, sometimes
interlaced, sometimes apart. Later on it became the mode to weave the
entire name. An example of these is the two letters C of Charles de
Comans on the galloon of _Meleager and Atalanta_ (plate facing page
68); and the name G. V. D. Strecken in the _Antony and Cleopatra_
(plate facing page 79).
Other countries than Flanders were wise in their generation, and
placed the marks that are so welcome to the eye of the modern who
seeks to know all the secrets of the tapestry before him. In the
Seventeenth Century, when Paris was gathering her scattered decorative
force for later demonstration at the Gobelins, the city had a pretty
mark for its own, a simple fleur-de-lis and the initial P, and the
initials of the weaver.
[Illustration: PARIS]
[Illustration: ALEX. DE COMANS]
[Illustration: CHARLES DE COMANS]
That Jean Lefèvre, who with his father Pierre was imported into Italy
to set the mode of able weaving for the Florentines, had a sign
unmistakable on the Gobelins tapestries of the _History of the King_.
(Plate facing page 114.) It was a simple monogram or union of his
initials. In the Eighteenth Century the Gobelins took the fleur-de-lis
of Paris, and its own initial letter G. The modern Gobelins' marks
combined the G with an implement of the craft, a _broche_ and a
straying thread.
[Illustration: JEAN LEFÈVRE]
[Illustration: GOBELINS, 18TH CENTURY]
[Illustration: GOBELINS, MODERN]
In Italy, in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, we find the able
Flemings, Nicholas Karcher and John Rost, using their personal marks
after the manner of their country. Karcher thus signed his
marvellously executed grotesques of Bacchiacca which hang in the
gallery of tapestries in Florence. (Plates facing pages 48 and 49.)
John Rost's fancy led him to pun upon his name by illustrating a fowl
roasting on the spit. Karcher had a little different mark in the
Ferrara looms, where he went at the call of the d'Este Duke.
[Illustration: KARCHER, FLORENCE]
[Illustration: JOHN ROST]
[Illustration: KARCHER, FERRARA]
The Florence factory made a mark of its own, refreshingly simple,
avoiding all of the cabalistic intricacies that are so often made
meaningless by the passing of the years, and which were affected by
the early Brussels weavers. The mark found on Florence tapestries is
the famous Florentine lily, and the initial of the town. The mark of
Pierre Lefèvre, when weaving here, was a combination of letters.
[Illustration: PIERRE LEFÈVRE, FLORENCE]
[Illustration: MORTLAKE]
When the Mortlake factory was established in England, the date was
sufficiently late, 1619, for marking to be considered a necessity. The
factory mark was a simple shield quartered by means of a cross thrown
thereon. Sir Francis Crane contented himself with a simple F. C., one
a-top the other, as his identification. Philip de Maecht, he whose
family went from Holland to England as tapissiers, directed at
Mortlake the weaving of a part of the celebrated _Vulcan_ and _Venus_
series, and his monogram can be seen on _The Expulsion of Vulcan from
Olympus_ (coloured plate facing page 170), owned by Mrs. A. von
Zedlitz, as well as in the other rare _Vulcan_ pieces owned by Philip
Hiss, Esq. This same Philip de Maecht worked under De Comans in Paris,
he having been decoyed thence by the wise organisers of Mortlake.
[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS CRANE]
[Illustration: PHILIP DE MAECHT]
The marks on tapestries are as numerous as the marks on china or
silver, and the absence of marks confronts the hunter of signs with
baffling blankness, as is the case of many very old wares, whether
china, silver or tapestries. Also, late work of poor quality is
unmarked. Having thus disposed of the situation, it remains to
identify the marks when they exist. The exhaustive works of the French
writers must be consulted for this pleasure. There are hundreds of
known signs, but there exist also many unidentified signs, yet the
presence of a sign of any kind is a keen joy to the owner of a hanging
which displays it.
[Illustration: TOURNAY]
[Illustration: LILLE]
CHAPTER XXII
HOW IT IS MADE
Wanting to see the wheels go 'round is a desire not limited to babes.
We, with our minds stocked with the history and romance of tapestry,
yet want to know just how it is made in every particular, just how the
loom works, how the threads are placed.
It seems that there must be some obscure and occult secret hidden
within the looms that work such magic, and we want to pluck it out,
lay it in the sunlight and dissect its intricacies. Well, then, let us
enter a tapestry factory and see what is there. But it is safe to
forecast the final deduction--which must ever be that the god of
patience is here omnipotent. Talent there must be, but even that is
without avail if patience lacks.
The factory for tapestries seems, then, little like a factory. The
belt and wheel, the throb and haste are not there. The whole place
seems like a quiet school, where tasks are done in silence broken by
an occasional voice or two. It is a place where every one seems bent
on accomplishing a brave amount of fancy-work; a kindergarten, if you
like, for grown-ups.
Within are many departments of labour. The looms are the thing, of
course, so must be considered first, although much preparing is done
before their work can be begun.
The looms are classic in their method, in their simplicity. They have
scarcely changed since the days when Solomon built his Temple and
draped it with such gorgeous hangings that even the inspired writers
digress to emphasise their richness with long descriptions that could
not possibly have assisted the cause of their religion.
The stitch made by the modern loom is the same as that made by the
looms of the furthermost-back Egyptian, by the Greeks, by the Chinese,
of primitive peoples everywhere, by the people of the East in the
familiar Khelim rugs, and by the aborigines of the two Americas. There
is nothing new, nothing obscure about it, being a simple weaving of
warp and woof. Penelope's loom was the same almost as that in use
to-day at the Gobelins factory in Paris. Archeologists have discovered
pictures of the ancient Egyptian loom, and of Penelope's, and there is
but little change from the times of these ladies to our days.
The fact is, the work is hand-work, must always be so, and the loom is
but a tool for its working, a tool which keeps in place the threads
set by hand. That is why tapestry must always be valuable and original
and no more possible to copy by machine than is a painting.
High warp and low warp are the terms so often used as to seem a
shibboleth. _Haute lisse_ and _basse lisse_ are their French
equivalents. They describe the two kinds of looms, the former
signifying the loom which stands upright, or high; the latter
indicating the loom which is extended horizontally or low. On the high
loom, the instrument which holds the thread is called the _broche_,
and on the low loom it is called the _flute_.
The stitch produced by the two is the same. The manner of producing
it varies in convenience to the operators, the low-warp being the
easier, or at least the more convenient and therefore the quicker
method.
The cynic is ever ready to say that the tyrant living within a man
declares only for those things which represent great sacrifice of time
and effort on the part of other men. Perhaps it is true, and that
therein lies the preference of the connoisseur in tapestry for the
works of the high-warp loom. Even the wisest experts cannot always
tell by an examination of a fabric, on which sort of loom it was
woven, high warp or low, other evidence being excluded.
The high loom has, then, the threads of its warp hung like a weighted
veil, from the top of the loom to the floor, with a huge wooden roller
to receive the finished fabric at the bottom and one at the top for
the yet unneeded threads. Each thread of the warp is caught by a loop,
which in turn is fastened to a movable bar, and by means of this the
worker is able to advance or withdraw the alternate threads for the
casting of the _broche_ or _flute_, which is the shuttle. Behind the
veil of the warp sits the weaver--_tissier_ or _tapissier_--with his
supply of coloured thread; back of him is the cartoon he is copying.
He can only see his work by means of a little mirror the other side of
his warp, which reflects it. The only indulgence that convenience
accords him is a tracing on the white threads of the warp, a copy of
the picture he is weaving. Thus stands the prisoner of art, sentenced
to hard labour, but with the heart-swelling joy of creating, to
lighten his task.
[Illustration: WEAVER AT WORK ON LOW LOOM. HERTER STUDIO]
[Illustration: SEWING AND REPAIR DEPARTMENT. BAUMGARTEN ATELIERS]
High-warp looms were those that made famous the tapestries of Arras in
the Fifteenth Century, of Brussels in the Sixteenth, and of Paris in
the Seventeenth, therefore it is not strange that they are worshipped
as having a resident, mysterious power.
To-day, the age of practicality, they scarcely exist outside the old
Gobelins in Paris. But this is not the day of tapestry weaving.
A shuttle, thrown by machine, goes all the width of the fabric, back
and forth. The _flute_ or _broche_, which is the shuttle of the
tapestry weaver, flies only as far as it is desired to thrust it, to
finish the figure on which its especial colour is required. Thus, a
leaf, a detail of any small sort, may mount higher and higher on the
warp, to its completion, before other adjacent parts are attempted.
The effect of this is to leave open slits, petty gashes in the fabric,
running lengthwise of the warp, and these are all united later with
the needle, in the hands of the women who thus finish the pieces.
Unused colours wound on the hundreds of flutes are dropped at the
demand of the pattern, left in a rich confusion of shades to be
resumed by the workmen at will; but the threads are not severed, if
the colour is to be used again soon.
Low-warp work is the same except for the weaver's position in relation
to his work. Instead of the warp like a thin wall before his face, on
which he seems to play as on one side of a harp, the warp is extended
before him as a table. It is easy to see how much more convenient is
this method.
The wooden rollers are the same, one for the yet unused length of
warp, the other for the finished fabric, and over one of these rollers
the worker leans, protected from its hostile hardness by a pillow.
The pattern lies below, just beneath the warp, and easily seen through
it, not the mere tracing as on the threads of the high-warp loom, but
the coloured cartoon, so that shades may be followed as well as lines.
It sometimes happens, however, in copying a valuable old tapestry,
that a black and white drawing only is placed under the warp while the
original is suspended behind the weavers, who look to it for colour
suggestion.
In low-warp the worker has the privilege of laying his flutes on top
the work, the flutes not at the moment in use, and there they lie in
convenient mass ready to resume for the figure abandoned for another.
If the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see
that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly
lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal
which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops which pass
around alternate threads.
That pressure lifts the threads, and the fingers of the left hand,
deft and agile, limit and select those which the flute shall cover
with its coloured woof.
After the casting of a thread, or of a group of threads, the weaver
picks up a comb of steel or of ivory, and packs hard the woof, one
line against another, to make the fabric firm and even in the weaving.
[Illustration: BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY]
[Illustration: BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON]
Such then is the simple process of the looms, far simpler seen than
described and yet depending absolutely for its beauty on the talent
and patience of gifted workers. It is as simple as the alphabet, yet
as complicated as the dictionary.
Patient years of apprenticeship must a man spend before he can become
a good weaver, and then must he give the best years of his life to
becoming perfect in the craft. But if the work is exacting, at least
it is agreeable, almost lovable, and in delightful contrast to the
labour of those who but tend machines driven by power. And if the art
of tapestry weaving is almost a lost one to-day, at least the weavers
can find in history much matter for pride. It is no mean ambition to
follow the profession of conscientious Nicolas Bataille, of the able
Pannemaker, of La Planche and Comans, of Tessier, Cozette, and a
hundred others of family and fame.
Much preparation is necessary before the loom can be set going. First
is the design, the cartoon. There we are in the department of the
artist, and must talk in whispers. Raphael belongs there, and
Leonardo; and Rubens, Teniers, Lebrun, Boucher and David, train us
through the past centuries into our own.
But the cartoon of to-day is not so sacred a matter, and we may speak
of it frankly--regretfully, too. Cartoons hang all over the walls of
the tapestry factory, so much property for the setting of future
scenes, and besides, they make a decoration which alone would lift the
tapestry factory into the regions of art and class it among ateliers,
instead of factories. The cartoons are painted, however, where the
artist will, in his own studio or in one provided for the purpose by
the director, as in the case of the Baumgarten works. They have the
look of special designs. They are not done in the manner of a painting
to be hung on a wall. Their brushwork is smooth and broad, dividing
lines well distinguished by marked contrasts in colour to make
possible their translation into the language of silk and wool.
After the cartoon is ready, comes the warp. That is set with the
closeness agreed upon. Naturally, the smaller the thread of the warp,
the closer is it set, the more threads to the inch, and thus comes
fine fabric. Coarser warp means fewer threads to the inch, quicker
work for the weaver and less value to the tapestry. From ten to twenty
threads to the inch carries the limits of coarseness and fineness. In
fine weaving, a weaver will accomplish but a square foot a week. Think
of that, you who wonder at the price of tapestries ordered for the new
drawing-room.
The warp comes to the factory all in big hanks of even thread.
Nowadays it is usually of cotton, although they contend at the
Gobelins that wool warp is preferable, for it gives the finished
fabric a lightness and flexibility that the heavier, stiffer cotton
destroys.
Setting the warp is a matter of patience and precision, and we will
leave the workman with it, to make it the whole length of the tapestry
to be woven, and to fasten the loops of thread around each _chaîne_
and to fasten those in turn, alternating, to the bar by means of
which they may be shifted to make the in-and-out of the weaving.
Then after choosing the colours, the weaving begins. It is like
nothing so much as a piece of fancy-work. If it were not for the
cumbersome loom, I am sure ladies would emulate the king who wove for
amusement, and would make chair-pieces on the summer veranda.
But before the silks and wools go to the weaving they are treated to a
beauty-bath in the dye-room. Hanks of wool and skeins of silk are but
neutral matters, coming to the factory devoid of individuality, mere
pale, soft bulk.
A room apart, somewhere away from the studio of design and the rooms
where the looms stand stolid, is a laboratory of dyes, a place which
looks like a farmhouse kitchen on preserving day. You sniff the air as
you go in, the air that is swaying long bunches of pendulous colour,
and it smells warm and moist and full of the suggestions of magic.
Over a big cauldron two men are bending, stirring a witches' broth to
charm man's eye. One of the wooden paddles brings up a mass from the
heavy liquid. It is silk, glistening rich, of the colour of melted
rubies. Upstairs the looms are making it into a damask background onto
which are thrown the garlands Boucher drew and Tessier loved to work.
Dainties fished up from another cauldron are strung along a line to
dry, soft wool and shining silk, all in shades of grapes, of asters,
of heliotropes, telling their manifest destiny. And beyond, are great
bunches of colour, red which mounts a quivering scale to salmon pink,
blue which sails into tempered gray, greens dancing to the note of
the forest. It is a nature's workshop, a laboratory where the rainbow
serves, apprenticed.
Jars, stone jars, little kegs, all ugly enough, are standing against
the wall. But uncover one, touch the thick dark stuff within, and
feast your eye on the colour left on a curious finger-tip. You are
close to the cochineal, to indigo, and all the wonderful alchemy of
colour.
Aniline? Not a bit of the treacherous stuff. It takes the eye, but it
is a fickle friend. They say a mordant has been found to stay the
flight of its lovely colours. Perhaps; it may be. But what weaver of
tapestry would be willing to confide his labour to the care of a dye
that has not known the test of ages? Aniline dye, says the director of
a tapestry factory, may last twenty years--but twenty years is nothing
in the life of a tapestry. Over in Paris, at the Gobelins, a master
rules as chemist of the dyes, with the dignity of a special laboratory
for making them.
In America, with no government assuming the expense, the dyes are
bought in such form that only expert dyers can use them in the few
factories which exist. But no new hazards are taken. The matter is too
serious. Economy in dyes brings too great disaster to contemplate. It
is only too true that a man, several men, may labour a year to produce
a perfect work, and that all the labour may be ruined by an ephemeral
dye, by the escape of tones skilfully laid. Let commerce cheat in some
other way, if it must, but not in this. Let the dye be honest, as
enduring as the colours imprisoned in gems.
[Illustration: BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON]
It is a modern economy. The ancients knew not of it, and were
willing to spend any amount on colours. More than that a port, or a
nation, was willing to rest its fame on a single colour. Purple of
Tyre, red of Turkey, yellow of China, are terms familiar through the
ages, and think not these colours were to be had for the asking. They
brought prices which we do not pay now even in this age of money. The
brothers Gobelins--their fame originally rested on their ambition to
be "dyers of scarlet," that being an ultimate test of skill.
It is a serious matter, that of dyeing wools and silks for tapestries,
and one which the directors conduct within the walls of the tapestry
factory. The Gobelins uses for its reds, cochineal or the roots of the
madder; for blue, indigo and Prussian blue; for yellow, the vegetable
colour extracted from gaude.
In America there is a specialist in dyes: Miss Charlotte Pendleton, who
gives her entire attention to rediscovering the dyes of the ancients,
the dyes that made a city's fame. It is owing to her conscientious
work that the tapestry repairers of museums can find appropriate
threads.
It is interesting to trace the differing gamut of colour through the
ages. Old dyes produced, old weavers needed, but twenty tones for the
old work. Tapestries of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries were as
simple in scale as stained glass, and as honest. Flesh tints were
neutral by contrast to the splendid reds, honest yellows and rich
greens. Colours meant something, then, too; had a sentimental language
all their own. When white predominated, purity was implied; black was
mortification of the flesh; livid yellow was tribulation; red,
charity; green, meditation.
An examination of the colours in the series which depicts the life of
Louis XIV, reveals a use of but seventy-nine colours. So up to that
time, great honesty of dye, and fine decorative effect were preserved.
The shades were produced by two little tricks open as the day,
hatching being one, the other, winding two shades on the same broche
or shuttle. Hatching, as we know, is merely a penman's trick, of
shading with lines of light and dark.
It was when they began to paint the lily, in the days of pretty
corruption, that the whole matter of dyeing changed. In the Eighteenth
Century when the Regent Philip, and then La Pompadour, set the mode,
things greatly altered. When big decorative effects were no more, the
stimulating effect of deep strong colour was considered vulgar, and,
only the suave sweetness of Boucher, Nattier, Fragonard, were admired.
Every one played a pretty part, all life was a theatre of gay comedy,
or a flattered miniature.
So, as we have seen, new times and new modes caused the Gobelins to
copy paintings instead of to interpret cartoons--and there lay the
destruction of their art. Instead of four-score tones, the dyers hung
on their lines tens and tens of thousands. And the weavers wove them
all into their fabric-painting, with the result that when the light
lay on them long, the delicate shades faded and with them was lost the
meaning of the design. And that is why the Gobelins of the older time
are worth more as decoration than those of the later.
We are doing a little better nowadays. There is a limit to the tones,
and in all new work a decided tendency to abandon the copying of
brush-shading in favour of a more restricted gamut of colour. By this
means the future worker may regain the lost charm of the simple old
pieces of work.
Another room in the factory of tapestry interests those who like to
see the creation of things. It is one of the prettiest rooms of all,
and is more than ever like a kindergarten for grown-ups. Or, if you
like, it is a chamber in a feudal castle where the women gather when
the men are gone to war.
Here the workers are all girls and women, each bending over a large
embroidery frame supported at a convenient level from the floor. On
one frame is a long flowered border with cartouches in the strong rich
colours of Louis XIV. On another a sofa-seat copied from Boucher. They
are both new, but like all work fresh from the loom are full of the
open slits left in the process of weaving, a necessity of the changing
colours and the requirements of the drawing.
All these little slits, varying from half an inch to several inches in
length, must be sewed with strong, careful stitches before the
tapestry can be considered complete.
On other frames are stretched old tapestries for repairs. At the
Gobelins as many as forty women are thus employed. The malapropos
deduction springs here that the demand for repaired old work is
greater than that for new in the famous factory, for only six or eight
weavers are there occupied.
Repairing is almost an art in itself. The emperor established a small
school at Berlin for training girls in this trade. The studio of the
late Mr. Ffoulke in Florence kept twenty or thirty girls occupied. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a repair studio under a
graduate of the Berlin school. The factories of Baumgarten and of
Herter, in New York, also conduct repairs; and the museum at Boston as
well.
We cannot make old tapestries, but we can restore and preserve them by
skilled labour in special ateliers. Restoration by the needle is the
only perfect restoration, and this is as yet but little done here,
although the method is so well known in Europe. We deplore the quicker
way, to use the loom for weaving large sections of border or large
bits which have gone into hopeless shreds, or have disappeared
altogether by reason of the bitter years when tapestries had fallen
into neglect. But the quicker way is the poorer, with these great
claimants for time. The woven figures are relentless in this, that
they claim of the living man a lion's share of his precious days. His
reward is that they outlast him. Food for cynics lies there.
The careful worker looks close and sees the warp exposed like fiddle
strings here and there. She matches the colour of silk and wool to the
elusive shades and covers stitch by stitch the bare threads, in
perfect imitation of the loom's way.
Sometimes the warp is gone. Then the work tests the best skill. The
threads, the _chaîne_, must be picked up, one by one, and united
invisibly to the new, and then the pattern woven over with the needle.
It happens that large holes remain to be filled entirely, the pattern
matched, the design caught or imagined from some other part of the
fabric. That takes skill indeed. But it is done, and so well, that the
repairer is called not that, but a restorer.
The two factories in New York, the Baumgarten and Herter ateliers,
have certain employés always busy with repairs and restorations. Given
even a fragment, the rest is supplied to make a perfect whole, in
these studios where the manner of the old workers is so closely
studied. For big repairs a drawing is made, a cartoon on the same
principle as that of large cartoons, in colours, these following the
old. Then it remains for the weaver to set his loom with the
corresponding number of threads, that the new fabric may match the old
in fineness. Then, too, comes the test of matching colours, a test
that almost never discovers a worker equal to its exactions. That is
as often as not the fault of the dyer who has supplied colours too
fresh.
It is the repairs done by the needle that give the best effect,
although such restorations are costly and slow.
Old repairs on old tapestries have been made, in some instances, very
long ago. It often happens, in old sets, that a great piece of another
tapestry has been roughly set in, like the knee-patches of a farm boy.
The object has been merely to fill the hole, not to match colour
scheme or figure. And these patches are by the judicious restorer
taken out and their place carefully filled with the needle.
Moths, say some, do not devour old tapestries. The reason given is
that the ancient wool is so desiccated as to be no longer nutritious.
A pretty argument, but not to be trusted, for I have seen moths
comfortably browsing on a Burgundian hanging, keeping house and
raising families on such precious stuff.
Commerce demands that tricks shall be played in the repair room, but
not such great ones that serious corruption will result. The coarse
verdures of the Eighteenth Century that were thrown lightly off the
looms with transient interest are sought now for coverings to antique
chairs. To give the unbroken greens more charm, an occasional bird is
snipped from a worn branch where he has long and mutely reposed, and
is posed anew on the centre of a back or seat. It is the part of the
repairer to see that he looks at home in his new surroundings.
If metal threads have not been spoken of in this chapter on _modus
operandi_, it is because metal is so little used since the time of
Louis XV as to warrant omitting it. And the little that appears seems
very different from the "gold of Cyprus" that made gorgeous and
valuable the tapestries of Arras, of Brussels and of old Paris.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
A. D. 1066
So long as one word continues to have more than one meaning, civilised
man will continue to gain false impressions. The word tapestry suffers
as much as any other--witness the attempt made for hundreds of years
among all nations to set apart a word that shall be used only to
designate the hand-woven pictured hangings and coverings discussed in
this book; arras, gobelins, _toile peinte_, etc. In English, tapestry
may mean almost any decorative stuff, and so comes it that we speak of
the wonderful hanging which gives name to this chapter as the tapestry
of Bayeux (plates facing pages 242, 243 and 244), when it is in
reality an embroidery. But so much is it confused with true tapestry,
and so poignantly does it interest the Anglo-Saxon that we will
introduce it here, even while acknowledging its extraneous character.
To begin with, then, we say frankly that it is not a tapestry; that it
has no place in this book. And then we will trail its length through a
short review of its history and its interest as a human document of
the first order.
In itself it is a strip of holland--brown, heavy linen cloth,
measuring in length about two hundred and thirty-one feet, and in
width, nineteen and two-thirds inches--remarkable dimensions which are
accounted for in the neatest way. The hanging was used in the
cathedral of the little French city of Bayeux, draped entirely around
the nave of the Norman Cathedral, which space it exactly covered. This
indicates to archeologists the original purpose of the hanging.
On the brown linen is embroidered in coloured wools a panoramic
succession of incidents, with border top and bottom. The colours are
but eight, two shades each of green and blue, with yellow,
dove-colour, red and brown.
This, in brief, is the great Bayeux tapestry. But its threads breathe
history; its stitches sing romance; and we who love to touch
humorously the spirits of brothers who lived so long ago, find here
the matter that humanly unites the Eleventh Century with the
Twentieth.
The subject is the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in
1066. That is fixed beyond a doubt, so that the precious cloth cannot
trail its ends any further back into antiquity than that event.
However, even the most insatiable antiquarian of European specialties
is smilingly content with such a date.
Legend has it that Queen Matilda, the wife of the conqueror, executed
the work as an evidence of the devotion and adulation that were his
due and her pleasure: There are lovely pictures in the mind of Matilda
in the safety of the chambers of the old castle at Caen, directing
each day a corps of lovely ladies in the task of their historic
embroidery, each one sewing into the fabric her own secret thoughts of
lover or husband absent on the great Conqueror's business. In absence
of direct testimony to the contrary, why not let us believe this
which comes as near truth as any legend may, and fits the case most
pleasantly?
[Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]
[Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]
The history it portrays in all its seventy-odd yards is easy enough to
verify. That is like working out a puzzle with the key in hand. But
the history of this keenly interesting embroidery is not so easy.
The records are niggardly. Inventories record it in 1369 and 1476. In
an inventory of the Bishop of Bayeux it is mentioned in 1563. About
this time it was in ecclesiastical hands and used for decorating the
nave of the Bayeux Cathedral.
Then the world forgot it.
How the world rediscovered that which was never lost is interesting
matter. Here is the story:
In 1724 an antiquarian found a drawing of about ten yards long, taken
from the tapestry. Here, said he and his fellow sages, is the drawing
of some wonderful, ancient work of art, most probably a frieze or
other decoration carved in wood or stone. Naturally, the desire was to
find such a monument. But no one could remember such a carving in any
church or castle.
Father Montfaucon, of Saint Maur, with interest intelligent, wrote to
the prior of St. Vigor's at Bayeux, and received the most satisfactory
reply, that the drawing represented not a carving but a hanging in
possession of his church, and associated with many yards more of the
same cloth.
So all this time the wonderful relic had lain safe in Bayeux, and
never was lost, but only forgotten by outsiders. The rediscovery,
so-called, aroused much comment, and England declared the cloth the
noblest monument of her history.
It was in use at that time, and after, once a year. It was hung around
the cathedral nave on St. John's Day, and left for eight days that all
the people might see it.
The fact that it was not religious in subject, that it could not
possibly be interpreted otherwise than as a secular history, makes
remarkable its place in the cathedral. This is explained by the
suggestion that while Bishop Odo established that precedent, all
others but followed without thought.
Since 1724 the world outside of Bayeux has never forgotten this
panorama of a past age, and its history is known from that time on.
The Revolution of France had its effect even on this treasure; or
would have had if the clergy had not been sufficiently capable to
defend it. It was hidden in the depositories of the cathedral until
the storm was over.
It seems there was no treasure in Europe unknown to Napoleon. He
commanded in 1803 that the Bayeux tapestry, of which he had heard so
much, be brought to the National Museum for his inspection. The
playwrights of Paris seized on the pictured cloth as material for
their imagination, and, refusing to take seriously the crude figures,
wrote humorously of Matilda eternally at work over her ridiculous
task, surrounded with simple ladies equally blind to art and nature.
It is only too easy to let humour play about the ill-drawn figures.
They must be taken grandly serious, or ridicule will thrust tongue in
cheek. It is to these French plays of 1804 that we owe the firmness
of the tradition that Queen Matilda in 1066 worked the embroidery.
[Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]
Napoleon returned the cloth to Bayeux, not to the church, but to the
Hotel de Ville, in which manner it became the property of the civil
authorities, instead of the ecclesiastic. It was rolled on cylinders,
that by an easy mechanism it might be seen by visitors. But the fabric
suffered much by the handling of a curious public. Even the most
enlightened and considerate hands can break threads which time has
played with for eight centuries.
It was decided, therefore, to give the ancient _toile fatiguée_ a
quiet, permanent home. For this purpose a museum was built, and about
1835 the great Bayeux tapestry was carefully installed behind glass,
its full length extended on the walls for all to see who journey
thither and who ring the guardian's bell at the courtyard's handsome
portico.
Once since then, once only, has the venerable fabric left its cabinet.
This was at the time of the Prussians when, in 1871, France trembled
for even her most intimate and special treasures.
The tapestry was taken from its case, rolled with care and placed in a
zinc cylinder, hermetically sealed. Then it was placed far from harm;
but exactly where, is a secret that the guardians of the tapestry do
well to conserve. There might be another trouble, and asylum needed
for the treasure in the future.
The pictures of the great embroidery are such as a child might draw,
for crudeness; but the archeologist knows how to read into them a
thousand vital points. History helps out, too, with the story of
Harold, moustached like the proper Englishman of to-day, taking a
commission from William, riding gaily out on a gentleman's errand, not
a warrior's. This is shown by the falcon on his wrist, that wonderful
bird of the Middle Ages that marked the gentleman by his associations,
marked the high-born man on an errand of peace or pleasure.
In these travelling days, no sooner do we land in Normandy than Mount
St. Michael looms up as a happy pilgrimage. So to the same religious
refuge Harold went on the pictured cloth, crossed the adjacent river
in peril, and--how pleasingly does the past leap up and tap the
present--he floundered in the quicksands that surround the Mount, and
about which the driver of your carriage across the _passerelle_ will
tell you recent tales of similar flounderings.
And when in Brittany, who does not go to tumbley-down Dinan to see its
ancient gates and walls, its palaces of Queen Anne, its lurching crowd
of houses? It is thither that Harold, made of threads of ancient wool,
sped and gave battle after the manner of his time.
Another link to make us love this relic of the olden time: It is the
star, the star so great that the space of the picture is all too small
to place it; so the excited hands of the embroiderers set it outside
the limit, in the border.
It flames over false Harold's head and he remembers sombrely that it
is an omen of a change of rule. He is king now, has usurped a throne,
has had himself crowned. But for how long is he monarch, with this
flaming menace burning into his courage? The year finishing saw the
prophecy fulfilled by the coming of the conqueror.
It was this section of the tapestry that, when it came to Paris, had
power to startle Napoleon, ever superstitious, ever ready to read
signs. The star over Harold's head reminded him of the possible
brevity of his own eminence.
The star that blazed in 1066--we have found it. It was not imaginary.
Behold how prettily the bits of history fit together, even though we
go far afield to find those bits. This one comes from China. Records
were better kept there in those times than in Christian Europe; and
the Chinese astronomers write of a star appearing April 2, 1066, which
was seen first in the early morning sky, then after a time disappeared
to reappear in the evening sky, with a flaming tail, most agreeably
sensational. It was Halley's comet, the same that we watched in 1910
with no superstitious fear at all for princes nor for powers. But it
is interesting to know that our modern comet was recorded in China in
the Eleventh Century, and has its portrait on the Bayeux tapestry, and
that it frightened the great Harold into a fit of guilty conscience.
The archeologist gives reason for the faith that is in him concerning
the Bayeux tapestry by reading the language of its details, such as
the style of arms used by its preposterous soldiers; by gestures; by
groupings of its figures; and we are only too glad to believe his
wondrous deductions.
There are in all fifteen hundred and twelve figures in this celebrated
cloth, if one includes birds, beasts, boats, _et cetera_, with the
men; and amidst all this elongated crowd is but one woman. Queen
Matilda, left at home for months, immured with her ladies, probably
had quite enough of women to refrain easily from portraying them.
Needless to say, this one embroidered lady interests poignantly the
archeologist.
Most of the animals are in the border--active little beasts who make a
running accompaniment to the tale they adorn. This excepts the very
wonderful horses ridden by knights of action.
Scenes of the pictured history of William's conquest are divided one
from the other by trees. Possibly the archeologist sees in these
evidences of extinct varieties, for not in all this round, green world
do trees grow like unto those of the Bayeux tapestry. They are dream
trees from the gardens of the Hesperides, and set in useful decoration
to divide event from event and to give sensations to the student of
the tree in ornament.
Such is the Bayeux tapestry, which, as was conscientiously forewarned,
is not a tapestry at all, but the most interesting embroidery of
Europe.
CHAPTER XXIV
TO-DAY
The making of inspired tapestry does not belong to to-day. The _amour
propre_ suffers a distinct pain in this acknowledgment. It were far
more agreeable to foster the feeling that this age is in advance of
any other, that we are at the front of the world's progress.
So we are in many matters, but those matters are all bent toward one
thing--making haste. Economy of time occupies the attention of
scientist, inventor, labourer. Yet a lavish expenditure of time is the
one thing the perfect tapestry inexorably demands, and that is the
fundamental reason why it cannot now enter a brilliant period of
production like those of the past.
It is not that one atelier cannot find enough weavers to devote their
lives to sober, leisurely production; it is that the stimulating
effect is gone, of a craft eagerly pursued in various centres, where
guilds may be formed, where healthy rivalry spurs to excellence, where
the world of the fine arts is also vitally concerned.
The great hangings of the past were the natural expression of
decoration in those days, the natural demand of pomp, of splendour and
of comfort. As in all things great and small, the act is but the
visible expression of an inward impulse, and we of to-day have not the
spirit that expresses itself in the reverent building of cathedrals,
or in the inspired composition of tapestries.
This is to be entirely distinguished from appreciation. That gift we
have, and it is momentarily increasing. To be entirely commercial,
which view is of course not the right one, one need only watch the
reports of sales at home and abroad to see what this latter-day
appreciation means in pelf. In England a tapestry was recently
unearthed and identified as one of the series of seven woven for
Cardinal Woolsey. It is not of extraordinary size, but was woven in
the interesting years hovering above and below the century mark of
1500. The time was when public favour spoke for the upholding of
morality with a conspicuousness which could be called Puritanism, were
the anachronism possible. Pointing a moral was the fundamental excuse
for pictorial art. This tapestry represents one of _The Seven Deadly
Sins_. Hampton Court displays the three other known pieces of the
series, and he who harbours this most recent discovery has paid
$33,000 for the privilege.
But that is a tiny sum compared to the price that rumour accredits Mr.
Morgan with paying for _The Adoration of the Eternal Father_ (called
also _The Kingdom of Heaven_). And this is topped by $750,000 paid for
a Boucher set of five pieces. One might continue to enumerate the
sales where enormous sums are laid down in appreciation of the men
whose excellence of work we cannot achieve, but these sums paid only
show with pathetic discouragement the completeness with which the
spirit of commercialism has replaced the spirit of art, at least in
the expression of art that occupies our attention.
[Illustration: MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY, LOUIS XV INSPIRATION]
[Illustration: MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY FROM FRENCH INSPIRATION]
If, then, this is not an age of production, but of appreciation,
it, too, has its natural expression. First it is the acquiring at any
sacrifice of the ancient hangings wherever they are found; and after
that it is their restoration and preservation. This is the reason for
recent high prices and the reason, too, for the establishment of
ateliers of repair, which are found in all large centres in Europe as
well as wherever any important museum exists in America.
It would not be possible nor profitable to dwell on the tapestry
repair shops of Europe. They have always been; the industry is one
that has existed since the Burgundian dukes tore holes in their
magnificent tapestries by dragging them over the face of Europe, and
since Henry the Eighth, in eager imitation of the continentals,
established in the royal household a supervisor of tapestry repairs.
Paris is full of repairers, and in the little streets on the other
side of the Seine old women sit in doorways on a sunny day, defeating
the efforts of time to destroy the loved _toiles peintes_. But this
haphazard repair, done on the knee, as a garment might be mended, is
not comparable to the careful, exact work of the restorer at her
frame. One ranks as woman's natural task of nine stitches, while the
other is the work of intelligent patience and skilled endeavour.
Wherever looms are set up, a department of repair is the logical
accompaniment. As every tapestry taken from the loom appears punctured
with tiny slits, places left open in the weaving, and as all of these
need careful sewing before the tapestry is finished, a corps of
needlewomen is a part of a loom's equipment. This is true in all but
the ateliers of the Merton Abbey factory, of which we shall speak
later.
Apart from repairs, what is being done in the present day? So little
that historians of the future are going to find scant pickings for
their record.
FRANCE
The Gobelins factory being the last one to make a permanent
contribution to art, the impulse is to ask what it is doing now. That
is easily answered, but there is no man so optimistic that he can find
therein matter for hope.
France is commendably determined not to let the great industry die. It
would seem a loss of ancient glory to shut down the Gobelins. Yet why
does it live? It lives because a body of men have the patriotic pride
to keep it alive. But as for its products, they are without
inspiration, without beauty to the eye trained to higher expressions
of art.
The Gobelins to-day is almost purely a museum, not only in the
treasures it exposes in its collection of ancient "toiles," but
because here is preserved the use of the high-warp loom, and the same
method of manufacture as in other and better times. A crowd of
interested folk drift in and out between the portals, survey the
Pavilion of Louis XIV and the court, the garden and the stream, then,
turning inside, the modern surveys the work of the ancient, the
remnants of time. And no less curious and no less remote do the old
tapestries seem than the atelier where the high looms rear their
cylinders and mute men play their colour harmonies on the warp. It
all seems of other times; it all seems dead. And it is a dead art.
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Luxembourg, Paris]
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Pantheon, Paris]
The tapestries on the looms are garish, crude, modern art in its
cheapest expression; or else they are brilliant-hued copies of
time-softened paintings that were never meant to be translated into
wool and silk.
The looms are always busy, nevertheless. There is always preserved a
staff of officers, the director, the chemist of dyes, and all that;
and the tapissiers are careful workmen, with perfection, not haste, in
view. The State directs the work, the State pays for it, the State
consumes the products. That is the Republic's way of continuing the
craft that was the serious pleasure of kings. But there is now no
personal element to give it the vital touch. There is no Gabrielle
d'Estrées, nor Henri IV; no Medici, no Louis XIV, no Pompadour. All is
impersonal, uninspired.
Men who have worked in the deadening influence of the Gobelins declare
that the factory cannot last much longer. But it is improbable that
France--Republican France, that holds with bourgeois tenacity to
aristocratic evidences--will abandon this, her expensive toy, her
inheritance of the time of kings.
In the time of the Second Empire it was the fashion to copy, at the
Gobelins, the portraits of celebrated personages executed by
Winterhalter. The exquisite portrait of the beautiful Empress Eugénie
by this delectable court painter has a delicacy and grace that is all
unhurt by contrast with more modern schools of painting. But fancy the
texture of the lovely flesh copied in the medium of woven threads, no
matter how delicately dyed and skilfully wrought. Painting is one art,
tapestry-making is entirely another.
But that is just where the fault lay and continued, the inability of
the Gobelins ateliers to understand that the two must not be confused.
The same false idea that caused Winterhalter's portraits to be copied,
gave to the modern tapissiers the paintings of the high Renaissance to
reproduce. Titian's most celebrated works were set up on the loom, as
for example the beautiful fancy known as _Sacred and Profane Love_,
which perplexes the loiterer of to-day in the Villa Borghese. Other
paintings copied were Raphael's _Transfiguration_, Guido René's
_Aurora_, Andrea del Sarto's _Charity_. There were many more, but this
list gives sufficiently well the condition of inspiration at the
Gobelins up to the third quarter of the Nineteenth Century.
Paul Baudry appeared at about this time striking a clear pure note of
delicate decoration. The few panels that he drew for the Gobelins
charm the eye with happy reminiscences of Lebrun, of Claude Audran, a
potpourri of petals fallen from the roses of yesterday mixed with the
spices of to-day.
But if the work of this talented artist illustrates anything, it is
the change in the uses of tapestries. The modern ones are made to be
framed, as flat as the wall against which they are secured. In a word,
they take the place of frescoes. The pleasure of touching a mobile
fabric is lost. A fold in such a dainty piece would break its beauty.
Almost must a woven panel of our day fit the panel it fills as
exactly as the wood-work of a room fits its dimensions.
The Nineteenth Century at the Gobelins was finished by mistakenly
copying Ghirlandajo, Correggio, others of their time.
In the beginning of this century, the spirit of pure decoration again
became animated. Instead of copying old painters, the Gobelins began
to copy old cartoons. The effect of this is to increase the
responsibility of the weaver, and with responsibility comes strength.
The models of Boucher, and the _Grotesques_ of Italian Renaissance
drawing are given even now to the weavers as a training in both taste
and skill. But better than all is the present wisdom of the Gobelins,
which has directly faced the fact that it were better to copy the
tapestries of old excellence than to copy paintings of no matter what
altitude of art.
Modern cartoons are used, as we know, commanded for various public
buildings in France, but the copying of old tapestries exercises a far
happier influence on the weavers. If this is not an age of creation in
art, at least it need not be an age of false gods, notwithstanding the
seriousness given to distortions of the Matisse and post-impressionist
school.
A careful copying of old tapestries--and in this case old means those
of the high periods of perfection--has led to a result from which much
may be expected. This is the enormous reduction in the number of tones
used. Gothic tapestries of stained glass effect had a restricted range
of colour. By this brief gamut the weaver made his own gradations of
colour, and the passage from light to shadow, by hatching, which was
in effect but a weaving of alternating lines of two colours, much as
an artist in pen-and-ink draws parallel lines for shading. Tapestries
thus woven resist well the attacks of light and time.
To sum up the present attitude of the Gobelins, then, is to say that
the director of to-day encourages the education of taste in the
weavers by encouraging them to copy old tapestries instead of
paintings old or new, and in a reduction of the number of the tones
employed. The talent of an artist is thus made necessary to the
tapissier, for shadings are left to him to accomplish by his own skill
instead of by recourse to the forty thousand shades that are stored on
the shelves of the store-room.
The manufactory at Beauvais, being also under the State, is associated
with the greater factory in the glance at modern conditions. Both
factories weave primarily for the State. Both factories keep alive an
ancient industry, and both have permission to sell their precious
wares to the private client. That such sales are rarely made is due to
the indifference of the State, which stipulates that its own work
shall have first place on the looms, that only when a loom is idle may
it be used for a private patron. The length of time, therefore, that
must elapse before an order is executed--two or three years,
perhaps--is a tiresome condition that very few will accept.
[Illustration: THE ADORATION
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Figures by Burne-Jones]
[Illustration: DAVID INSTRUCTING SOLOMON IN THE BUILDING OF THE
TEMPLE
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Burne-Jones, Artist]
Beauvais, with its low-warp looms, is more celebrated for its small
pieces of work than for large hangings. The tendency toward the latter
ended some time ago, and in our time Beauvais makes mainly those
exquisite coverings for seats and screens that give the beholder a
thrill of artistic joy and a determination to possess something
similar. The models of Béhagle, Oudry, Charron are copied with
fidelity to their loveliness, and it is these that after a few years
of wear on furniture take on that mellowness which long association
with human hands alone can give. It is scarcely necessary to say that
antique furniture tapestry is rare; its use has been too hard to
withstand the years. Therefore, we may with joy and the complacency of
good taste acquire new coverings of the Don Quixote or Æsop's Fables
designs for our latter-day furniture or for the fine old pieces from
which the original tapestries have vanished.
ENGLAND
The chapter on Mortlake looms shows what was accomplished by
deliberate importation of an art coveted but not indigenous. It is
interesting to compare this with England's entirely modern and
self-made craft of the last thirty years. I allude to the tapestry
factory established by William Morris and called Merton Abbey. Mr.
Morris preferred the word arras as attached to his weavings, tapestry
having sometimes the odious modern meaning of machine-made figured
stuffs for any sort of furniture covering. But as Arras did not invent
the high-warp hand-loom, nor did the Saracens, nor the Egyptians, it
is but quibbling to give it arbitrarily the name of any particular
locale.
It seems that enough can never be said about the versatility of
William Morris and the strong flood of beauty in design that he sent
rippling over arid ground. It were enough had he accomplished only the
work in tapestry. It is not too strong a statement that he produced at
Merton Abbey the only modern tapestries that fill the primary
requirements of tapestries.
How did he happen upon it in these latter days? By worshipping the old
hangings of the Gothic perfection, by finding the very soul of them,
of their designers and of their craftsmen; then, letting that soul
enter his, he set his fingers reverently to work to learn, as well,
the secret of the ancient workman.
It was as early as 1885 that he began; was cartoonist, dyer,
tapissier, all, for the experiment, which was a small square of
verdure after the manner of the Gothic, curling big acanthus leaves
about a softened rose, a mingling of greens of ocean and shady reds.
Perhaps it was no great matter in the way of tapestry, but it was to
Morris like the discovery of a new continent to the navigator.
His was the time of a so-called æsthetic school in England. Watts,
Rossetti and Burne-Jones were harking back to antiquity for
inspiration. Morris associated with him the latter, who drew wondrous
figures of maids and men and angels, figures filled with the devout
spirit of the time when religion was paramount, and perfect with the
art of to-day.
The romance of _The Holy Grail_ gave happy theme for the work, and
three beautiful tapestries made the set. _The Adoration of the Magi_
was another, made for Exeter College, Oxford. Sir Edward Burne-Jones
designed all these wondrous pictures, and the wisdom of Morris
decreed that the _Grail_ series should not be oft repeated. The
first figure tapestry woven on the looms was a fancy drawn by Walter
Crane, called _The Goose Girl_.
[Illustration: TRUTH BLINDFOLDED
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Byram Shaw, Artist]
The most enchantingly mediæval and most modernly perfect piece is by
Burne-Jones, called _David Instructing Solomon in the Building of the
Temple_. (Plate facing page 257.) In this the time of Gothic beauty
lives again. Planes are repeated, figures are massed, detail is clear
and impressive, yet modern laws of drawing concentrate the interest on
the central action as strongly as though all else were subservient.
_The Passing of Venus_ was Burne-Jones' last cartoon for Merton Abbey
looms. (Plate facing page 260.) Although a critique of the art of this
great painter would be out of place in a book on the applied arts, at
least it is allowable to express the conviction that more beautiful,
more fitting designs for tapestry it would be difficult to imagine.
Modern work of this sort has produced nothing that approaches them,
preserving as they do the sincerity and reverence of a simple people,
the ideality of a conscientious age, yet softening all technical
faults with modern finish. An unhappy fact is that this tapestry,
which was considered by the Merton Abbey works as its _chef d'oeuvre_,
was destroyed by fire in the Brussels Exhibition of 1910.
Alas for tapestry weaving of to-day, the usual modern cartoon is a
staring anachronism, and a conglomerate of modes. An "art nouveau"
lady poses in a Gothic setting, a Thayer angel stands in a Boucher
entourage, and both eye and intelligence are revolted. The master
craftsman and artist, William Morris, alone has known how to produce
acceptable modern work from modern cartoons. Other examples are
_Angeli Laudantes_, and _The Adoration_. (Plates facing pages 261 and
256.)
A false note is sometimes struck, even in this factory of wondrous
taste. In _Truth Blindfolded_ (plate facing page 258), Mr. Byram Shaw
has drawn the central figure as Cabanel might have done a decade ago,
while every other figure in the group might have been done by some
hand dead these four hundred years.
Morris' manner of procedure differed little from that of the decorator
Lebrun, although his work was a private enterprise and in no way to be
compared with the royal factory of a rich king. Burne-Jones drew the
figures; H. Dearle, a pupil, and Philip Webb drew backgrounds and
animals, but Morris held in his own hands the arrangement of all. It
was as though a gardener brought in a sheaf of cut roses and the
master hand arranged them. Mr. Dearle directed some compositions with
skill and talent.
With the passing of William Morris an inevitable change is visible in
the cartoons. The Gothic note is not continued, nor the atmosphere of
sanctity, which is its usual accompaniment. A tapestry of 1908 from
the design of _The Chace_ by Heyward Sumner suggests long hours with
the Flemish landscapists of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
with a jarring note of Pan dragged in by the ears to huddle under
foliage obviously introduced for this purpose.
[Illustration: THE PASSING OF VENUS
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-Jones]
[Illustration: ANGELI LAUDANTES
Merton Abbey Tapestry]
But criticism of this aberration cannot hurt the wondrous inspired
work directed by Morris, and which it were well for a beauty-loving
world to have often repeated. Unhappily, the Merton Abbey works are
bound not to repeat the superb series of the _Grail_. The entire set
has been woven twice, and three pieces of it a third time--and there
it ends. This is well for the value of the tapestries, but is it not a
providence too thrifty when the public is considered? In ages to come,
perhaps, other looms will repeat, and our times will glow with the
fame thereof.
Before leaving the subject of the Merton Abbey tapestries, it is
interesting to note a technical change in the weaving. By
intertwisting the threads of the chain or warp at the back, a way is
found to avoid the slits in weaving that are left to be sewn together
with the needle in all old work. This method has been proved the
stronger of the two. The strain of hanging proves too great for the
strength of the stitches, and on many a tapestry appear gaping wounds
which call for yet more stitching. But in the new method the fabric
leaves the loom intact.
The determination of William Morris to catch old secrets by fitting
his feet into old footsteps, led him to employ only the loom of the
best weavers in the ancient long ago. The high-warp loom is the only
one in use at the Merton Abbey works.
AMERICA
America makes heavy demands for tapestries, but the art of producing
them is not indigenous here. We are not without looms, however. The
first piece of tapestry woven in America--to please the ethnologist
we will grant that it was woven by Zuñi or Toltec or other aborigine.
But the fabric approaching that of Arras or Gobelins, was woven in New
York, in 1893, in the looms of the late William Baumgarten. It is
preserved as a curiosity, as being the first. It is a chair seat woven
after the designs popular with Louis XV and his court, a plain
background of solid colour on which is thrown a floral ornament.
The loom was a small affair of the low-warp type, and was operated by
a Frenchman who came to this country for the purpose of starting the
craft on new soil.
The sequence to this small beginning was the establishment of tapestry
ateliers at Williamsbridge, a suburb of New York. Like the Gobelins
factory, this was located in an old building on the banks of a little
stream, the Bronx. Workmen were imported, some from Aubusson, who knew
the craft; these took apprentices, as of old, and trained them for the
work. The looms were all of the low-warp pattern.
It may be of interest to those who like figures, to know that the work
of the Baumgarten atelier averages in price about sixty dollars a
square yard. Perhaps this will help a little in deciding whether or
not the price is reasonable when a dealer seductively spreads his
ancient wares. Modern cartoons of the Baumgarten factory lack the
charm of the old designs, but the adaptations and copies of ancient
pieces are particularly happy. No better execution could be wished
for. The factory has increased its looms to the number of twenty-two,
and has its regular corps of tapissiers, dyers, repairers, etc.
Nowhere is the life of the weaver so nearly like that of his prototype
in the golden age of tapestry. The colony on the Bronx is like a bit
of old Europe set intact on American soil.
[Illustration: AMERICAN (BAUMGARTEN) TAPESTRY COPIED FROM THE GOTHIC]
[Illustration: DRYADS AND FAUNS
From Herter Looms, New York, 1910]
It is odd that New York should have more tapestry looms at work than
has Paris. The Baumgarten looms exceed in number the present Gobelins,
and the Herter looms add many more. The ateliers of Albert Herter are
in the busiest part of New York, and here are woven by hand many
fabrics of varying degrees of excellence. It is not Mr. Herter's
intention to produce only fine wall hangings, but to supply as well
floor coverings "a la façon de Perse," as the ancient documents had
it, and to make it possible for persons of taste, but not necessarily
fortune, to have hand-woven portières of artistic value.
Apart from this commendable aim, the Herter looms are also given to
making copies of the antique in the finest of weaving, and to
producing certain original pieces expressing the decorative spirit of
our day. Besides this, the work is distinguished by certain
combinations of antique and modern style that confuse the seeker after
purity of style. That the effect is pleasing must be acknowledged as
illustrated in the plate showing a tapestry for the country house of
Mrs. E. H. Harriman. (Plate facing page 263.) It is not easy in a
review of tapestry weaving of to-day to find any great encouragement.
These are times of commerce more than of art. If art can be made
profitable commercially, well and good. If not, it starves in a garret
along with the artist. If the demand for modern tapestries was large
enough, the art would flourish--perhaps. But it is not a large demand,
for many reasons, chief among which is the incontrovertible one that
the modern work is seldom pleasing. The whole world is occupied with
science and commerce, and art does not create under their influence as
in more ideal times. What can the trained eye and the cultivated taste
do other than turn back to the products of other days?
We have artists in our own country whose qualities would make of them
marvellous composers of cartoons. The imagination and execution of
Maxfield Parrish, for example, added to his richness of colouring,
would be translatable in wool under the hands of an artist-weaver. And
the designs which take the name of "poster" and are characterised by
strength, simplicity and few tones, why would they not give the same
crispness of detail that constitutes one of the charms of Gothic work?
Perhaps the factories existent in America will work out this line of
thought, combine it with honesty of material and labour, and give us
the honour of prominence in an ancient art's revival.
FINIS
BEST PERIODS AND THEIR DATES
EARLIEST TAPESTRY LOOMS Prehistoric
EUROPEAN EARLY ATTEMPTS Twelfth To Fourteenth Centuries
ARRAS AND BURGUNDIAN TAPESTRY Early Fifteenth Century
GOTHIC PERFECTION, FLANDERS About Fifteen Hundred
GOTHIC PERFECTION, FRANCE About Fifteen Hundred
ITALIAN FACTORIES Fifteenth Century
RAPHAEL CARTOONS IN FLANDERS 1515-1519
RENAISSANCE PERFECTION, FLANDERS 1515 To Second Half of Century
BRUSSELS MARK 1528
FLEMISH DECADENCE End of Sixteenth Century
FRENCH RISE End of Sixteenth Century
FRENCH ORGANISATION 1597, Reign of Henri IV
ENGLISH SUPREMACY, MORTLAKE
ESTABLISHED 1619
ESTABLISHMENT OF GOBELINS 1662, Reign of Louis XIV
BEST HEROIC PERIOD OF GOBELINS Last Half of Seventeenth Century
BEST DECORATIVE PERIOD OF
GOBELINS Middle of Eighteenth Century
DECADENCE OF GOBELINS End of Eighteenth Century
RECENT TIMES, ENGLAND, WM. MORRIS End of Nineteenth Century
RECENT TIMES, AMERICA End of Nineteenth Century
INDEX
Abbot Robert, 20.
_Achilles, Story of_, 169.
Adelaide, Queen, 22.
_Adoration of the Eternal Father, The_, 59, 250, 260.
_Adoration of the Magi, The_, 258.
_Acts of the Apostles_, 64, 86, 147, 169, 197, 205, 214, 221.
_Alcisthenes, Mantle of_, 19.
_Alexander, History of_, 115, 172, 197.
Alfonso II (d'Este), 83.
America, 261-264.
American interest, 10.
Amorini, 209.
Andrea del Sarto, 73.
_Angeli Laudantes_, 260.
Angers, 29, 30.
Angivillier, Count of, 131, 133, 137.
_Annunciation, The_, 61.
Antin, Duke d', 128, 130, 131, 148.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, 80, 110, 151, 187, 210, 222.
_Apocalypse_, 23, 25, 30, 45, 217.
Apprentices, 5.
Architectural detail, 177-179.
_Armide_, 130.
Arras, 28, 32, 34, 38, 47, 48, 51, 54, 66, 90, 106, 129, 163, 176,
203, 229.
Arazzeria Medicea, 84.
Artemisia, 93, 94.
Artois, 32, 34, 163.
Aubusson, 150, 152-158.
Audran, Claude, 122-124, 126-128, 132.
Audran, Jean, 138.
_Aurora_, 254.
Babylon, 18.
Bacchiacca, 76, 223.
Backgrounds, 185.
_Baillée des Roses_, 42, 176, 181.
Bajazet, 35.
Barberini, 87, 88, 131, 208.
Basse lisse, 3, 193, 227.
Bataille, Nicolas, 29, 30, 217.
Baudry, Paul, 254.
Baumgarten, 232, 238, 239, 262.
Bayeux Tapestry, 21, 241-248.
Beauvais, 4, 121, 135, 145-153, 154, 163, 256.
Beaux Art, École des, 204.
Béhagle, Philip, 147, 148, 257.
Belle, Augustin, 138.
Bellegarde, 157.
Berne, Cathedral of, 37, 53.
Bernini, 10.
Berthélemy, 141.
Besnier, 152.
Bible, influence of, 130.
Bièvre, 105, 106, 107.
Blamard, Louis, 99, 103.
Blumenthal collection, 74, 75, 78, 196, 205.
Bobbin, 4.
_Book of Hours_, 41.
Borders, 132, 147, 158, 169, 170, 172, 173, 188-190, 201-215.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 15, 46, 56, 238.
Botticelli, 180.
Boucher, 131, 132, 135, 141, 151.
Boulle, 107.
Bourg, Maurice du, 93, 94, 95, 96.
Broche, 4, 223, 227, 228, 229.
Bruges, 54, 55, 221.
Brussels, 7, 9, 10, 29, 38, 48, 54, 55, 57, 64, 66, 68-72, 76, 78,
90, 111, 129, 141, 163, 194, 197, 216, 218, 219, 221, 229.
Brussels Mark, 217.
Burgundian tapestry, 37, 45, 160, 174.
Burgundy, Dukes of, 22, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 46, 47, 48, 51.
Burne-Jones, 258, 259.
Caffieri, 107.
Carron, Antoine, 94.
Carthaginians, 19.
Cartoons, 56, 151, 155, 173, 176, 231, 255.
Cartouche, 207.
Casanova, 151.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 7.
_Charity_, 254.
Charles I, 167, 168, 170, 171.
Charles V, 32.
Charles V, Emperor, 62, 75, 82, 83, 220.
Charles VI, 29.
Charles VII, 42.
Charles VIII, 48.
Charles le Téméraire, 36, 45, 47, 51, 66.
Chef d'atelier, 5.
Chicago Institute of Art, 47, 78, 221.
China, 18.
Circe, 19.
Clein, or Cleyn, Francis, 166, 169, 170, 171.
Cluny Museum of Paris, 44, 54.
Colbert, 99, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 116, 117, 118, 121, 145,
155, 156.
Colours, 191-193, 210, 211, 233-236.
Comans, Charles de, 222.
Comans, or Coomans, Marc, 95-97, 107, 165, 166, 231.
_Condemnation of Suppers and Banquets, The_, 51.
_Conquest of Tunis_, 75, 220.
_Constantine, History of_, 112.
Copies, 197-200.
Coptic, 15, 16.
Cornelisz, Lucas, 82.
Correggio, 209.
Cortona, Pietro di, 87.
Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany, 84, 85.
Cosmati brothers, 178.
Costumes, 181-183.
Cotte, Jules Robert de, 122, 129, 131.
Coypel, Antoine, 130.
Coypel, Charles, 12, 127, 128, 130, 132, 150.
Cozette, 132.
Crane, Richard, 171.
Crane, Sir Francis, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 223.
Crane, Walter, 259.
Crusades, 19, 24.
_Cupid and Psyche_, 132.
David, 136, 140, 142, 143, 144.
_David Instructing Solomon, etc._, 259.
Dearle, H., 260.
Delacroix, Jean, 109.
Devonshire, Duke of, 46.
_Diana, History of_, 92.
Directing artist, 5.
Director, 4.
Directory, 139, 142.
_Don Quixote_, 127, 132, 133, 152.
Dosso, Battista, 82.
Dourdin, 30.
Ducal Palace at Nancy, tapestry room of, 51, 65.
Du Mons, Jean Joseph, 158.
Dupont, Pierre, 161.
Dye, scarlet, of the Gobelin brothers, 106.
Dyes, 6, 218, 233, 234.
Dyes at Aubusson, 156.
Edward the Confessor, 260.
Egypt, 18, 27.
Egyptian drawing, 15.
Egyptian loom, 16.
Egyptian weaving, 16.
Egyptian work, 7.
Eighteenth Century, 76, 123, 152, 158, 180, 185, 187, 190, 211,
222, 236, 257-261.
Eleventh Century, 23.
Elizabeth, Queen, 164.
_Enfants Jardiniers_, 74.
Enghien, 103, 221, 222.
England, 54, 223.
Ercole II (d'Este), 82-84.
Este, d', 82-84, 91, 223.
_Esther and Ahasuerus_, 190.
Europe, 18, 19.
_Fables of La Fontaine_, 149-152.
Felletin, 157.
Ferrara, 82, 83, 223.
Ffoulke collection, 88, 89, 131.
Fifteenth Century, 22, 27, 46, 51, 54, 58, 81, 106, 160, 163, 176,
183, 184, 196, 202.
Filleul, 148.
Flanders, 6, 7, 28, 54, 68, 110, 121, 150, 163, 169, 176, 208.
Flemish tapestry, 9, 79.
Fleur-de-lis, use of, 38, 222.
Florence factory, 223.
Flowers, use of, 52, 180, 181.
Flute, 4, 227, 228, 229.
Fontainebleau, 91, 92.
Foucquet, 100-105.
Fouquet, Jean, 42.
Fourteenth Century, 25, 27, 30, 106, 176, 183.
France, 10, 28, 54, 90, 110, 163, 176, 252-257.
Francis I, 90, 91.
French terms, 4.
Furniture, 133, 134, 135, 146, 149, 152, 159, 162.
Galloon, 173, 201, 204, 219, 221.
Genoa, 89.
Germany, 54, 160.
Geubels, Jacques, 79, 221.
Ghent, 66.
Giotto, 27, 216.
Giulio Romano, 73, 74, 84, 93, 118.
Gobelin, Jean and Philibert, 105, 106.
Gobelins, 10, 30, 90, 93, 99, 103-107, 109, 111, 112, 115-122,
128-131, 133, 135, 137-145, 154, 159, 161, 162, 203, 205, 222,
236, 252.
Gobelins Museum (Paris), 92, 99, 252.
Gold, use of, 6.
Gonnor (Duchess), 21.
Gonzaga, 61, 81.
_Goose Girl, The_, 259.
Gothic border, 60, 61.
Gothic columns, use of, 39, 52, 177, 178.
Gothic drawing, 174-177.
Gothic flowers, 180, 181.
Gothic period, 7, 8, 16, 52, 69, 188, 192.
Gothic style, 5, 27, 53, 66.
Greece, 18, 27.
Greek drawing, 15.
Greek influence, 186.
_Grotesque Months_, 76, 127.
Guildhall, 7.
Guilds, 6, 7.
Halberstadt, Cathedral at, 23.
Hallé, 131.
Hardwick Hall tapestries, 46.
Harriman, Mrs. E. H., 263.
Haute lisse, 3, 193, 194, 227.
Helen, 19, 21.
Helly, 35.
Henri II, 92.
Henri IV, 10, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 107, 146, 160, 161, 164, 165,
212.
Henry V, 31.
Henry VIII, 164, 251.
_Hero and Leander, History of_, 169.
_Herse and Mercury_, 205.
Herter, 238, 239, 263.
High-loom, 15, 18.
High-warp, 3, 16, 19, 27, 29, 95, 109, 157, 193, 227, 228, 229.
Hinart, Louis, 146, 147.
Hiss, Philip, 170, 224.
_History of Alexander_, 115, 172, 197.
_History of Constantine_, 112.
_History of Esther_, 131, 132.
_History of Gideon_, 36.
_History of Hero and Leander_, 169.
_History of Meleager_, 112.
_History of the King_, 112, 113, 129, 222.
_Holy Grail, The_, 258.
_Horrors of the Seven Deadly Sins, The_, 51.
_Hunt of Meleager_, 99.
_Hunts of Louis XV_, 130, 188.
Identifications, 172-200.
Iliad, influence of, 130.
India, 18.
Italy, 6, 10, 54, 71, 81, 86, 110, 152, 168, 208, 223.
James I, 164-167.
Jans, Jean, 109, 126.
John, Revelation of, 23.
John without Fear, 36, 45.
Jouvenet, 130.
_Judgment of Paris, The_, 119.
Jumeau, Pierre le, 28, 29.
Karcher, John, 82.
Karcher, Nicholas, 76, 82, 84, 85, 223.
_Kingdom of Heaven, The_, 59.
King's Works, 171.
_Lady and the Unicorn, The_, 44, 54, 175, 181, 203.
Lancaster, Duke of, 33.
La Marche, 157, 158.
La Planche, Raphael de, 96, 165, 166.
Laurent, Henri, 95, 96, 109.
Lebrun, 74, 99, 103, 104, 107, 109-120, 188, 203, 209, 211, 212,
213.
Lefèvre (or Lefebvre), 98, 109, 126, 222, 223.
Leipzig, 152.
Leleu, 105.
Leo X, Pope, 70, 71, 86.
Leonardo da Vinci, 90.
Le Pape, 147.
Leprince, 151.
Lerambert, Henri, 94, 211.
Lettering, 183-184, 203.
Leyniers, Nicolas, 221.
Liége, tapestries of, 48.
_Life of Marie de Medici_, 197.
_Life of the King_, 114, 144, 188.
Lisse, 3, 193.
Loches, church of, 41.
London, 165.
"Long wool" (_longue laine_), 160.
Looms, 3, 226-230.
Lorenzo the Magnificent, 86.
Louis XI, 36, 47, 48, 50, 54.
Louis XII, 48.
Louis XIII, 98.
Louis XIV, 10, 97-107, 117, 118, 122, 129, 145, 155-157, 161, 188,
203, 211, 212.
Louis XV, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 150, 162, 191, 205,
213.
Louis XVI, 133, 136, 137, 152, 162.
Louvois, 116-121.
Louvre, 97, 108, 109, 115, 160, 161.
_Loves of the Gods_, 132.
Low-warp, 3, 78, 109, 114, 147, 157, 158, 193, 227, 228, 230.
Maecht, Philip de, 166, 170, 223, 224.
Maincy, factory of. _See_ Vaux.
Maintenon, Mme. de, 118, 122, 124.
Mangelschot, 138.
Mantegna, Andrea, 61, 73, 81, 171.
Manufactory, Royal (Aubusson), 156.
Marie Antoinette, 133, 137, 152.
_Marie de Medici, Life of_, 197.
Marie Thérèse, 118.
Marks, 216-224.
Martel, Charles, 154, 155.
Mary's Chamber at Holyrood, 65.
Master-weaver, 6.
Matilda (Queen), 21, 242, 245.
_Mausolus and Artemisia_, 93.
Mazarin, Cardinal, 59, 100.
Mazarin tapestry, 56, 196.
Medici, 84, 92, 94.
_Meleager and Atalanta_, 222.
Memling, 55.
Mercier, Pierre, 157.
_Mercury_, 75, 76, 78, 196.
Merton Abbey, 252, 257-261.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 15, 40, 42, 46, 52, 58, 59, 76, 80,
162, 170, 174, 176, 187, 210, 238.
Meulen, François de la, 114.
Michael Angelo, 84.
Micou, 148.
Middle Ages, 5, 6, 7, 19, 21, 27, 42, 201.
Mignard, Pierre, 119, 120, 121.
Millefleurs, 4, 13.
Missals, 5.
Monasteries, influence of, 21, 22.
Montespan, Mme. de, 118, 131, 148.
Montezert, Pierre de, 158.
_Months, The_, 112, 133, 197, 212.
Morgan, J. P., 40, 56, 59, 128, 196, 250.
Morris, William, 257-261.
Mortlake, 163-171, 197, 223.
Mozin, Jean Baptiste, 109.
_Muses_, 104, 141.
Museums, Boston Fine Arts, 15, 46, 56, 238;
Chicago Institute of Art, 47, 78, 221;
Cluny, 44, 54;
Gobelins (Paris), 92, 99, 252;
Metropolitan (New York), 15, 40, 42, 52, 58, 59, 76, 80, 162,
170, 174, 176, 187, 210, 238;
Nancy, 37.
_Mysteries of the Life and Death of Jesus Christ, The_, 87, 208.
Nancy, Museum of, 37.
Nantes, Edict of; its effect, 95, 118, 157.
Napoleon, 136, 142, 143, 144, 208.
_Napoleon Crossing the Alps_, 144.
Natoire, Charles, 151.
Neilson, 132.
Nineteenth Century, 255.
Notre Dame, 21.
Otho, Count of Burgundy, 32.
Oudenarde, 221.
Oudry, 131, 148-152, 257.
Pannemaker, Wilhelm de, 62, 75, 220.
Paris, 10, 28, 29, 30, 47, 51, 90, 98, 132, 163, 222, 229.
Parrish, Maxfield, 264.
Parrocel, Charles, 130.
_Passing of Venus, The_, 259.
Pendleton, Charlotte, 235.
Penelope, 15, 16, 21, 227.
Pepersack, Daniel, 99.
Percier, 143.
"_Perse, à la façon de, ou du Levant_," 160.
Persia, 19.
Personages, 4.
Perspective, 175-177.
Pharaohs, 18, 57.
Philip the Good, 36.
Philip the Hardy, 22, 29, 33, 34, 35, 45.
Philippe (Regent), 122, 128, 134, 148, 236.
Pickering, Sir Gilbert, 171.
Pius X, Pope, 9.
Planche, François de la, 95, 96, 97, 107.
Poitiers, 23, 154, 155.
Poitou, Count of, 23.
_Portières des Dieux_, 126.
Portraits, 133, 140, 143, 162, 253.
_Presentation in the Temple, The_, 30.
Quedlimburg Hanging, 25.
Quentin Matsys, 58, 59.
Raphael, 9, 64, 67, 69, 70, 71, 79, 84, 118, 119, 145, 169, 187,
189, 205, 207, 214, 216, 221.
Ravaillac, 97.
Renaissance, influence of, 9, 53, 61, 67, 68, 69, 70, 77, 78, 174,
178, 182, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192.
_Renommés, Les_, 111.
Repairs, 237-240.
Revolution, French, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 152.
_Reward of Virtue, The_, 51.
Rheims, 99, 155.
Richelieu, 99.
Riesner, 107.
Riviera, Giacomo della, 87.
Rococo, 128.
Roman influence, 186.
Romanelli, 87, 88, 130.
Romano, Giulio, 73, 74, 84, 93, 118.
Rome, 18, 27.
Rome, Jean de, or Jan von Room, 56, 58, 59, 216.
Rost, John, 76, 84, 85, 223.
Rouen, 21.
Royal Collection, Madrid, 187.
_Royal Hunts, The_, 130, 188.
_Royal Residences, The_, 112, 197, 203, 212.
Rubens, 79, 104, 110, 111, 112, 169, 187, 209, 210, 211, 214.
Ryerson collection, 59, 60, 61.
Ryswick, Peace of, 121.
_Sack of Jerusalem, The_, 45, 176.
_Sacraments, The_, 38, 46, 52, 174, 176, 192.
_Sacred and Profane Love_, 254.
St. Denis, abbey of, 22.
St. Florent, Abbot of, 23.
St. Germain, 109.
St. John the Divine, Cathedral of, 87, 88, 208.
St. Marceau, 97.
St. Merri, 95.
Saracens, 28, 154, 155, 178.
Sarrazinois, 28, 29, 47.
Saumur, 20.
Savonnerie, 97, 159-162.
_Seasons, The_, 132.
_Seven Cardinal Virtues, The_, 34.
_Seven Cardinal Vices, The_, 34.
_Seven Deadly Sins, The_, 6, 250.
Seventeenth Century, 10, 76, 86, 96, 99, 123, 158, 160, 163, 180,
185, 187, 194, 207, 208, 211.
Sevigné, Mme. de, 101, 103.
Sforza Castle, 90.
Shaw, Byram, 260.
Shuttle, 4.
_Siege of Calais_, 141.
Silver, use of, 6.
Sixteenth Century, 29, 54, 56, 58, 62, 73, 74, 79, 163, 183, 187,
221, 223.
Sorel, Agnes, 41.
Spain, 54.
Spitzer, collection of Baron, 59, 60, 61.
_Spring_, 180.
Stockholm, 152.
_Story of Christ, The_, 99.
"Stromaturgie, La," 161.
Stradano, 85.
Sully, 94, 95, 164.
Sumner, Howard, 260.
Tapissiers, 4, 5, 228.
Tenth Century, 20, 22.
Tessier, Louis, 135.
Thirteenth Century, 25, 26, 27, 28.
Titian, 73.
Tournelles, 96, 97.
Tours, 99.
_Transfiguration, The_, 254.
"Très Riches Heures, Les," 41.
Trinité, Hôpital de la, 92, 93, 95, 97, 109.
_Triumph of Cæsar, The_, 171.
_Triumph of Right, The_, 51.
_Triumphs of the Gods_, 74.
_Troy, History of_, 81.
Troy, J. F. de, 131.
_Truth Blindfolded_, 260.
Tuileries, 97.
Tuscans, 27.
Twelfth Century, 23, 28.
Urban VIII, History of, 88.
Urbino, Duke Frederick of, 81.
Vallière, Mme. de la, 118.
Van Aelst, 70, 71, 86, 220, 221, 222.
Van den Strecken, Gerard, 80, 222.
Van der Straaten, Johan, 85.
Van Dyck, 169.
Van Eycks, 27, 55, 58.
Van Orley, Bernard, 55, 220.
Vaux, factory of, 99, 103, 105, 111, 112.
Venice, 10, 89.
_Venus_, 180.
Verdure, 4, 158, 222.
Vermeyen, Jan, 62.
Veronese, Paolo, 73.
Versailles, 109.
_Vertumnus and Pomona, The Loves of_, 76, 78, 220.
Vignory, Count of, 131.
_Virgin and Saints_, 21.
_Visit of Louis XIV to the Gobelins_, 113.
Von Zedlitz, Anna, 170, 224.
Vouet, Simon, 211.
_Vulcan, The Expulsion of_, 170, 224.
_Vulcan, Story of_, 169.
Warp, 232.
Watteau, André, 126, 188.
Wauters, 87.
Weave, 194-196.
Weavers, 5.
Webb, Philip, 260.
William the Conqueror, 242.
Williamsbridge, 262.
Winterhalter, 253.
Woolsey, Cardinal, 250.
Zègre, Jean, 103.
Transcriber's Note
Minor typographic errors of spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have
been repaired. Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as
printed.
The following errors in facing page number references have been repaired:
Page 61--plate reference to page 81 amended to 82.
Page 76--plate references for the "Vertumnus and Pomona"
series amended from 39 through 42 to 72 through 75.
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