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Title: The Tapestry Book

Author: Helen Churchill Candee

Release date: July 30, 2008 [eBook #26151]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAPESTRY
BOOK ***

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

See larger image

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

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
France and Flanders, 15th
IV Century 32
V High Gothic 51
VI Renaissance Influence 64
VII Renaissance to Rubens 72
Italy, 15th through 17th
VIII Centuries 81
IX France 90
X The Gobelins Factory 105
The Gobelins Factory
XI (Continued) 117
The Gobelins Factory
XII (Continued) 126
The Gobelins Factory
XIII (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
170
THE EXPULSION OF
VULCAN FROM OLYMPUS

(Coloured Plate)

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

T HE 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,” “Phœbus 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.

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CHINESE TAPESTRY
Chien Lung Period

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COPTIC TAPESTRY
About 300 A. D.

CHAPTER II
ANTIQUITY

E GYPT 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.

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COPTIC TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts

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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, Cœur 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.

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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

I N 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

W HETHER 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.

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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.

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THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430

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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.

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FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts

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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.

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LA BAILLÉE DES ROSES
French Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York

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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.

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THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musée de
Cluny, Paris

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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.

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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.

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SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITH ARMORIAL
SHIELDS
Flemish Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Institute
of Art, Chicago

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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.

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DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
German Tapestry, about 1450

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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

T HE 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.

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DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
Flemish Tapestry, late Fifteenth Century

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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.

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VERDURE
French Gothic Tapestry

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“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.

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ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT
Flemish Tapestry, about 1500. Collection of
Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.

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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.

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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.

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FLEMISH TAPESTRY, END OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq.,
Chicago. Formerly in the Spitzer Collection

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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.

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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

B RUSSELS 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.

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DEATH OF ANANIAS.—FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY
RAPHAEL
From the Palace of Madrid

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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.

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THE CREATION
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth
Century

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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.

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MELEAGER AND ATALANTA
Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth
Century. Woven in Paris workshops by
Charles de Comans

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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.

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EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CÆSAR
Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery
of the Arazzi, Florence

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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

W HEN 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.

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VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal
Collection of Madrid

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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.

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VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal
Collection of Madrid

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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.

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TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED
Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of
Madrid

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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.

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BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art,
Chicago

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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

T HE 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.

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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.

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ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas
Karcher

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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.

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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

I N 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.

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THE FINDING OF MOSES
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after
Poussin. The Louvre Museum

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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.

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TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century

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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.

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GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

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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.

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CHILDREN GARDENING

After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth
Century. Château Henri Quatre, Pau

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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.

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GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New
York

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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

C OLBERT 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.

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DESIGN BY RUBENS

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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.

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DESIGN BY RUBENS

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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.

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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)

C OLBERT 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)

A UDRAN 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.

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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.

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HUNTS OF LOUIS XV
Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry

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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.

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CUPID AND PSYCHE
Gobelins Tapestry. Eighteenth Century.
Design by Coypel

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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)

A ND 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.

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CHAIR OF TAPESTRY. STYLE OF LOUIS XV

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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

A NOTHER 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.

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HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS
Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century.
Design by Vincent

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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.

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BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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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.

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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.

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BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY

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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

P ERHAPS 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

T HOSE 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.

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SAVONNERIE. PORTRAIT SUPPOSABLY OF LOUIS XV
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York

CHAPTER XVII
MORTLAKE

1619-1703

T HE 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.

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VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York

See larger image

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.

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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

I DENTIFYING 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)

I F 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

I F 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

R EGARDLESS 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.

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.

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.

JACQUES GEUBELS NICOLAS LEYNIERS 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.

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.

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.

PARIS ALEX. DE COMANS 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.

GOBELINS,
JEAN LEFÈVRE GOBELINS, 18TH CENTURY 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.

KARCHER, KARCHER,
FLORENCE JOHN ROST 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.

PIERRE LEFÈVRE,
FLORENCE

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.

SIR FRANCIS CRANE 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.

TOURNAY LILLE

CHAPTER XXII
HOW IT IS MADE

W ANTING 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.

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WEAVER AT WORK ON LOW LOOM. HERTER STUDIO

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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.

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BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

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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.

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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

S O 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?

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BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066

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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.

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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

T HE 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.

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MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY, LOUIS XV INSPIRATION

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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.

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GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Luxembourg, Paris

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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.

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THE ADORATION
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Figures by Burne-
Jones

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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.

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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’œuvre, 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.

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THE PASSING OF VENUS
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-
Jones

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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.

See larger image

AMERICAN (BAUMGARTEN) TAPESTRY COPIED FROM THE
GOTHIC

See larger image

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
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWZ

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.