summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/26151.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to '26151.txt')
-rw-r--r--26151.txt9474
1 files changed, 9474 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/26151.txt b/26151.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fea66a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26151.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9474 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tapestry Book, by Helen Churchill Candee
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Tapestry Book
+
+Author: Helen Churchill Candee
+
+Release Date: July 30, 2008 [EBook #26151]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAPESTRY BOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eileen Gormly, Alicia Williams (who did the
+scanning, image prep, and OCR), Sam W. and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ TAPESTRY
+ BOOK
+
+
+ BY
+
+ HELEN CHURCHILL CANDEE
+
+ AUTHOR OF "DECORATIVE STYLES AND PERIODS"
+
+
+_WITH FOUR PLATES IN COLOUR AND NINETY-NINE
+ ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE_
+
+
+ NEW YORK
+ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+ MCMXII
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: HERSE AND MERCURY
+
+ Renaissance Brussels Tapestry, Italian Cartoon. W. de Pannemaker,
+ weaver.
+
+ Collection of George Blumenthal, Esq., New York]
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1912,
+by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
+languages, including the Scandinavian_
+
+_October, 1912_
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+ TWO CERTAIN BYZANTINE MADONNAS
+ AND THEIR OWNERS
+
+
+
+
+AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+Modesty so dominates the staff in art museums that I am requested not
+to make mention of those officers who have helped me with friendly
+courtesy and efficiency. To the officers and assistants at the
+Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago,
+the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Print Department in the
+Library of Congress in Washington, indebtedness is here publicly
+acknowledged with the regret that I may not speak of individuals.
+Photographs of tapestries are credited to Messrs. A. Giraudon, Paris;
+J. Laurent, Madrid; Alinari, Florence; Wm. Baumgarten, and Albert
+Herter, New York, and to those private collectors whose names are
+mentioned on the plates.
+
+ H. C. C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER PAGE
+
+ I A FOREWORD 1
+
+ II ANTIQUITY 15
+
+ III MODERN AWAKENING 25
+
+ IV FRANCE AND FLANDERS, 15TH CENTURY 32
+
+ V HIGH GOTHIC 51
+
+ VI RENAISSANCE INFLUENCE 64
+
+ VII RENAISSANCE TO RUBENS 72
+
+ VIII ITALY, 15TH THROUGH 17TH CENTURIES 81
+
+ IX FRANCE 90
+
+ X THE GOBELINS FACTORY 105
+
+ XI THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) 117
+
+ XII THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) 126
+
+ XIII THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) 135
+
+ XIV BEAUVAIS 145
+
+ XV AUBUSSON 154
+
+ XVI SAVONNERIE 159
+
+ XVII MORTLAKE 163
+
+ XVIII IDENTIFICATIONS 172
+
+ XIX IDENTIFICATIONS (_Continued_) 186
+
+ XX BORDERS 201
+
+ XXI TAPESTRY MARKS 216
+
+ XXII HOW IT IS MADE 226
+
+ XXIII THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 241
+
+ XXIV TO-DAY 249
+
+ BEST PERIODS AND THEIR DATES 265
+
+ INDEX 267
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ HERSE AND MERCURY (_Coloured Plate_) _Frontispiece_
+ Renaissance Brussels Tapestry, Italian Cartoon. W. de
+ Pannemaker, weaver. Collection of George Blumenthal,
+ Esq., New York
+
+ FACING PAGE
+
+ CHINESE TAPESTRY 14
+ Chien Lung Period
+
+ COPTIC TAPESTRY 15
+ About 300 A. D.
+
+ COPTIC TAPESTRY 16
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts
+
+ COPTIC TAPESTRY 17
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts
+
+ TAPESTRY FOUND IN GRAVES IN PERU 18
+ Date prior to Sixteenth Century
+
+ THE SACRAMENTS (_Coloured Plate_) 34
+ Arras Tapestry, about 1430. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
+ New York
+
+ THE SACRAMENTS 38
+ Arras Tapestry, about 1430
+
+ THE SACRAMENTS 39
+ Arras Tapestry, about 1430
+
+ FIFTEENTH CENTURY, FRENCH TAPESTRY 40
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts
+
+ THE LIFE OF CHRIST 41
+ Flemish Tapestry, second half of Fifteenth Century.
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts
+
+ LA BAILLEE DES ROSES 42
+ French Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
+ New York
+
+ FIFTEENTH CENTURY MILLEFLEUR WITH ARMS 43
+ Cathedral of Troyes
+
+ THE LADY AND THE UNICORN 44
+ French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris
+
+ THE LADY AND THE UNICORN 45
+ French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris
+
+ THE SACK OF JERUSALEM (DETAIL) 46
+ Burgundian Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of
+ Art, New York
+
+ SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITH ARMORIAL SHIELDS 48
+ Flemish Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Institute of Art,
+ Chicago
+
+ HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN 49
+ Angers Cathedral
+
+ DAVID AND BATHSHEBA 50
+ German Tapestry, about 1450
+
+ FLEMISH TAPESTRY. ABOUT 1500 51
+ Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.
+
+ DAVID AND BATHSHEBA 52
+ Flemish Tapestry, late Fifteenth Century
+
+ HISTORY OF ST. STEPHEN 53
+ Arras Tapestry, Fifteenth Century
+
+ VERDURE 54
+ French Gothic Tapestry
+
+ "ECCE HOMO" 55
+ Brussels Tapestry, about 1520. Metropolitan Museum of
+ Art, New York
+
+ ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT 56
+ Flemish Tapestry, about 1500. Collection of Alfred W.
+ Hoyt, Esq.
+
+ CROSSING THE RED SEA 57
+ Brussels Tapestry, about 1500. Boston Museum of Fine Arts
+
+ THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 58
+ Flemish Tapestry, about 1510. Collection of J. Pierpont
+ Morgan, Esq., New York
+
+ FLEMISH TAPESTRY, END OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 60
+ Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly
+ in the Spitzer Collection
+
+ THE HOLY FAMILY 61
+ Flemish Tapestry, end of Fifteenth Century. Collection
+ of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly in the
+ Spitzer Collection
+
+ CONQUEST OF TUNIS BY CHARLES V (DETAIL) 62
+ Cartoon by Jan Vermeyen. Woven by Pannemaker. Royal
+ Collection at Madrid
+
+ DEATH OF ANANIAS.--FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY RAPHAEL 64
+ From the Palace of Madrid
+
+ THE STORY OF REBECCA 65
+ Brussels Tapestry, Sixteenth Century. Collection of
+ Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
+
+ THE CREATION 66
+ Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century
+
+ THE ORIGINAL SIN 67
+ Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century
+
+ MELEAGER AND ATALANTA 68
+ Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth Century.
+ Woven in Paris workshops by Charles de Comans
+
+ PUNIC WAR SERIES 69
+ Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of
+ Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
+
+ EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CAESAR 70
+ Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the
+ Arazzi, Florence
+
+ WILD BOAR HUNT 71
+ Flemish Cartoon and Weaving, Sixteenth Century. Gallery
+ of the Arazzi, Florence
+
+ VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 72
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
+ Madrid
+
+ VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 73
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
+ Madrid
+
+ VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 74
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
+ Madrid
+
+ VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 75
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of
+ Madrid
+
+ TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED 76
+ Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid
+
+ THE STORY OF REBECCA 77
+ Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of
+ Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
+
+ BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 78
+ Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art, Chicago
+
+ MEETING OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 79
+ Brussels Tapestry. Woven by Gerard van den Strecken.
+ Cartoon attributed to Rubens
+
+ THE ANNUNCIATION (_Coloured Plate_) 82
+ Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of
+ Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago
+
+ ITALIAN TAPESTRY, MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY 84
+ Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas Karcher
+
+ ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY 85
+ Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by G. Rost
+
+ ITALIAN VERDURE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 86
+
+ THE FINDING OF MOSES 90
+ Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin.
+ The Louvre Museum
+
+ TRIUMPH OF JUNO 91
+ Gobelins under Louis XIV
+
+ TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL) 94
+ Gobelins, Seventeenth Century
+
+ TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL) 95
+ Gobelins Tapestry
+
+ GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 98
+
+ CHILDREN GARDENING 99
+ After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century.
+ Chateau Henri Quatre, Pau
+
+ CHILDREN GARDENING 102
+ After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century.
+ Chateau Henri Quatre, Pau
+
+ GOBELINS GROTESQUE 103
+ Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
+
+ GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV 104
+ Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York
+
+ THE VILLAGE FETE 105
+ Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers
+
+ DESIGN BY RUBENS 110
+
+ DESIGN BY RUBENS 111
+
+ DESIGN BY RUBENS 112
+
+ GOBELINS TAPESTRY. DESIGN BY RUBENS 113
+ Royal Collection, Madrid
+
+ LOUIS XIV VISITING THE GOBELINS FACTORY 114
+ Gobelins Tapestry, Epoch Louis XIV
+
+ GOBELINS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XV 126
+
+ HUNTS OF LOUIS XV 130
+ Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry
+
+ ESTHER AND AHASUERUS SERIES 131
+ Gobelins, about 1730. Cartoon by J. F. de Troy;
+ G. Audran, weaver
+
+ CUPID AND PSYCHE 132
+ Gobelins Tapestry. Eighteenth Century. Design by Coypel
+
+ PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE OF RUSSIA 133
+ Gobelins under Louis XVI.
+
+ CHAIR OF TAPESTRY. STYLE OF LOUIS XV 136
+
+ GOBELINS TAPESTRY (DETAIL) CRAMOISEE. STYLE LOUIS XV 137
+
+ HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS 146
+ Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent
+
+ HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTREES 147
+ Design by Vincent
+
+ BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 148
+ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+ BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI 149
+ Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York
+
+ BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV 150
+
+ BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY 152
+
+ CHAIR COVERING 153
+ Beauvais Tapestry. First Empire
+
+ SAVONNERIE. PORTRAIT SUPPOSABLY OF LOUIS XV 162
+ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+ VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE 163
+ Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York
+
+ VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE 168
+ Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York
+
+ VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE 169
+ Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York
+
+ THE EXPULSION OF VULCAN FROM OLYMPUS (_Coloured Plate_) 170
+
+ WEAVER AT WORK ON LOW LOOM. HERTER STUDIO 228
+
+ SEWING AND REPAIR DEPARTMENT. BAUMGARTEN ATELIERS 229
+
+ BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 230
+
+ BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON 231
+
+ BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON 234
+
+ BAYEUX TAPESTRY. (DETAIL) 1066 242
+
+ BAYEUX TAPESTRY. (DETAIL) 1066 243
+
+ BAYEUX TAPESTRY. (DETAIL) 1066 244
+
+ MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY, LOUIS XV INSPIRATION 250
+
+ MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY FROM FRENCH INSPIRATION 251
+
+ GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 252
+ Luxembourg, Paris
+
+ GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY 253
+ Pantheon, Paris
+
+ THE ADORATION 256
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Figures by Burne-Jones
+
+ DAVID INSTRUCTING SOLOMON IN THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE 257
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Burne-Jones, Artist
+
+ TRUTH BLINDFOLDED 258
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Byram Shaw, Artist
+
+ THE PASSING OF VENUS 260
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-Jones
+
+ ANGELI LAUDANTES 261
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry
+
+ AMERICAN (BAUMGARTEN) TAPESTRY COPIED FROM THE GOTHIC 262
+
+ DRYADS AND FAUNS 263
+ From Herter Looms, New York, 1910
+
+
+
+
+THE TAPESTRY BOOK
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A FOREWORD
+
+
+The commercial fact that tapestries have immeasurably increased in
+value within the last five years, would have little interest were it
+not that this increase is the direct result of America's awakened
+appreciation of this form of art. It has come about in these latter
+days that tapestries are considered a necessity in the luxurious and
+elegant homes which are multiplying all over our land. And the
+enormous demand thus made on the supply, has sent the prices for rare
+bits into a dizzy altitude, and has made even the less perfect pieces
+seem scarce and desirable.
+
+The opinion of two shrewd men of different types is interesting as
+bearing on the subject of tapestries. One with tastes fully cultivated
+says impressively, "Buy good old tapestries whenever you see them, for
+there are no more." The other says bluffly, "Tapestries? You can't
+touch 'em. The prices have gone way out of sight, and are going higher
+every day." The latter knows but one view, the commercial, yet both
+are right, and these two views are at the bottom of the present keen
+interest in tapestries in our country. Outside of this, Europe has
+collections which we never can equal, and that thought alone is
+enough to make us snatch eagerly at any opportunity to secure a piece.
+We may begin with our ambition set on museum treasures, but we can
+come happily down to the friendly fragments that fit our private
+purses and the wall-space by the inglenook.
+
+Tapestries are not to be bought lightly, as one buys a summer coat, to
+throw aside at the change of taste or circumstance. They demand more
+of the buyer than mere money; they demand that loving understanding
+and intimate appreciation that exists between human friends. A
+profound knowledge of tapestries benefits in two ways, by giving the
+keenest pleasure, and by providing the collector--or the purchaser of
+a single piece--with a self-protection that is proof against fraud,
+unconscious or deliberate.
+
+The first step toward buying must be a bit of pleasant study which
+shall serve in the nature of self-defence. Not by books alone,
+however, shall this subject be approached, but by happy jaunts to
+sympathetic museums, both at home and abroad, by moments snatched from
+the touch-and-go talk of afternoon tea in some friend's salon or
+library, or by strolling visits to dealers. These object lessons
+supplement the book, as a study of entomology is enlivened by a chase
+for butterflies in the flowery meads of June, or as botany is made
+endurable by lying on a bank of violets. All work and no play not only
+makes Jack a dull boy, but makes dull reading the book he has in hand.
+
+The tale of tapestry itself carries us back to the unfathomable East
+which has a trick at dates, making the Christian Era a modern epoch,
+and making of us but a newly-sprung civilisation in the history of the
+old grey world. After showing us that the East pre-empted originality
+for all time, the history of tapestry lightly lifts us over a few
+centuries and throws us into the romance of Gothic days, then trails
+us along through increasing European civilisation up to the great
+awakening, the Renaissance. Then it loiters in the pleasant ways of
+the kings of France during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
+and finally falls upon modern effort, not limited to Europe now, but
+nesting also in the New World which is especially our own.
+
+Tapestry, according to the interpretation of the word used in this
+book, is a pictured cloth, woven by an artist or a talented craftsman,
+in which the design is an integral part of the fabric, and not an
+embroidery stitched on a basic tissue. With this flat statement the
+review of tapestries from antiquity until our time may be read without
+fear of mistaking the term.
+
+
+THE LOOM
+
+The looms on which tapestries are made are such as have been known as
+long as the history of man is known, but we have come to call them
+high-warp and low-warp, or as the French have it, _haute lisse_ and
+_basse lisse_. In the celebrated periods of weaving the high loom has
+been the one in use, and to it is accredited a power almost
+mysterious; yet the work of the two styles of loom are not
+distinguishable by the weave alone, and it is true that the low-warp
+looms were used in France when the manufacture of tapestries was
+permanently established by the Crown about 1600. So difficult is it to
+determine the work of the two looms that weavers themselves could not
+distinguish without the aid of a red thread which they at one time
+wove in the border. Yet because the years of the highest perfection in
+tapestries have been when the high loom was in vogue, some peculiar
+power is supposed to reside within it. That the high movements of the
+fine arts have been contemporary with perfection in tapestries, seems
+not to be taken into consideration.
+
+
+NECESSARY FRENCH TERMS
+
+French terms belong so much to the art of tapestry weaving that it is
+hard to find their English equivalent. Tapestries of _verdure_ and of
+_personnages_ describe the two general classes, the former being any
+charming mass of greenery, from the Gothic _millefleurs_, and curling
+leaves with animals beneath, to the lovely landscapes of sophisticated
+park and garden which made Beauvais famous in the Eighteenth Century.
+_Tapisseries des personnages_ have, as the name implies, the human
+figure as the prominent part of the design. The shuttle or bobbin of
+the high loom is called a _broche_, and that of the low loom a
+_flute_. Weavers throughout Europe, whether in the Low Countries or in
+France, were called _tapissiers_, and this term was so liberal as to
+need explaining.
+
+
+WORKERS' FUNCTIONS
+
+The tapestry factory was under the guidance of a director; under him
+were the various persons required for the work. Each tapestry woven
+had a directing artist, as the design was of primary importance. This
+man had the power to select the silks and wools for the work, that
+they might suit his eye as to colour. But there was also a _chef
+d'atelier_ who was an artist weaver, and he directed this matter and
+all others when the artist of the cartoons was not present. Under him
+were the tapissiers who did the actual weaving, and under these,
+again, were the apprentices, who began as boys and served three years
+before being allowed to try their hands at a "'prentice job" or essay
+at finished work.
+
+
+WEAVERS
+
+The word weaver means so little in these days that it is necessary to
+consider what were the conditions exacted of the weavers of tapestries
+in the time of tapestry's highest perfection. A tapissier was an
+artist with whom a loom took place of an easel, and whose brush was a
+shuttle, and whose colour-medium was thread instead of paints. This
+places him on a higher plane than that of mere weaver, and makes the
+term tapissier seem fitter. Much liberty was given him in copying
+designs and choosing colours. In the Middle Ages, when the Gothic
+style prevailed, the master-weaver needed often no other cartoon for
+his work than his own sketches enlarged from the miniatures found in
+the luxurious missals of the day. These historic books were the
+luxuries of kings, were kept with the plate and jewels, so precious
+were considered their exquisitely painted scenes in miniature. From
+them the master-weaver drew largely for such designs as _The Seven
+Deadly Sins_ and other "morality" subjects.
+
+Master-weavers were many in the best years of tapestry weaving;
+indeed, a man must have attained the dignity and ability of that
+position before being able to produce those marvels of skill which
+were woven between 1475 and 1575 in Flanders, France and Italy. Their
+aids, the apprentices, pique the fancy, as Puck harnessed to labour
+might do. They were probably as mischievous, as shirking, as
+exasperating as boys have ever known how to be, but those little
+unwilling slaves of art in the Middle Ages make an appeal to the
+imagination more vivid than that of the shabby lunch-box boy of
+to-day.
+
+
+DYERS
+
+Accessory to the weavers, and almost as important, were the dyers who
+prepared the thread for use. The conscientiousness of their work cries
+out for recognition when the threads they dyed are almost unaltered in
+colour after five hundred years of exposure to their enemies, light
+and air. Dye stuffs were precious in those days, and so costly that
+even threads of gold and silver (which in general were supplied by the
+client ordering the tapestry) hardly exceeded in value certain dyed
+wools and silk. All of these workers, from director down to
+apprenticed lad, were bound by the guild to do or not do, according to
+its infinite code, to the end that the art of tapestry-making be held
+to the highest standards. The laws of the guilds make interesting
+reading. The guild prevailed all over Europe and regulated all crafts.
+In Florence even to-day evidences of its power are on every side, and
+the Guildhall in London attests its existence there. Moreover, the
+greatest artists belonged to the guilds, uniting themselves usually by
+work of the goldsmith, as Benvenuto Cellini so quaintly describes in
+his naive autobiography.
+
+
+GUILDS
+
+It was these same protective laws of the guilds that in the end
+crippled the hand of the weaver. The laws grew too many to comply
+with, in justice to talent, and talent with clipped wings could no
+longer soar. At the most brilliant period of tapestry production
+Flanders was to the fore. All Europe was appreciating and demanding
+the unequalled products of her ateliers. It was but human to want to
+keep the excellence, to build a wall of restrictions around her
+especial craft that would prevent rivals, and at the same time to
+press the ateliers to execute all the orders that piled in toward the
+middle of the Sixteenth Century.
+
+But although the guilds could make wise laws and enforce them, it
+could not execute in haste and retain the standard of excellence. And
+thus came the gradual decay of the art in Brussels, a decay which
+guild-laws had no power to arrest.
+
+
+GOTHIC PERIOD
+
+The first period in tapestries which interests--except the remnants of
+Egyptian and aboriginal work--is that of the Middle Ages, the early
+Gothic, because that is when the art became a considerable one in
+Europe. It is a time of romance, of chivalry, of deep religious
+feeling, and yet seems like the childhood of modernity. Is it the
+fault of crudity in pictorial art, or the fault of romances that we
+look upon those distant people as more elemental than we, and thus
+feel for them the indulgent compassion that a child excites? However
+it is, theirs is to us a simple time of primitive emotion and romance,
+and the tapestries they have left us encourage the whim.
+
+The time of Gothic perfection in tapestry-making is included in the
+few years lying between 1475 and 1520. Life was at that time getting
+less difficult, and art had time to develop. It was no longer left to
+monks and lonely ladies, in convent and castle, but was the serious
+consideration of royalty and nobility. No need to dwell on the story
+of modern art, except as it affects the art of tapestry weaving. With
+the improvement of drawing that came in these years, a greater
+excellence of weave was required to translate properly the meaning of
+the artist. The human face which had hitherto been either blank or
+distorted in expression, now required a treatment that should convey
+its subtlest shades of expression. Gifted weavers rose to the task,
+became almost inspired in the use of their medium, and produced such
+works of their art as have never been equalled in any age. These are
+the tapestries that grip the heart, that cause a _frisson_ of joy to
+the beholder. And these are the tapestries we buy, if kind chance
+allows. If they cannot be ours to live with, then away to the museum
+in all haste and often, to feast upon their beauties.
+
+
+RENAISSANCE
+
+That great usurper, the Renaissance, came creeping up to the North
+where the tapestry looms were weaving fairy webs. Pope Pius X wanted
+tapestries, those of the marvellous Flemish weave. But he wanted those
+of the new style of drawing, not the sweet restraint and finished
+refinement of the Gothic. Raphael's cartoons were sent to Brussels'
+workshops, and thus was the North inoculated with the Renaissance, and
+thus began the second phase of the supreme excellency of Flemish
+tapestries. It was the Renaissance expressing itself in the wondrous
+textile art. The weavers were already perfect in their work, no change
+of drawing could perplex them. But to their deftness with their medium
+was now added the rich invention of the Italian artists of the
+Renaissance, at the period of perfection when restraint and delicacy
+were still dominant notes.
+
+It was the overworking of the craft that led to its decadence. Toward
+the end of the Sixteenth Century the extraordinary period of Brussels
+perfection had passed.
+
+But tapestry played too important a part in the life and luxury of
+those far-away centuries for its production to be allowed to languish.
+The magnificence of every great man, whether pope, king or dilettante,
+was ill-expressed before his fellows if he were not constantly
+surrounded by the storied cloths that were the indispensable
+accessories of wealth and glory. Palaces and castles were hung with
+them, the tents of military encampments were made gorgeous with their
+richness, and no joust nor city procession was conceivable without
+their colours flaunting in the sun as background to plumed knights and
+fair ladies. Venice looked to them to brighten her historic stones on
+days of carnival, and Paris spread them to welcome kings.
+
+
+FRANCE
+
+When, therefore, Brussels no longer supplied the tissues of her former
+excellence, opportunity came for some other centre to rise. The next
+important producer was Paris, and in Paris the art has consistently
+stayed. Other brief periods of perfection have been attained
+elsewhere, but Paris once establishing the art, has never let it drop,
+not even in our own day--but that is not to be considered at this
+moment.
+
+Divers reigns of divers kings, notably that of Henri IV, fostered the
+weaving of tapestry and brought it to an interesting stage of
+development, after which Louis XIV established the Gobelins. From that
+time on for a hundred years France was without a rival, for the
+decadent work of Brussels could not be counted as such. Although the
+work of Italy in the Seventeenth Century has its admirers, it is
+guilty of the faults of all of Italy's art during the dominance of
+Bernini's ideals.
+
+
+AMERICAN INTEREST
+
+America is too late on the field to enter the game of antiquity. We
+have no history of this wonderful textile art to tell. But ours is the
+power to acquire the lovely examples of the marvellous historied
+hangings of other times and of those nations which were our forebears
+before the New World was discovered. And we are acquiring them from
+every corner of Europe where they may have been hiding in old chateau
+or forgotten chest. To the museums go the most marvellous examples
+given or lent by those altruistic collectors who wish to share their
+treasures with a hungry public. But to the mellow atmosphere of
+private homes come the greater part of the tapestries. To buy them
+wisely, a smattering of their history is a requisite. Within the brief
+compass of this book is to be found the points important for the
+amateur, but for a profounder study he must turn to those huge volumes
+in French which omit no details.
+
+Not entirely by books can he learn. Association with the objects
+loved, counts infinitely more in coming to an understanding. Happy he
+who can make of tapestries the _raison d'etre_ for a few months'
+loitering in Europe, and can ravish the eye and intoxicate the
+imagination with the storied cloths found hanging in England, in
+France, in Spain, in Italy, in Sweden, and learn from them the
+fascinating tales of other men's lives in other men's times.
+
+Then, when the tour is finished and a modest tapestry is hung at home,
+it represents to its instructed owner the concentrated tale of all he
+has seen and learned. In the weave he sees the ancient craftsman
+sitting at his loom. In the pattern is the drawing of the artist of
+the day, in the colours, the dyes most rare and costly; in the metal,
+the gold and silver of a duke or prince; and in the tale told by the
+figures he reads a romance of chivalry or history, which has the
+glamour given by the haze of distant time to human action.
+
+To enter a house where tapestries abound, is to feel oneself welcomed
+even before the host appears. The bending verdure invites, the
+animated figures welcome, and at once the atmosphere of elegance and
+cordiality envelopes the happy visitor.
+
+To live in a house abundantly hung with old tapestries, to live there
+day by day, makes of labour a pleasure and of leisure a delight. It is
+no small satisfaction in our work-a-day life to live amidst beauty, to
+be sure that every time the eyes are raised from the labour of writing
+or sewing--or of bridge whist, if you like--they encounter something
+worthy and lovely. In the big living-room of the home, when the hours
+come in which the family gathers, on a rainy morning, or on any
+afternoon when the shadows grow grim outside and the afternoon
+tea-tray is brought in whispering its discreet tune of friendly
+communion, the tapestries on the walls seem to gather closer, to
+enfold in loving embrace the sheltered group, to promise protection
+and to augment brotherly love.
+
+In the dining-room the glorious company assembles, so that he who eats
+therein, attends a feast on Olympus, even though the dyspeptic's fast
+be his lot. If the eyes gaze on Coypel's gracious ladies, under fruit
+and roses, with adolescent gods adoring, what matters if the palate is
+chastised? In a dining-room soft-hung with piquant scenes, even
+buttermilk and dog-biscuit, burnt canvasback and cold Burgundy lose
+half their bitterness.
+
+When night is well started in its flight, perhaps one only, one lover
+of the silence and the solitude, loath to give away to soft sleep the
+quiet hours, this one remains behind when all the others have flown
+bedward, and to him the neighbouring tapestries speak a various
+language. From the easy chair he sees the firelight play on the
+verdure with the effect of a summer breeze, the gracious foliage all
+astir. The figures in this enchanted wood are set in motion and
+imagination brings them into the life of the moment, makes of them
+sympathetic playmates coaxing one to love, as they do, the land of
+romance. Before their imperturbable jocundity what bad humour can
+exist? All the old songs of mock pastoral times come singing in the
+ears, "It happened on a day, in the merry month of May," "Shepherds
+all and maidens fair," "It was a lover and his lass," "Phoebus arise,
+and paint the skies," _et cetera_. Animated by the fire, in the
+silence of the winter night the loving horde gathers and ministers to
+the mind afflicted with much hard practicality and the strain of
+keeping up with modern inexorable times. This sweet procession on the
+walls, thanks be to lovely art, needs no keeping up with, merely asks
+to scatter joy and to soften the asperities of a too arduous day.
+
+All the way up the staircase in the house of tapestries are dainty
+bits of _millefleurs_, that Gothic invention for transferring a block
+of the spring woods from under the trees into a man-made edifice. It
+may have a deep indigo background or a dull red--like the shades of
+moss or like last year's fallen leaves--but over it all is abundantly
+sprinkled dainty bluebells, anemones, daisies, all the spring beauties
+in joyous self-assertion and happy mingling. With such flowery guides
+to mark the way the path to slumberland is followed. Once within the
+bedroom, the poppies of the hangings spread drowsy influence, and the
+happy sleeper passes into unconsciousness, passes through the flowered
+border of the ancient square, into the scene beyond, becomes one of
+those storied persons in the enchanted land and lives with them in
+jousts and tourneys or in _fetes champetres_ at lovely chateaux. The
+magic spell of the house of tapestries has fallen like the dew from
+heaven to bless the striver in our modern life of exigency and
+fatigue.
+
+ [Illustration: CHINESE TAPESTRY
+
+ Chien Lung Period]
+
+ [Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
+
+ About 300 A. D.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ANTIQUITY
+
+
+Egypt and China, India and Persia, seem made to take the conceit from
+upstart nations like those of Europe and our own toddling America.
+Directly we scratch the surface and look for the beginning of applied
+arts, the lead takes us inevitably to the oldest civilisation. It
+would seem that in a study of fabrics which are made in modern Europe,
+it were enough to find their roots in the mediaeval shades of the dark
+ages; but no, back we must go to the beginning of history where man
+leaped from the ambling dinosaur, which then modestly became extinct,
+and looking upon the lands of the Nile and the Yangtsi-kiang found
+them good, and proceeded to pre-empt all the ground of applied arts,
+so that from that time forward all the nations of the earth were and
+are obliged to acknowledge that there is nothing new under the sun.
+
+In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a bit of tapestry,
+Coptic, that period where Greek and Egyptian drawing were intermixed,
+a woman's head adorned with much vanity of head-dress, woven two or
+three centuries after Christ. (Plate facing page 15.) In the Boston
+Museum of Fine Arts are other rare specimens of this same time.
+(Plates facing pages 16 and 17.) Looking further back, an ancient
+decoration shows Penelope at her high loom, four hundred years before
+the Christian era; and one, still older, shows the Egyptians weaving
+similarly three thousand years before that epoch.
+
+It is not altogether thrilling to read that civilised people of
+ancient times wove fabrics for dress and decoration, but it certainly
+is interesting to learn that they were masters of an art which we
+carelessly attribute to Europe of six centuries back, and to find that
+the weaving apparatus and the mode of work were almost identical. The
+Coptic tapestry of the Third Century is woven in the same manner as
+the tapestries that come to us from Europe as the flower of
+comparatively recent times, and its dyes and treatment of shading are
+identical with the Gothic times. Penelope's loom as pictured on an
+ancient vase, is the same in principle as the modern high-warp loom,
+although lacking a bit in convenience to the weaver; and so we can
+easily imagine the lovely lady at work on her famous web, "playing for
+time," during Ulysses' absence, when she sat up o' nights undoing her
+lovely stint of the day.
+
+And the Egyptian loom shown in ancient pictures--that is even more
+modern than Penelope's, although it was set up three thousand years
+before, a last guide-post on the backward way to the misty land called
+prehistoric.
+
+But as there is really little interest except for the archeologist in
+digging so far into the past for an art that has left us but
+traditions and museum fragments, let us skim but lightly the surface
+of this time, only picking up the glistening facts that attract the
+mind's eye, so that we may quickly reach the enchanted land of more
+recent times which yet appear antique to the modern.
+
+ [Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
+
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
+
+ [Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
+
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
+
+There are those to whom reading the Bible was a forced task during
+childhood, a class which slipped the labour as soon as years gave
+liberty of choice. There are others who have always turned as
+naturally to its accounts of grand ceremony and terrible battles as to
+the accounts of Caesar, Coeur de Lion, Charlemagne. But in either case,
+whatever the reason for the eye to absorb these pages of ancient
+Hebrew history, the impression is gained of superb pomp. And always
+concerned with it are descriptions of details, lovingly impressed, as
+though the chronicler was sure of the interest of his audience. In
+this enumeration, decorative textiles always played a part. Such
+textiles as they were exceed in extravagance of material any that we
+know of European production, for in many cases they were woven
+entirely of gold and silver, and even set with jewels. These gorgeous
+fabrics shone like suns on the magnificent pomp of priest and ruler,
+and declared the wealth and power of the nation. They departed from
+the original intention of protecting shivering humanity from chill
+draughts or from close and cold association with the stones of
+architectural construction, and became a luxury of the eye, a source
+of bewilderment to the fancy and a lively intoxication to those
+who--irrespective of class, or of century--love to compute display in
+coin.
+
+But, dipping into the history of one ancient country after another, it
+is easy to see that the usual fabric for hanging was woven of wool, of
+cotton and of silk, and carried the design in the weaving. Babylon
+the great, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Greece in its heroic times, Rome
+under the Emperors--not omitting China and India of the Far
+East--these countries of ancient peoples all knew the arts of dyeing
+and weaving, of using the materials that we employ, and of introducing
+figures symbolic, geometric, or realistic into the weaving. Beyond a
+doubt the high loom has been known to man since prehistoric times. It
+may be discouraging to those who like to feel that tapestry properly
+belongs to Europe only,--Europe of the last six centuries--to find
+that the art has been sifted down through the ages; but in reality it
+is but one more link between us and the centuries past, the human
+touch that revivifies history, that unites humanity. People of the
+past wear a haze about them, are immovable and rigid as their pictured
+representations. The Assyrian is to us a huge man of impossible beard,
+the Egyptian is a lean angle fixed in posture, the Greek is eternally
+posed for the sculptor.
+
+But once we can find that these people were not forever transfixed to
+frieze, but were as simple, as industrious, as human as we, the
+kinship is established, and through their veins begins to flow the
+stream that is common to all humanity. These people felt the same need
+for elegantly covering the walls of their homes that we in this
+country of new homes feel, and the craftsmen led much the same lives
+as do craftsmen of to-day. Even in the matter of expense, of money
+which purchasers were willing to spend for woven decorative fabrics,
+we see no novelty in the high prices of to-day, the Twentieth
+Century. _The Mantle of Alcisthenes_ is celebrated for having been
+bought by the Carthaginians for the equal of a hundred thousand
+dollars.
+
+ [Illustration: TAPESTRY FOUND IN GRAVES IN PERU
+
+ Date prior to Sixteenth Century]
+
+Thus we connect ourselves with the remote past in making a continuous
+history. But as the purpose of this book is to assist the owner of
+tapestries to understand the story of his hangings and to enable the
+purchaser or collector to identify tapestries on his own knowledge
+instead of through the prejudiced statements of the salesman, it is
+useless to dwell long upon the fabrics that we can only see through
+exercise of the imagination or in disintegrated fragments in museums.
+
+Then away with Circe and her leisure hours of weaving, with Helen and
+her heroic canvas, and the army of grandiose Biblical folk, and let us
+come westward into Europe in short review of the textiles called
+tapestry which were produced from the early Christian centuries to the
+time of the Crusades, and thus will we approach more modern times.
+
+So far as known, high-warp weaving was not universally used in Europe
+in the first part of the Middle Ages. Whether plain or figured, most
+of the fabrics of that time that have come down to us for hangings or
+for clothing, are woven, with the decorative pattern executed by the
+needle on woven cloth. In Persia and neighbouring states, however, the
+high-warp loom was used.[1]
+
+Europe in the Middle Ages was a place so savage, so devastated by war
+and by neighbouring malice, that to consider it is to hear the clash
+of steel, to feel the pangs of hunger, to experience the fearsome
+chill of dungeons or moated castles. It was a time when those who
+could huddle in fortresses mayhap died natural deaths, but those who
+lived in the world were killed as a matter of course. Man was man's
+enemy and to be killed on sight.
+
+In such gay times of carnage, art is dead. Men there were who drew
+designs and executed them, for the _luxe_ of the eye is ever
+demanding, but the designs were timid and stunted and came far from
+the field of art. Fabrics were made and worn, no doubt, but when looms
+were like to be destroyed and the weavers with them, scant attention
+was given to refinements.
+
+By the time the Tenth Century was reached matters had improved. We
+come into the light of records. It is positively known that the town
+of Saumur, down in the lovely country below Tours, became the
+destination of a quantity of wall-hangings, carpets, curtains, and
+seat covers woven of wool. This was by order of the third Abbot Robert
+of the Monastery of St. Florent, one of those vigorous, progressive
+men whose initiative inspires a host. It is recorded that he also
+ordered two pieces of tapestry executed, not of wool exclusively, but
+with silk introduced, and in these the figures of the designs were the
+beasts that were then favourites in decoration and that still showed
+the influence of Oriental drawing.
+
+Before enumerating other authentic examples of early tapestries it is
+well to speak of the reason for their being invariably associated with
+the church. The impression left by history is that folk of those days
+must have been universally religious when not cutting each other in
+bits with bloody cutlass. The reason is, of course, that when poor
+crushed humanity began to revive from the devastating onslaughts of
+fierce Northern barbarians, it was with a timid huddling in
+monasteries, for there was found immunity from attack. The lord of the
+castle was forced to go to war or to resist attack in his castle, but
+the monastery was exempt from whatever conscription the times imposed,
+and frocked friars were always on hand were defence needed. Thus it
+came about that monasteries became treasure-houses, the only safe
+ones, were built strong, were sufficiently manned, and therefore were
+the safe-deposit of whatever articles of concentrated value the great
+lord of the Middle Ages might accumulate. Many tapestries thus
+deposited became gifts to the institution which gave them asylum.
+
+The arts and crafts of the Middle Ages were in the hands of the
+monasteries, monks and friars being the only persons with safety and
+leisure. Weaving fell naturally to them to execute as an art. In the
+castles, necessary weaving for the family was done by the women, as on
+every great lord's domains were artisans for all crafts; and great
+ladies emulated Penelope and Helen of old in passing their hours of
+patience and anxiety with fabricating gorgeous cloths. But these are
+exceptional, and deal with such grand ladies as Queen Matilda, who
+with her maidens embroidered (not wove) the Bayeux Tapestry, and with
+the Duchess Gonnor, wife of Richard First, who embroidered for the
+church of Notre Dame at Rouen a history of the Virgin and Saints.[2]
+
+To the monasteries must be given the honour of preserving this as
+many other arts, and of stimulating the laity which had wealth and
+power to present to religious institutions the best products of the
+day. The subjects executed inside the monastery were perforce
+religious, many revelling in the horrors of martyrology, and those
+intended as gifts or those ordered by the clergy were religious in
+subject for the sake of appropriateness. It is interesting to note the
+sweet childlike attitude of all lower Europe toward the church in
+these years, a sort of infantile way of leaving everything in its
+hands, all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. It was not even necessary
+to read or write, as the clergy conveniently concerned themselves with
+literacy. As late as the beginning of the Fifteenth Century Philip the
+Hardy, the great Duke of Burgundy, in ordering a tapestry, signed the
+order, not with his autograph, for he could not, but with his mark,
+for he, too, left pen-work to the clerks of the church.
+
+That pile of concentrated royal history, the old abbey of St. Denis,
+received, late in the Tenth Century, one of the evidences of royal
+patronage that every abbey must have envied. It was a woven
+representation of the world, as scientists of that day imagined our
+half-discovered planet, and was presented by Queen Adelaide, the wife
+of Hugh Capet, whose descendants reigned for three hundred years.[3]
+
+While dealing with records rather than with objects on which the eye
+can gaze and the hand can rest, note must be made of an order of a
+Count of Poitou, William V, to a factory for tapestries then existing
+in Poitiers, showing that the art of weaving had in that spot jumped
+the monastery walls in 1025.[4] The order was for a large hanging with
+subjects taken from the Scriptures, but given the then modern touch by
+introducing portraits of kings and emperors and their favourite
+animals transfixed in ways peculiar to the nature of the day.
+
+A century later, another Abbot of St. Florent in Saumur had hangings
+made important enough to be recorded. One of these represented the
+four and twenty elders of the Apocalypse with musical instruments, and
+other subjects taken from the Revelation of John. This subject was one
+of unending interest to the artists of that time who seemed to find in
+its depicting a serving of both God and imagination.
+
+Among the few tapestries of this period, those of the Cathedral at
+Halberstadt must be mentioned, partly by way of conscientious
+chronicling, partly that the interested traveller may, as he travels,
+know where to find the rare specimens of the hobby he is pursuing.
+This is a high-warp tapestry which authorities variously place as the
+product of the Eleventh or the Twelfth Centuries. Entirely regardless
+of its age, it has for us the charm of the craft of hands long
+vanished, and of primitive art in all its simplicity of artifice. The
+subject is religious--could hardly have been otherwise in those
+monastic days--and for church decoration, and to fit the space they
+were woven to occupy, each of the two parts was but three and a half
+feet high although more than fourteen yards long.
+
+Each important event recorded in history has its expression in the
+material product of its time, and this is one of the charms of
+studying the liberal arts. Tapestry more than almost any other
+handicraft has left us a pictured history of events in a time when
+records were scarce. The effect of the Crusades was noticeable in the
+impetus it gave to tapestry, not only by bringing Europe into fresh
+contact with Oriental design but by increasing the desire for
+luxurious stuffs. The returning crusaders--what traveller's tales did
+they not tell of the fabrics of the great Oriental sovereigns and
+their subjects, the soft rugs, the tent coverings, the gorgeous
+raiment; and these tales they illustrated with what fragments they
+could port in their travellers' packs. Here lay inspiration for a
+continent.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Eugene Muentz, "History of Tapestry."
+
+[2] Jubinal, "Recherches," Vol. I.
+
+[3] F. Michel, "Recherches."
+
+[4] Jubinal, "Recherches."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MODERN AWAKENING
+
+
+In the Fourteenth Century, tapestry, the high-warp product, began to
+play an important part in the refinements of the day. We have seen the
+tendency of the past time to embellish and soften churches and
+monastic institutions with hangings. Records mostly in clerical Latin,
+speak of these as curtains for doorways, dossers for covering seats,
+and the backs of benches, and baldachins, as well as carpets for use
+on the floor. Subjects were ecclesiastic, as the favourite Apocalypse;
+or classic, like that of the Quedlimburg hanging which fantastically
+represents the marriage of Mercury and Philology.
+
+But in the Thirteenth Century the political situation had improved and
+men no longer slept in armour and women no longer were prepared to
+thrust all household valuables into a coffer on notice that the enemy
+was approaching over the plains or up the rocks. Therefore, homes
+began to be a little less rude in their comforts. Stone walls were
+very much the rule inside as well as out, but it became convenient
+then to cover their grim asperities with the woven draperies, the
+remains of which so interest us to-day, and which we in our accession
+of luxuriousness would add to the already gently finished apartments.
+To put ourselves back into one of those castle homes we are to
+imagine a room of stone walls, fitted with big iron hooks, on which
+hung pictured tapestry which reached all around, even covering the
+doors in its completeness. To admit of passing in and out the door a
+slit was made, or two tapestries joined at this spot. Set Gothic
+furniture scantily about such a room, a coffer or two, some
+high-backed chairs, a generous table, and there is a room which the
+art of to-day with its multiple ingenuity cannot surpass for beauty
+and repose.
+
+But such a room gave opportunity for other matters in the Thirteenth
+Century. Customs were less polite and morals more primitive. Important
+people desiring important information were given to the spying and
+eavesdropping which now has passed out of polite fashion. And those
+ancient rooms favoured the intriguer, for the hangings were suspended
+a foot or two away from the wall, and a man or a woman, for that
+matter, might easily slip behind and witness conversations to which
+the listener had not been invited. So it was customary on occasions of
+intimate and secret converse lightly to thrust a sharpened blade
+behind the curtains. If, as in the case in "Hamlet," the sword pierced
+a human quarry, so much the worse for the listener who thus gained
+death and lost its dignity.
+
+Before leaving this ancient chamber it is well to impress ourselves
+with the interesting fact that tapestries were originally meant to be
+suspended loosely, liberally, from the upper edge only, and to fall in
+folds or gentle undulations, thus gaining in decorative value and
+elegance. This practice had an important effect on the design, and
+also gave an appearance of movement to human figures and to foliage,
+as each swayed in light folds.
+
+When considering tapestries of the Thirteenth Century we are only
+contemplating the stones of history, for the actual products of the
+looms of that time are not for us; they are all gathered into museums,
+public or ecclesiastic. The same might be said of tapestries of the
+Fourteenth Century, and almost of the Fifteenth. But those old times
+are so full of romance, that their history is worth our toying with.
+It adds infinite joy to the possessing of old tapestries, and converts
+museum visits into a keen chase for the elusive but fascinating
+figures of the past.
+
+Let us then absorb willingly one or two dry facts. High-warp tapestry
+we have traced lightly from Egypt through Greece and Rome and, almost
+losing the thread in the Middle Ages, have seen it rising a virile
+industry, nursed in monasteries. It was when the stirrings of artistic
+life were commencing under the Van Eycks in the North and under Giotto
+and the Tuscans in the South that the weaving of tapestries reached a
+high standard of production and from that time until the Nineteenth
+Century has been an important artistic craft. The Thirteenth Century
+saw it started, the Fourteenth saw the beginnings of important
+factories, and the Fifteenth bloomed into full productions and beauty
+of the style we call Gothic.
+
+In these early times of the close of the Thirteenth Century and the
+beginning of the Fourteenth, the best known high-warp factories were
+centred in northern and midland provinces of France and Flanders,
+Paris and Arras being the towns most famed for their productions. As
+these were able to supply the rest of Europe, the skilled technique
+was lost otherwheres, so that later, when Italy, Germany and England
+wished to catch up again their ancient work, they were obliged to ask
+instruction of the Franco-Flemish high-warp workers.[5]
+
+It is not possible in the light of history for either Paris or Arras
+to claim the invention of so nearly a prehistoric art as that of
+high-warp tapestry, and there is much discussion as to which of these
+cities should be given the honour of superiority and priority in the
+work of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.
+
+Factories existed at both places and each had its rules of manufacture
+which regulated the workman and stimulated its excellence. The
+factories at Paris, however, were more given to producing copies of
+carpets brought from the East by returning crusaders, and these were
+intended for floors. The craftsmen were sometimes alluded to as
+_tapissiers Sarrazinois_, named, as is easily seen, after the Saracens
+who played so large a part in the adventurous voyages of the day. But
+in Paris in 1302, by instigation of the Provost Pierre le Jumeau,
+there were associated with these tapissiers or workmen, ten others,
+for the purpose of making high-warp tapestry, and these were bound
+with all sorts of oaths not to depart from the strict manner of
+proceeding in this valued handicraft.
+
+Indeed, the Articles of Faith, nor the Vows of the Rosicrucians,
+could not be more inviolable than the promises demanded of the early
+tapestry workers. In some cases--notably a factory of Brussels,
+Brabant, in the Sixteenth Century--there were frightful penalties
+attendant upon the breaking of these vows, like the loss of an ear or
+even of a hand.
+
+The records of the undertaking of the Provost Pierre le Jumeau in
+introducing the high-warp (_haute lisse_) workers into the factory
+where Sarrazinois and other fabrics were produced, means only that the
+improvement had begun, but not that Paris had never before practised
+an art so ancient.
+
+The name of Nicolas Bataille is one of the earliest which we can
+surround with those props of records that please the searcher for
+exact detail.[6] He was both manufacturer and merchant and was a man
+of Paris in the reign of Charles VI, a king who patronised him so well
+that the workshops of Paris benefited largely. The king's brother
+becoming envious, tried to equal him in personal magnificence and gave
+orders almost as large as those of the king. Philip the Hardy, uncle
+of the king, also employed this designer whose importance has not
+lessened in the descent of the centuries.
+
+What makes Bataille of special interest to us is that we cannot only
+read of him in fascinating chronicles as well as dry histories, but we
+can ourselves see his wondrous works. In the cathedral at Angers hangs
+a tapestry executed by him; it is a part of the _Apocalypse_
+(favourite subject) drawn by Dourdin, who was artist of the cartoons
+as well as artist to Charles V.
+
+In those days the weaver occupied much the same place in relation to
+the cartoonist as the etcher does now to the painter. That is to say,
+that because the drawing was his inspiration, the weaver was none the
+less an artist of originality and talent.
+
+These celebrated hangings at Angers, although commenced in 1376 for
+Louis of Anjou, were not completed in all the series until 1490,
+therefore Bataille's work was on the first ones, finished on
+Christmas, 1379. The design includes imposing figures, each seated on
+a Gothic throne reading and meditating. The larger scenes are topped
+with charming figures of angels in primitive skies of the "twisted
+ribbon" style of cloud, angels whose duty and whose joy is to trump
+eternally and float in defiance of natural laws of gravitation.
+
+The museum at the Gobelins factory in Paris shows to wondering eyes
+the other authentic example of late Fourteenth Century high-warp
+tapestry, as woven in the early Paris workshops. It portrays with a
+lovely naive simplicity _The Presentation in the Temple_. This with
+the pieces of the _Apocalypse_ at Angers are all that are positively
+known to have come from the Paris workshops of the late Fourteenth
+Century.
+
+History steps in with an event that crushed the industry in Paris.
+Just when design and execution were at their highest excellence, and
+production was prolific, political events began to annihilate the
+trade. The English King, Henry V, crossed the Channel and occupied
+Paris in 1422. Thus, under the oppression of the invaders, the art of
+tapestry was discouraged and fell by the way, not to rise lustily
+again in Paris for two hundred years.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] Eugene Muentz, "La Tapisserie."
+
+[6] For extensive reading see Guiffrey, "Nicolas Bataille, tapissier
+parisien," and "L'Histoire General de la Tapisserie," the section
+called "Les Tapisseries Francaises."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS
+
+
+Whether Arras began as early as Paris is a question better left
+unsettled if only for the sake of furnishing a subject of happy
+controversy between the champions of the two opinions. But certain it
+is that with fewer distractions to disturb her craftsmen, and under
+the stimulus of certain ducal and royal patrons, Arras succeeded in
+advancing the art more than did her celebrated neighbour. It was
+Arras, too, that gave the name to the fabric, a name which appears in
+England as arras and in Italy as arazzo, as though there was no other
+parent-region for the much-needed and much-prized stuffs than the busy
+Flemish town.
+
+Among the early records is found proof that in 1311, a countess of the
+province of Artois, of which Arras was the capital, bought a figured
+cloth in that city, and two years later ordered various works in high
+warp.[7] It is she who became ruler of the province. To patronise the
+busy town of her own domains, Arras, she ordered from there the
+hangings that were its specialty. Paris also shared her patronage. She
+took as husband Otho, Count of Burgundy, and set his great family the
+fashion in the way of patronising the tapestry looms.
+
+It was in the time of Charles V of France, that the Burgundian duke
+Philip, called the Hardy, began to patronise conspicuously the Arras
+factories. In 1393, as de Barante delightfully chronicles, the
+gorgeous equipments of this duke were more than amazing when he went
+to arrange peace with the English at Lelingien.[8]
+
+The town chosen for the pourparlers, wherein assembled the English
+dukes, Lancaster and Gloucester and their attendants, as well as the
+cortege attending the Duke of Burgundy, was a poor little village
+ruined by wars. The conferences were held by these superb old fighters
+and statesmen in an ancient thatched chapel. To make it presentable
+and worthy of the nobles, it was covered with tapestries which
+entirely hid the ruined walls. The subject of the superb pieces was a
+series of battles, which made the Duke of Lancaster whimsically
+critical of a subject ill-chosen for a peace conference, he suggesting
+that it were better to have represented "_la Passion de notre
+Seigneur_."
+
+Not satisfied with having the meeting place a gorgeous and luxurious
+temple, this Philip, Duke of Burgundy, demonstrated his magnificence
+in his own tent, which was made of wooden planks entirely covered with
+"toiles peintes" (authorities state that tapestries with personages
+were thus described), and was in form of a chateau flanked with
+towers. As a means of pleasing the English dukes and the principal
+envoys, Philip gave to them superb gifts of tapestries, the beautiful
+tapestries of Flanders such as were made only in the territory of the
+duke. It is interesting to note this authentic account of the
+importation of certain Arras tapestries into England.
+
+Subjects at this time introduced, besides Bible people, figures of
+Clovis and of Charlemagne. Two hangings represented, the one _The
+Seven Cardinal Vices_, with their conspicuous royal exponents in the
+shape of seven vicious kings and emperors; the other, _The Seven
+Cardinal Virtues_, with the royalties who had been their notable
+exponents. Here is a frank criticism on the lives of kings which
+smacks of latter-day democracy. All these tapestries were enriched
+with gold of Cyprus, as gold threads were called.
+
+This same magnificent Philip the Hardy, had other treaties to make
+later on, and seeing how much his tapestries were appreciated,
+continued to make presents of them. One time it was the Duke of
+Brittany who had to be propitiated, all in the interests of peace,
+peace being a quality much sought and but little experienced at this
+time in France. Perhaps this especial Burgundian duke had a bit of
+self-interest in his desire for amity with the English, for he was
+lord of the Comite of Artois (including Arras) and this was a district
+which, because of its heavy commerce with England, might favour that
+country. A large part of that commerce was wool for tapestry weaving,
+wool which came from the _pres sales_ of Kent, where to-day are seen
+the same meadows, salt with ocean spray and breezes, whereon flocks
+are grazing now as of old--but this time more for mutton chops than
+for tapestry wools.
+
+ [Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
+
+ Arras Tapestry, about 1430. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
+
+The history of the Dukes of Burgundy, because their patronage was
+so stimulating to the factories of Flanders, leads us to recall the
+horrors of the war with Bajazet, the terrible Sultan of Turkey, and
+the way in which this cool monster bartered human lives for human
+luxuries. It was when the flower of France (1396) invaded his country
+and was in the power of his hand, that he had the brave company of
+nobles pass in review before his royal couch that he might see them
+mutilated to the death. Three or four only he retained alive, then
+sent one of these, the Sire de Helly, back to his France with _parole
+d'honneur_ to return--to amass, first, as big a ransom as could be
+raised; this, if in the Turk's demanding eyes it appeared sufficient,
+he would accept in exchange for the remaining unhappy nobles.
+
+Added to the money which de Helly was able to collect, were superb
+tapestries of Arras contributed by the Burgundian duke, Philip the
+Hardy. It was argued that of these luxurious hangings, Bajazet had
+none, for the looms of his country had not the craft to make
+tapestries of personages. Cloth of gold and of silver, considered an
+extreme elegance in France, they argued was no rarity to the terrible
+Turk, for it was from Damascus in his part of the world that this
+precious fabric came most plentifully. So de Helly took Arras
+tapestries into Turkey, a suite representing the history of Alexander
+the Great, and the avaricious monarch was persuaded by reason of this
+and other ransom to let his prisoners free.[9]
+
+After the death of Philip the Hardy in 1404, his accumulated luxuries
+had to be sold to help pay his fabulous debts. To this end his son
+sold, among other things, his superb tapestries, and thus they became
+distributed in Paris. And yet John without Fear, who succeeded Philip,
+continued to stimulate the Arras weavers. In 1409 he ordered five big
+hangings representing his victories of Liege, all battle subjects.[10]
+
+Philip the Good was the next head of the Burgundian house, and he it
+was who assisted in the sumptuous preparations for the entry of the
+king, Louis XI, into Paris. The king himself could scarcely equal in
+magnificence this much-jewelled duke, whose splendour was a matter of
+excitement to the populace. People ran to see him in the streets or to
+the church, to feast their eyes on his cortege, his mounted escort of
+a hundred knights who were themselves dukes, princes and other nobles.
+
+His house, in the old quarter of Paris, where we are wont to wander
+with a Baedeker veiled, was the wonder of all who were permitted to
+view its interior. Here he had brought his magnificent Arras
+tapestries and among them the set of the _History of Gideon_, which he
+had had made in honour of the order of the Golden Fleece founded by
+him at Bruges, in 1429, for, he said, the tale of Gideon was more
+appropriate to the Fleece than the tale of Jason, who had not kept his
+trust--a bit of unconventionalism appreciable even at this distance of
+time.
+
+Charles le Temeraire--the Bold or rather the foolhardy--how he used
+and lost his tapestries is of interest to us, because his possessions
+fell into a place where we can see them by taking a little trouble.
+Some of them are among the treasures in the museum at Nancy and at
+Berne in Switzerland. How they got there is in itself a matter of
+history, the history of a war between Burgundy and Switzerland.
+
+Like all the line of these half-barbaric, picturesque dukes, Charles
+could not disassociate himself from magnificence, which in those days
+took the place of comfort. When making war, he endeavoured to have his
+camp lodgment as near as possible reproduce the elegance of his home.
+In his campaign against Switzerland, his tent was entirely hung with
+the most magnificent of tapestries. After foolhardy onslaughts on a
+people whose strength he miscalculated, he lost his battles, his
+life--and his tapestries. And this is how certain Burgundian
+tapestries hang in the cathedral at Berne, and in the museums at
+Nancy.[11]
+
+The simple Swiss mountaineers, accustomed more to expediency than to
+luxury, are said to have been entirely ignorant of the value of their
+spoils of war. Tapestries they had never seen, nor had they the
+experienced eye to discern their beauties; but cloth, thick woollen
+cloth, that would protect shivering man from the cold, was a commodity
+most useful; so, many of the fine products of the high-warp looms that
+had augmented the pride of their noble possessor, found their way into
+shops and were sold to the Swiss populace in any desired length,
+according to bourgeois household needs, a length for a warm bed-cover,
+or a square for a table; and thus disappeared so many that we are
+thankful for the few whole hangings of that time which are ours to
+inspect, and which represent the best work of the day both from Arras
+and from Brussels, which was then (about 1476) beginning to produce.
+
+There is a special and local reason why we should be interested in the
+products of the high-warp tapestries in the time of the greatest power
+of the Dukes of Burgundy. It is that we can have the happy experience
+of studying, in our own country, a set of these hangings, and this
+without going farther than to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
+York, where repose the set called _The Sacraments_. (Plates facing
+pages 34, 38 and 39.) There are in all seven pieces, although the
+grounds are well taken that the set originally included one more. They
+represent the four Sacraments of Baptism, Marriage, Confirmation and
+Extreme Unction, first by a series of ideal representations, then by
+the everyday ceremonies of the time--the time of Joan of Arc. Thus we
+have the early Fifteenth Century folk unveiled to us in their ideals
+and in their practicality. The one shows them to be religionists of a
+high order, the other reveals a sumptuous and elegant scale of living
+belonging to the nobility who made resplendent those early times.
+
+ [Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
+
+ Arras Tapestry, about 1430]
+
+ [Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
+
+ Arras Tapestry, about 1430]
+
+The drawing is full of simplicity and honesty, the composition limited
+to a few individuals, each one having its place of importance. In
+this, the early work differed from the later, which multiplied figures
+until whole groups counted no more than individuals. The background is
+a field of conventionalised fleur-de-lis of so large a pattern as not
+to interfere with the details thrown against it. Scenes are divided
+by slender Gothic columns, and other architectural features are
+tessellated floors and a sketchy sort of brick-work that appears
+wherever a limit-line is needed. It is the charming naivete of its
+drawing that delights. Border there is none, but its lack is never
+felt, for the pictures are of such interest that the eye needs no
+barrier to keep it from wandering. Whatever border is found is a
+varying structure of architecture and of lettering and of the happy
+flowers of Gothic times which thrust their charm into all possible and
+impossible places.
+
+The dress, in the suite of ideals, is created by the imagining of the
+artist, admixed with the fashion of the day; but in scenes portraying
+life of the moment, we are given an interesting idea of how a bride a
+la mode was arrayed, in what manner a gay young lord dressed himself
+on his wedding morning, and how a young mother draped her proud
+brocade. The colouring is that of ancient stained glass, simple, rich,
+the gamut of colours limited, but the manner of their combining is
+infinite in its power to please. The conscientiousness of the ancient
+dyer lives after him through the centuries, and the fresh ruby-colour,
+the golden yellow of the large-figured brocades, glow almost as richly
+now as they did when the Burgundian dukes were marching up and down
+the land from the Mediterranean, east of France, to the coast of
+Flanders, carrying with them the woven pictures of their ideals, their
+religion and their conquests. The weave is smooth and even, speaking
+for the work of the tapissier or weaver, although time has distorted
+the faces beyond the lines of absolute beauty; and hatching
+accomplishes the shading.
+
+The repairer has been at work on this valuable set, not the
+intelligent restorer, but the frank bungler who has not hesitated to
+turn certain pieces wrong side out, nor to set in large sections
+obviously cut from another tapestry. It is surmised that the set
+contained one more piece--it would be regrettable, indeed, if that
+missing square had been cut up for repairs.
+
+The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns these tapestries
+through the altruistic generosity of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. They are
+the most interesting primitive work which are on public view in our
+country, and awake to enthusiasm even the most insensate dullard, who
+has a half hour to stand before them and realise all they mean in art,
+in morals and in history.
+
+To the lives of the Prophets and Saints we can always turn; from the
+romance of men and women we can never turn away. And so when a Gothic
+tapestry is found that frankly omits Biblical folk and gives us a true
+picture of men and women of the almost impenetrable time back of the
+fifteen hundreds, tells us what they wore, in what manner they
+comported themselves, that tapestry has a sure and peculiar value. The
+surviving art of the Middle Ages smacks strong of saints, paints at
+full length the people of Moses' time, but unhappily gives only a bust
+of their contemporaries.
+
+ [Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH TAPESTRY
+
+ Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
+
+ [Illustration: THE LIFE OF CHRIST
+
+ Flemish Tapestry, second half of Fifteenth Century. Boston Museum
+ of Fine Arts]
+
+Hangings portraying secular subjects were less often woven than those
+of religion and morals, but also the former have less lustily outlived
+the centuries, owing to the habit of tearing them from the
+suspending hooks and packing them about from chateau to chateau, to
+soften surroundings for the wandering visitor. Thus it comes that we
+have little tapestried record of a time when knights and ladies and
+ill-assorted attributes walked hand in hand, a time of chivalry and
+cruelty, of roses and war, of sumptuousness and crudity, of privation
+and indulgence, of simplicity and deceit.
+
+If prowling among old books has tempted the hand to take from the
+shelves one of those quaint luxuries known as a "Book of Hours," there
+before the eye lies the spirit of that age in decoration and design.
+There, too, lies much of the old spirit of morality--that, whether
+genuine or affected, was bound to be expressed. Morality had a vogue
+in those days, was a _sine qua non_ of fashion. That famous amateur
+Jean, duc de Berry, uncle of Charles VI of France, had such a book,
+"Les Tres Riches Heures"; one was possessed by that gifted Milanese
+lady whom Ludovico Sforza put out of the line of Lombardy's throne.
+The wonderful Gothic ingenuousness lies in their careful paintings,
+the ingenuousness where virtue is expressed by beauty, and vice by
+ugliness, and where, with delightful seriousness, standing figures
+overtop the houses they occupy--the same people, the same battlements,
+we have seen on the early tapestries. Weavers must surely have
+consulted the lovely books of Gothic miniature, so like is the spirit
+of the designs to that in the Gothic fabrics.
+
+"The beauties of Agnes Sorel were represented on the wool," says
+Jubinal, "and she herself gave a superb and magnificent tapestry to
+the church at Loches," but this quaint student is doubtful if the
+lovely _amante du roi_ actually gave the tapestries that set forth her
+own beauties, which beauty all can see in the quiet marble as she lies
+sleeping with her spaniel curled up at her lovely feet in the big
+chateau on the Loire.
+
+By means of a rare set bought by the Rogers Fund for the Metropolitan
+Museum of Art in New York, we can see, if not the actual tapestries of
+fair Agnes Sorel, at least those of the same epoch and manner. This
+set is called _The Baillee des Roses_ and comprises three pieces,
+fragments one is inclined to call them, seeing the mutilations of the
+ages. (Plate facing page 42.) They were woven probably before 1450,
+probably in France, undoubtedly from French drawings, for the hand and
+eye of the artist were evidently under the influence of the celebrated
+miniaturist, Jean Fouquet of Tours. Childlike is the charm of this
+careful artist of olden times, childlike is his simplicity, his
+honesty, his care to retain the fundamental virtues of a good little
+boy who lives to the tune of Eternal Verities.
+
+These three tapestries of the Roses illustrate so well so many things
+characteristic of their day, that it is not time lost to study them
+with an eye to all their points. There is the weave, the wool, the
+introduction of metal threads, the colour scale; all these besides the
+design and the story it tells.
+
+The tapestries represent a custom of France in the time when Charles
+VII, the Indolent (and likewise through Jeanne d'Arc, the victorious)
+had as his favourite the fascinating Agnes Sorel. During the late
+spring, when the roses of France are in fullest flower, various
+peers of France had as political duty to present to each member of the
+Parliament a rose when the members answered in response to roll call.
+
+ [Illustration: LA BAILLEE DES ROSES
+
+ French Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
+
+ [Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY MILLEFLEUR WITH ARMS
+
+ Cathedral of Troyes]
+
+The great chamber where the body met was for the occasion transformed
+into a bower; vines and sprays of roses covered all the grim walls, as
+the straying vines in the tapestry reveal. The host of the day, who
+might be a foreign prince or cardinal, or one of the "children of
+France," began the day with giving a great breakfast which took place
+in the several chambers. During the feast the noble host paid a
+courtly visit to each chamber, accompanied by a servitor who bore a
+huge salver on which were the flowers and souvenirs to be presented.
+The air was sweet with blossoms and pungent herbs, music penetrated
+from the halls outside as the man of conspicuous elegance played mock
+humility and served all with the dainty tribute of a fragrant tender
+rose. This part of the ceremony over, the company moved on to the
+great audience chamber, where mass was said.
+
+Our tapestries show the figures of ladies and gentlemen present at
+this pretty ceremony--too pretty to associate with desperate Jeanne
+d'Arc, who at that very time was rousing France to war to throw off
+the foreign yoke. The ladies fair and masters bold are intensely human
+little people, for the most part paired off in couples as men and
+women have been wont to pair in gardens since Eden's time. They are
+dressed in their best, that is evident, and by their distant,
+courteous manners show good society. The faces of the ladies are
+childlike, dutiful; those of the men more determined, after the
+manner of men.
+
+But the interest of the set centres in the tableau wherein are but
+three figures, those of two men and a woman. Here lies a piquant
+romance. Who is she, the grand and gracious lady, bending like a lily
+stalk among the roses, with a man on either side? A token is being
+exchanged between her and the supplicant at her right. He, wholly
+elegant, half afraid, bends the knee and fixes her with a regard into
+which his whole soul is thrown. She, fair lady, is inclining, yet
+withdrawing, eyes of fear and modesty cast down. Yet whatever of
+temerity the faces tell, the hands are carrying out a comedy. Hid in
+the shadow of a copious hat, which the gentleman extends, lurks a
+rose; proffered by the lady's hand is a token--fair exchange, indeed,
+of lover's symbols--provided the strong, hard man to the left of the
+lady has himself no right of command over her and her favours. Thus
+might one dream on forever over history's sweets and romance's
+gallantries.
+
+It is across the sea, in the sympathetic Museum of Cluny that the
+beauty of early French work is exquisitely demonstrated. The set of
+_The Lady and the Unicorn_ is one of infinite charm. (Plates facing
+pages 44 and 45.) In its enchanted wood lives a noble lady tall and
+fair, lithe, young and elegant, with attendant maid and two faithful,
+fabulous beasts that uphold the standards of maidenhood. A simple
+circle denotes the boundary of the enchanted land wherein she dwells,
+a park with noble trees and lovely flowers, among which disport the
+little animals that associate themselves with mankind. For four
+centuries these hangings have delighted the eye of man, and are
+perhaps more than ever appreciated now. Certain it is that the art
+student's easel is often set before them for copying the quaint design
+and soft colour.
+
+ [Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
+
+ French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris]
+
+ [Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
+
+ French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris]
+
+As the early worker in wools could not forget the beauties of earth,
+the foreground of many Gothic tapestries is sprinkled with the loved
+common flowers of every day, of the field and wood. This is one of the
+charming touches in early tapestry, these little flowers that thrust
+themselves with captivating inappropriateness into every sort of
+scene. The grave and awesome figures in the _Apocalypse_ find them at
+their feet, and in scenes of battle they adorn the sanguinary sod and
+twinkle between fierce combatants.
+
+Occasionally a weaver goes mad about them and refuses to produce
+anything else but lily-bells newly sprung in June, cowslips and
+daisies pied, rosemary and rue, and all these in decorous courtesy on
+a deep, dark background like twilight on a bank or moonlight in a
+dell--and lo, we have the marvellous bit of nature-painting called
+_millefleurs_.
+
+A Burgundian tapestry that has come to this country to add to our
+increasing riches, is the large hanging known as _The Sack of
+Jerusalem_. (Plate facing page 46.) Almost more than any other it
+revivifies the ancient times of Philip the Hardy, John without Fear,
+and Charles the Bold, when these dukes, who were monarchs in all but
+name, were leading lives that make our own Twentieth Century fretting
+seem but the unrest of aspens. Such hangings as this, _The Sack of
+Jerusalem_, were those that the great Burgundian dukes had hung about
+their tents in battle, their castles in peace, their facades and
+bridges in fetes.
+
+The subject chosen hints religion, but shouts bloodshed and battle.
+Those who like to feel the texture of old tapestries would find this
+soft and pliable, and in wondrous state of preservation. Its colours
+are warm and fresh, adhering to red-browns and brown-reds and a
+general mellow tone differing from the sharp stained-glass contrasts
+noticed in _The Sacraments_. Costumes show a naive compromise between
+those the artist knew in his own time and those he guessed to
+appertain to the year of our Lord 70, when the scene depicted was
+actually occurring. The tapestry resembles in many ways the famous
+tapestries of the Duke of Devonshire which are known as the Hardwick
+Hall tapestries. In drawing it is similar, in massing, in the placing
+of spots of interest. This large hanging is a part of the collection
+at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
+
+The Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibits a primitive hanging which is
+probably woven in France, Northern France, at the end of the Fifteenth
+Century. (Plate facing page 40.) It represents, in two panels, the
+power of the church to drive out demons and to confound the heathen.
+Fault can be found with its crudity of drawing and weave, but
+tapestries of this epoch can hold a position of interest in spite of
+faults.
+
+ [Illustration: THE SACK OF JERUSALEM (DETAIL)
+
+ Burgundian Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
+ York]
+
+A fine piece at the same museum is the long, narrow hanging
+representing scenes from the life of Christ, with a scene from
+Paradise to start the drama. (Plate facing page 41.) This tapestry,
+which is of great beauty, is subdivided into four panels by slender
+columns suggesting a springing arch which the cloth was too low to
+carry. All the pretty Gothic signs are here. The simple flowers
+upspringing, the Gothic lettering, the panelling, and a narrow border
+of such design as suggests rose-windows or other lace-like carving.
+Here is noticeable, too, the sumptuous brocades in figures far too
+large for the human form to wear, figures which diminished greatly a
+very few decades later.
+
+The Institute of Art, Chicago, possesses an interesting piece of the
+period showing another treatment of a similar subject. (Plate facing
+page 48.) In this the columns are omitted, the planes are increased,
+and there is an entire absence of the triptych or altar-piece style of
+drawing which we associate with the primitive artists in painting.
+
+We have seen in this slight review that Paris was in a fair way to
+cover the castle walls and floors of noble lords with her high loom
+and _sarrazinois_ products, when the English occupation ruined the
+prosperity of the weaver's guild. Arras supplied the enormous demand
+for tapestries through Europe, and made a lasting fame. But this
+little city, too, had to go down before the hard conditions of the
+Conqueror. Louis XI, in 1477, possessed himself of the town after the
+death of the last-famed Burgundian duke, Charles the Bold, and under
+his eccentric persecutions the guild of weavers scattered. He saw too
+late his mistake. But other towns benefited by it, towns whither the
+tapissiers fled with their art.
+
+There had also been much trouble between the last Duke of Burgundy and
+his Flemish cities. His extravagances and expeditions led him to make
+extraordinary demands upon one town and another for funds, and even to
+make war upon them, as at Liege, the battles of which conflict were
+perpetuated in tapestries. Let us trust that no Liegois weaver was
+forced to the humiliation of weaving this set.
+
+This disposition to work to his own ultimate undoing was encouraged in
+the duke, wherever possible, by the crafty Louis XI, who had his own
+reasons for wishing the downfall of so powerful a neighbour. And thus
+it came that Arras, the great tapestry centre, was at first weakened,
+then destroyed by the capture of the town by Louis XI immediately
+after the tragic death of the duke in 1477.
+
+Thus everything was favourable to the Brussels factories, which began
+to produce those marvels of workmanship that force from the world the
+sincerest admiration. It is frankly asserted that toward the end of
+the century, or more accurately, during the reigns of Charles VIII and
+Louis XII (1483-1515), tapestry attained a degree of perfection which
+has never been surpassed.
+
+ [Illustration: SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITH ARMORIAL SHIELDS
+
+ Flemish Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Institute of Art, Chicago]
+
+ [Illustration: HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN
+
+ Angers Cathedral]
+
+We have a very clear idea of what use to make of tapestries in these
+days--to hang them in a part of the house where they will be much seen
+and much protected, on an important wall-space where their figures
+become the friend of daily life, or the bosky shades of their
+verdure invite to revery. They are extended flat against the wall, or
+even framed, that not one stroke of the artist's pencil or one flash
+of the weaver's shuttle be hid. But, many were their uses and grand
+were their purposes in the days when high-warp and low-warp weaving
+was the important industry of whole provinces. Palaces and castles
+were hung with them, but apart from this was the sumptuous use of a
+reserve of hangings for outdoor fetes and celebrations of all sorts.
+These were the great opportunities for all to exhibit their
+possessions and to make a street look almost as elegant and habitable
+as the grandest chamber of the king.
+
+On the occasion of the entry of a certain queen into Paris, all the
+way from Porte St. Denis to the Cathedral of Notre Dame was hung with
+such specimens of the weaver's art as would make the heart of the
+modern amateur throb wildly. They were hung from windows, draped
+across the fronts of the houses, and fluttered their bright colours in
+the face of an illuminating sun that yet had no power to fade the
+conscientious work of the craftsman. The high lights of silk in the
+weave, and the enrichment of gold and silver in the pattern caught and
+held the sunbeams. In all the cavalcade of mounted knights and ladies,
+there was the flashing of arms, the gleam of jewelled bridles, the
+flaunting of rich stuffs, all with a background of unsurpassed
+blending of colour and texture. The bridge over the Seine leading to
+Notre Dame, its ramparts were entirely concealed, its asperities
+softened, by the tapestries which hung over its sides, making the
+passage over the river like the approach to a throne, the luxury of
+kings combined with the beauty of the flowing river, the blue sky, the
+tender green of the trees.
+
+Indeed, it was so lovely a sight that the king himself was not content
+to see it from his honoured but restricted post, but needs must doff
+his crown--monarchs wore them in those fairy days--and fling a leg
+over a gentleman's charger, behind its owner, and thus ride double to
+see the sights. So great was his eagerness to enjoy all the display
+that he got a smart reproof from an officer of ceremonies for
+trespassing.[12]
+
+When Louis XI was the young king, and had not yet developed the taste
+for bloodshed and torture that as a crafty fox he used later to the
+horror of his nation, he, too, had similar festivals with similar
+decorations. On one occasion the Pont des Changes was made the chief
+point in the royal progress through the streets of Paris. The bridge
+was hung with superb tapestries of great size, from end to end, and
+the king rode to it on a white charger, his trappings set with
+turquoise, with a gorgeous canopy supported over his head. Just as he
+reached the bridge the air became full of the music of singing birds,
+twenty-five hundred of them at that moment released, and all
+fluttering, darting, singing amid the gorgeous scene to tickle the
+fancy of a king.
+
+ [Illustration: DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
+
+ German Tapestry, about 1450]
+
+ [Illustration: FLEMISH TAPESTRY. ABOUT 1500
+
+ Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Canon de Haisnes, "La Tapisserie."
+
+[8] M. de Barante, "Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne."
+
+[9] Froissart, manuscript of the library of Dijon.
+
+[10] De Barante, "Histoire."
+
+[11] See M. Pinchart, "Roger van der Weyden et les Tapisseries de
+Berne."
+
+[12] Enguerrand de Monstrelet, "Chronicles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HIGH GOTHIC
+
+
+The wonderful time of the Burgundian dukes is gone; Charles le
+Temeraire leaves the world at Nancy, where the pitying have set up a
+cross in memory of his unkingly death, and where the lover of things
+Gothic may wander down a certain way to the exquisite portico of the
+Ducal Palace and, entering, find the Gothic room where the duke's
+precious tapestries are hung. In this sympathetic atmosphere one may
+dream away hours in sheer joy of association with these shadowy hosts
+of the past, the relentless slayers in the battle scenes, relentless
+moralists in the religious subjects--for morality plays had a parallel
+in the morality tapestry, issuing such rigid warnings to those who
+make merry as is seen in _The Condemnation of Suppers and Banquets_,
+_The Reward of Virtue_, _The Triumph of Right_, _The Horrors of the
+Seven Deadly Sins_, all of which were popular subjects for the weaver.
+
+With the artists who might be called primitives we have almost
+finished in the end of the Fifteenth Century. The simplicity of the
+very early weavers passed. They were content with comparatively few
+figures, and these so strongly treated that in composition one scarce
+took on more importance than another. When Arras and other Flemish
+towns, as well as Paris and certain French towns, developed the
+industry and employed more ambitious artists, the designs became more
+crowded, and the tendency was to multiply figures in an effort to
+crowd as many as possible into the space. When architecture appeared
+in the design, towers and battlements were crowded with peeping heads
+in delightful lack of proportion, and forests of spears springing from
+platoons of soldiers, filled almost the entire height of the cloth.
+The naive fashion still existed of dressing the characters of an
+ancient Biblical or classic drama in costumes which were the mode of
+the weaver's time, disregarding the epoch in which the characters
+actually lived.
+
+An adherence to the childlike drawing of the early workers continues
+noticeable in their quaint way of putting many scenes on one tapestry.
+Interiors are readily managed, by dividing--as in _The Sacraments_ set
+in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York--with slender Gothic
+columns, than which nothing could be prettier, especially when framed
+in at the top with the Gothic arch. In outdoor scenes the frank
+disregard of the probable adds the charm of audacity. Side by side
+with a scene of carnage, a field of blood with victims lying prone, is
+inserted an island of flowers whereon youths and dogs are pleasantly
+sporting; and adjoining that may be another section cunningly
+introduced where a martyred woman is enveloped in flames which spring
+from the ground around her as naturally as grass in springtime.
+
+ [Illustration: DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
+
+ Flemish Tapestry, late Fifteenth Century]
+
+ [Illustration: HISTORY OF ST. STEPHEN
+
+ Arras Tapestry, Fifteenth Century]
+
+And flowers, flowers everywhere. Those little blossoms of the Gothic
+with their perennial beauty, they are one of the smiles of that far
+time that shed cheer through the centuries. They are not the
+grandiose affairs of the Renaissance whose voluptuous development
+contains the arrogant assurance of beauty matured. They do not crown a
+column or trail themselves in foliated scrolls; but are just as Nature
+meant them to be, unaffected bits of colour and grace, upspringing
+from the sod. In the cathedral at Berne is a happy example of the use
+of these sweet flowers, as they appear at the feet of the sacred
+group, and as they carry the eye into the sky by means of the feathery
+branches like fern-fronds which tops the scene; but we find them
+nearer home, in almost every Gothic tapestry.
+
+It was about the end of the last Crusade when Italy began to produce
+the inspired artists who broke the bonds of Byzantine traditions and
+turned back to the inspiration of all art, which is Nature. Giotto,
+tending his sheep, began to draw pictures of things as he saw them,
+Savonarola awoke the conscience, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio--a string
+of names to conjure with--all roused the intellect. The dawn of the
+Renaissance flushed Europe with the life of civilisation. But before
+the wonderful development of art through the reversion to classic
+lines, came a high perfection of the style called Gothic, and with
+that we are pleased to deal first. It is so full of beauty to the eye
+and interest to the intellect that sometimes we must be dragged away
+from it to regard the softer lines of later art, with the ingratitude
+and reluctance of childhood when torn from its fairy tales to read of
+real people in the commonplace of every day.
+
+We are now in the time when the perfection of production was reached
+in the tapestries we call Gothic. Artists had grown more certain of
+their touch in colour and design, and weavers worked with such
+conscientious care as is now almost unknown, and produced a quality of
+tapestry superior to that of their forebears. The Fifteenth Century
+and the first few years of the Sixteenth were spent in perfecting the
+style of the preceding century, and so great was the perfection
+reached, that it was impossible to develop further on those lines.
+
+It must not be supposed from their importance that Brussels and Bruges
+were the sole towns of weavers. There were many high-warp looms, and
+low-warp as well, in many towns in Flanders and France, and there were
+also beginnings in Spain, England and Germany. Italy came later. The
+superb set in the Cluny Museum in Paris, _The Lady and the Unicorn_,
+than which nothing could be lovelier in poetic feeling as well as in
+technique, is accorded to French looms. But as it is impossible in a
+cursory survey to mention all, the two most important cities are dwelt
+upon because it is from them that the greatest amount of the best
+product emanated.
+
+Tapestries could not well decline with the fortunes of a town, for
+they were a heavy article of commerce at the time when Louis XI
+attacked Arras. Trade was made across the Channel, whence came the
+best wool for their manufacture; they were bought by the French
+monarchs and nobility; many drifted to Genoa and Italy, to be sold by
+the active merchants of the times to whoever could buy. When,
+therefore, Arras was crushed, her able workmen flew to other centres
+of production, principally in Flanders, notably to Bruges and
+Brussels, and helped to bring these places into their high position.
+
+ [Illustration: VERDURE
+
+ French Gothic Tapestry]
+
+ [Illustration: "ECCE HOMO"
+
+ Brussels Tapestry, about 1520. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
+ York]
+
+Stories of kings and their magnificence breathe ever of romance, but
+kings could not be magnificent were it not for the labour of the
+conscientious common people, those who go daily to their task, asking
+nothing better than to live their little span in humble endeavour. The
+weavers, the tapissiers of that far-away time in Flanders are
+intensely appealing now when their beautiful work hangs before us
+to-day. They send us a friendly message down through the centuries. It
+is this makes us inquire a bit into the conditions of their lives, and
+so we find them scattered through the country north of France working
+with single-hearted devotion toward the perfection of their art. That
+they arrived there, we know by such tapestries as are left us of their
+time.
+
+Bruges was the home of a movement in art similar to that occurring in
+Italy. Old traditions of painting were being thrown aside--the
+revolution even attacking the painter's medium, tempera, which was
+criticised, discarded and replaced by oil on the palettes. Memling,
+the brothers Van Eyck, were painting things as they saw them, not as
+rules prescribed. Bernard Van Orley was at work with bold originality.
+
+It were strange if this Northern school of painters had not influenced
+all art near by. It is to these men that Brussels owes the beauty of
+her tapestries in that apogee of Gothic art which immediately preceded
+the introduction of the Renaissance from Italy.
+
+Cartoons or drawings for tapestries took on the rules of composition
+of these talented and original men. Easily distinguishable is the
+strong influence of the religious feeling, the fidelity to standards
+of the church. When a rich townsman wished to express his praise or
+gratitude to God, he ordered for the church an altar-piece or dainty
+gilded Gothic carving to frame the painted panels of careful
+execution. When Jean de Rome executed a cartoon, he treated it in much
+the same way; built up an airy Gothic structure and filled the spaces
+with pretty pictures. The so-called Mazarin tapestry of Mr. Morgan's
+shows this treatment at its best. Unhappily, the atelier of Jean de
+Rome or Jan von Room is too sketchily portrayed in the book of the
+past; its records are faint and elusive. We only hear now and then an
+interested allusion, a suggestion that this or that beautiful specimen
+of work has come from his atelier.
+
+Cartoons at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century were not all
+divided into their different scenes by Gothic column and arch. In much
+of the fine work there was no division except a natural one, for the
+picture began to develop the modern scheme of treating but one scene
+in one picture. Although this might be filled with many groups, yet
+all formed a harmonious whole. The practice then fell into disuse of
+repeating the same individual many times in one picture.
+
+A good example of the change and improvement in drawing which assisted
+in making Brussels' supremacy and in bringing Gothic art to
+perfection, is the fine hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
+(Plate facing page 57.) It depicts with beautiful naivete and much
+realism the discomfiture of Pharaoh and his army floundering in the
+Red Sea, while the serene and elegant children of Israel contemplate
+their distress with well-bred calm from the flowery banks of an
+orderly park.
+
+ [Illustration: ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT
+
+ Flemish Tapestry, about 1500. Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.]
+
+ [Illustration: CROSSING THE RED SEA
+
+ Brussels Tapestry, about 1500. Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
+
+This tapestry illustrates so many of the important features of work
+during the first period of Brussels' supremacy that it is to be
+lingered over, dissected and tasted like a dessert of nuts and wine.
+Should one speak first of the cartoon or of the weave, of the artist
+or of the craftsmen? If it is to be the tapissier, then to him all
+credit, for in this and similar work he has reached a care in
+execution and a talent in translation that are inspired. Such quantity
+of detail, so many human faces with their varying expressions, could
+only be woven by the most adroit tapissier.
+
+The drawing shows, first, one scene of many groups but a sole
+interest, with none but probable divisions. Much grace and freedom is
+shown in the attitudes of the persons on the shore, and strenuous
+effort and despair among the engulfed soldiers. Extreme attention to
+detail, the making one part as finished as another, even to the least
+detail, is noticeable. The exaggerated patterns of the stuffs
+observable in earlier work is absent, and a sense of proportion is
+displayed in dress ornament. The free movement of men and beasts, and
+the variety of facial expression all show the immense strides made in
+drawing and the perfection attained in this brilliant period.
+
+It was a time when the artist perfected the old style and presaged the
+new, the years before the Renaissance had left its cradle and marched
+over Europe. This perfection of the Gothic ideal has a purity and
+simplicity that can never fail to appeal to all who feel that
+sincerity is the basic principle of art as it is of character. The
+style of Quentin Matsys, of the Van Eycks, was the mode at the end of
+the Fifteenth Century and the beginning of the Sixteenth, and after
+all this lapse of time it seems to us a sweet and natural expression
+of admirable human attributes.
+
+In the new wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
+labels of certain exhibits, purchases and loans allude briefly to
+"studio of Jean de Rome." It is an allusion which especially interests
+us, as our country now holds examples of this atelier which make us
+wish to know more about its master. He was a designer in the
+marvellous transition period of about 1500, when art trembled between
+the restraint of ecclesiastic Gothic and the voluptuous freedom of the
+Renaissance; hesitated between the conventions of religion and the
+abandonment to luxury, to indulgence of the senses. It is the fashion
+to regard periods of transition as times of decadence, of false
+standards of hybrid production, but at least they are full of deepest
+interest to the student of design who finds in the tremulous dawn of
+the new idea a flush which beautifies the last years of the old
+method.
+
+ [Illustration: THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
+
+ Flemish Tapestry, about 1510. Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan,
+ Esq., New York]
+
+Attributed to this newly unearthed studio of Jean de Rome hangs a
+marvellous tapestry in the new wing alluded to, one which deserves
+repeated visits. (Plate facing page 58.) Indeed, to see it once
+creates the desire to see it again, so beautiful is it in drawing and
+so exquisite in colour and weave. It is suggested that Quentin
+Matsys is responsible for the drawing, and it is known that only
+Bruges or Brussels could produce such perfection of textile. Indeed,
+Jean de Rome is by some authorities spoken of as Jean de Brussels, for
+it is there that he worked long and well, assisting to produce those
+wonders of textile art that have never been surpassed, not even by the
+Gobelins factory in the Seventeenth Century. The tapestry in the
+Metropolitan Museum is now the property of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.,
+but began life as the treasure of the King and Queen of Spain who, at
+the time when Brussels was producing its best, were sitting firmly on
+a throne but just wrested from the Saracenic occupancy. Spain, while
+unable to establish famous and enduring tapestry factories of her own,
+yet was known always as a lavish buyer. Later, Cardinal Mazarin, with
+his trained Italian eye, detected at once the value of the tapestry
+and became possessed of it, counting it among his best treasures of
+art. It is a woven representation of the triptych, so favourite in the
+time of the Van Eycks, and is almost as rich with gold as those
+ancient altar decorations. The tapestry is variously called _The
+Kingdom of Heaven_, and _The Adoration of the Eternal Father_ and is
+the most beautiful and important of its kind in America. Fortunate
+they who can go to the museum to see it--only less fortunate than
+those who can go to see it many times.
+
+In the private collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., of Chicago, are
+three examples of great perfection. They belonged to the celebrated
+art collection of Baron Spitzer, which fact, apart from their beauty,
+gives them renown. The first of these (plate facing page 60) is an
+appearance of Christ to the Magdalen after the Entombment, and is
+Flemish work of late in the Fifteenth Century. It is woven in silk and
+gold with infinite skill. With exquisite patience the weaver has
+brought out the crowded detail in the distance; indeed, it is this
+background, stretching away to the far sky, past the Tomb, beyond
+towns and plains of fruited trees to yet more cities set on a hill,
+that constitutes the greatest charm of the picture, and which must
+have brought hours of happy toil to the inspired weaver.
+
+The second tapestry of Mr. Ryerson's three pieces is also Flemish of
+the late Fifteenth Century. (Plate facing page 61.) This small group
+of the Holy Family shows at its best the conscientious work of the
+time, a time wherein man regarded labour as a means of worshipping his
+God. The subject is treated by both artist and weaver with that loving
+care which approaches religion. The holy three are all engaged in
+holding bunches of grapes, while the Child symbolically spills their
+juice into a chalice. Other symbols are found in the book and the
+cross-surmounted globe. A background of flat drapery throws into
+beautiful relief the inspired faces of the group. Behind this
+stretches the miniature landscape, but the foreground is unfretted by
+detail, abounding in the repose of the simple surfaces of the garments
+of Mother and Child. By a subtle trick of line, St. Joseph is
+separated from the holier pair. The border is the familiar
+well-balanced Gothic composition of flower, fruit, and leaf, all
+placed as though by the hand of Nature. The materials used are silk
+and gold, but one might well add that the soul of the weaver also
+entered into the fabric.
+
+ [Illustration: FLEMISH TAPESTRY, END OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly in the
+ Spitzer Collection]
+
+ [Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY
+
+ Flemish Tapestry, end of Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin
+ A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago. Formerly in the Spitzer Collection]
+
+The third piece from the Spitzer collection bears all those marks of
+exquisite beauty with which Italy was teeming in the Fifteenth
+Century. (Colour plate facing page 82.) Weavers from Brussels went
+down into Italy and worked under the direction of Italian artists who
+drew the designs. Andrea Mantegna was one of these. The patron of the
+industry was the powerful Gonzaga family. This tapestry of _The
+Annunciation_ which Mr. Ryerson is so fortunate as to hang in his
+collection, is decorated with the arms of the Gonzaga family. The
+border of veined marble, the altar of mosaics and fine relief, the
+architecture of the outlying baptistry, the wreathed angel, all speak
+of Italy in that lovely moment when the Gothic had not been entirely
+abandoned and the Renaissance was but an opening bud.
+
+The highest work of painter and weaver--artists both--continued
+through thirty or forty years. Pity it is, the time had not been long
+enough for more remains of it to have come to us than those that
+scantily supply museums. After the Gothic perfection came the great
+change made in Flanders by the introduction of the Renaissance.
+
+It came through the excellence of the weavers. It was not the worth of
+the artists that brought Brussels its greatest fame, but the humbler
+work of its tapissiers. Their lives, their endeavours counted more in
+textile art than did the Flemish school of painting. No such weavers
+existed in all the world. They were bound together as a guild, had
+restrictions and regulations of their own that would shame a trades
+union of to-day, and in change of politics had scant consideration
+from new powers. But in the end they were the ones to bring fame to
+the Brussels workshops.
+
+In 1528 they were banded together by organisation, and from that time
+on their work is easily followed and identified. It was in that year
+that a law was made compelling weavers--and allowing weavers--to
+incorporate into the encompassing galloon of the tapestry the Brussels
+Brabant mark of two B's with a shield between. And it was about this
+time and later that the celebrated family of weavers named Pannemaker
+came into prominence through the talent of Wilhelm de Pannemaker, he
+who accompanied the Emperor Charles V on his expedition to Tunis.
+
+This expedition flaunts itself in the set of tapestries now in Madrid.
+(Plate facing page 62.) The emperor seems, from our point of view, to
+have done it all with dramatic forethought. There was his special
+artist on the spot, Jan Vermeyen, to draw the superb cartoons, and
+accompanying him was Wilhelm de Pannemaker, the ablest weaver of his
+day, to set the loom and thrust the shuttle. Granada was the place
+selected for the weaving, and the finest of wool was set aside for it,
+besides lavish amounts of silk, and pounds of silver and gold. In
+three years, by the help of eighty workmen, Pannemaker completed his
+colossal task. Such was the master-weaver of the Sixteenth Century.
+
+ [Illustration: CONQUEST OF TUNIS BY CHARLES V (DETAIL)
+
+ Cartoon by Jan Vermeyen. Woven by Pannemaker. Royal Collection at
+ Madrid]
+
+As for Pannemaker's imperial patron, John Addington Symonds
+discriminatingly says of him: "Like a gale sweeping across a forest of
+trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilising pollen to far distant
+trees, the storm of Charles Fifth's army carried far and wide through
+Europe the productive energy of the Renaissance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RENAISSANCE INFLUENCE
+
+
+Brussels in 1515, with her workmen at the zenith of their perfection,
+was given the order to weave the set of the _Acts of the Apostles_ for
+the Pope to hang in the Sistine Chapel. (Plate facing page 64.) The
+cartoons were by the great Raphael. Not only did he draw the splendid
+scenes, but with his exquisite invention elaborated the borders. Thus
+was set in the midst of the Brussels ateliers a pattern for the new
+art that was to retire the nice perfection of the previous school of
+restraint. From that time, all was regulated by new standards.
+
+Before considering the change that came to designs in tapestry, it is
+necessary that both mind and eye should be literally savants in the
+Gothic. Without this the greatest point in classifying and
+distinguishing is missed. The dainty grace of the verdure and flowers,
+the exquisite models of the architectural details, the honest, simple
+scheme of colour, all these are distinguishing marks, but to them is
+added the still greater one of the figures and their grouping. In the
+very early work, these are few in number, all equally accented in size
+and finish, but later the laws of perspective are better understood,
+and subordinates to the subject are drawn smaller. This gives
+opportunity for increase in the number of personages, and for the
+introduction of the horses and dogs and little wild animals that cause
+a childish thrill of delight wherever they are encountered, so like
+are they to the species that haunt childhood's fairyland.
+
+ [Illustration: DEATH OF ANANIAS.--FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY
+ RAPHAEL
+
+ From the Palace of Madrid]
+
+ [Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA
+
+ Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
+ Carey, Esq., Boston]
+
+Indeed, the Gothic tapestries more than any other existing pictures
+take us back to that epoch of our lives when we lived in romance, when
+the Sleeping Beauty hid in just such towers, when the prince rode such
+a horse and appeared an elegant young knight. The inscrutable mystery
+of those folk of other days is like the inscrutable mystery of that
+childhood time, the Mediaeval time of the imagination, and those of us
+who remember its joys gaze silent and happy in the tapestry room of
+the Ducal Palace at Nancy, or in Mary's Chamber at Holyrood, or in any
+place whatever where hang the magic pictured cloths.
+
+When the highest development of a style is reached a change is sure to
+come. It may be a degeneration, or it may be the introduction of a new
+style through some great artistic impulse either native or introduced
+by contact with an outside influence. Fortunately, the Gothic passed
+through no pallid process of deterioration. The examples that nest
+comfortably in the museums of the world or in the homes of certain
+fortunate owners, do not contain marks of decadence--only of
+transition. It is a style that was replaced, but not one that died the
+death of decadence.
+
+It is with reluctance that one who loves the Gothic will leave it for
+the more recent art of the Renaissance. Its charm is one that embodies
+chasteness, grace, and simplicity, one that is so exquisitely
+finished, and so individual that the mind and eye rest lovingly upon
+its decorative expressions. It is averred that the introduction of the
+revived styles of Greece and Rome into France destroyed an art
+superior. One is inclined to this opinion in studying a tapestry of
+the highest Gothic expression, a finished product of the artist and
+the craftsman, both having given to its execution their honest labour
+and highest skill. Unhappily it is often, with the tapestry lover, a
+case similar to that of the penniless boy before the bakeshop
+window--you may look, but you may not have,--for not often are
+tapestries such as these for sale. Only among the experienced
+dealer-collectors is one fortunate enough to find these rare remnants
+of the past which for colour, design and texture are unsurpassed.
+
+But the Gothic was bound to give way as a fashion in design. Politics
+of Europe were at work, and men were more easily moving about from one
+country to another. The cities of the various provinces over which the
+Burgundian dukes had ruled were prevented by natural causes, from
+being united. Arras, Ghent, Liege instead of forming a solidarity,
+were separate units of interest. This made the subjugation of one or
+the other an easy matter to the tyrant who oppressed. As Arras
+declined under the misrule of Charles le Temeraire (whose possessions
+at one time outlined the whole northern and eastern border of France)
+Brussels came into the highest prominence as a source of the finest
+tapestries.
+
+ [Illustration: THE CREATION
+
+ Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century]
+
+ [Illustration: THE ORIGINAL SIN
+
+ Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century]
+
+The great change in tapestries that now occurs is the same that
+altered all European art and decoration and architecture. Indeed it
+cannot be limited to these evidences alone, for it affected
+literature, politics, religion, every intellectual evidence. Man was
+breaking his bonds and becoming freed for centuries to come. The time
+was well-named for the new birth. Like another Birth of long ago, it
+occurred in the South, and its influence gradually spread over the
+entire civilised world. The Renaissance, starting in Italy, gradually
+flushed the whole of Europe with its glory. Artists could not be
+restrained. Throbbing with poetry to be expressed, they threw off
+design after design of inspired beauty and flooded the world with
+them. The legitimate field of painting was not large enough for their
+teeming originality which pre-empted also the field of decorative
+design as well. Many painters apprenticed themselves to goldsmiths and
+silversmiths to become yet more cunning in the art of minute design,
+and the guilds of Florence held the names best known in the fine arts.
+
+Tapestry weaving seems a natural expression in the North, the
+impulsive supplying of a local need. Possibly Italy felt no such need
+throughout the Middle Ages. However that may be, when her artists
+composed designs for woven pictures there were no permanent artisans
+at home of sufficient skill to weave them.
+
+But up in the North, craftsmen were able to produce work of such
+brilliant and perfect execution that the great artists of Italy were
+inspired to draw cartoons. And so it came, that to make sure of having
+their drawings translated into wool and silk with proper artistic
+feeling, the cartoons of Raphael were bundled off by trusty carriers
+to the ateliers of Flanders. Thus Italy got her tapestries of the
+Renaissance, and thus Flanders acquired by inoculation the rich art of
+the Renaissance.
+
+The direct cause of the change in Flemish style of tapestries was in
+this way brought about by the Renaissance of Italy. New rules of
+drawing were dominating. Changes were slower when travelling was
+difficult, and the average of literacy was low; but gradually there
+came creeping up to Brussels cartoon after cartoon in the new method,
+for her skilled workmen to transpose into wool and silk and metal,
+"thread of Arras," and "gold and silver of Cyprus." Italy had the
+artists, Brussels had the craftsmen--what happier combination could be
+made than the union of these two? Thus was the great change brought
+about in tapestries, and this union is the great fact to be borne in
+mind about the difference between the Gothic tapestries and those
+which so quickly succeeded them.
+
+From now on the old method is abandoned, not only in Brussels, but
+everywhere that the high-warp looms are set up. The "art nouveau" of
+that day influenced every brush and pencil. The great crowding of
+serried hosts on a single field disappeared, and fewer but perfect
+figures played their parts on the woven surface. Wherever
+architectural details, such as porticoes or columns, were introduced,
+these dropped the old designs of "pointed" style or battlements, and
+took on the classic or the high Renaissance that ornaments the facade
+of Pavia's Certosa. One by one the wildwood flowers receded before the
+advance of civilisation, very much as those in the veritable land
+are wont to do, and their place was taken by a verdure as rich as the
+South could produce, with heavy foliage and massive blossoms.
+
+ [Illustration: MELEAGER AND ATALANTA
+
+ Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth Century. Woven in Paris
+ workshops by Charles de Comans]
+
+ [Illustration: PUNIC WAR SERIES
+
+ Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
+ Carey, Esq., Boston]
+
+It is impossible to overestimate the importance to Brussels of the
+animating experience and distinguished commission of executing the set
+of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel after cartoons by Raffaelo
+Sanzio. The date is one to tie to (1515) and the influence of the work
+was far-reaching. The Gothic method could no longer continue.
+
+The Renaissance spread its influence, established its standards and
+introduced that wave of productiveness which always followed its
+introduction. There are many who doubt the superiority of the
+voluptuous art of the high Renaissance. There are those who prefer
+(perhaps for reasons of sentiment) the early Gothic, and many more who
+love far better the sweet purity of the early Renaissance. Before us
+Raphael presents his full figures replete with action, rich with
+broad, open curves in nudity, and magnificent with lines of flowing
+drapery. To him be accorded all due honour; but, if it is the
+privilege of the artist's spirit to wander still on earth, he must
+find his particular post-mortem punishment in viewing the deplorable
+school of exaggeration which his example founded. Who would not prefer
+one of the chaste tapestries of perfected Gothic to one of those which
+followed Raphael, imitating none of his virtues, exaggerating his
+faults? It is these followers, the virilities of whose false art is as
+that of weeds, who have come almost to our own day and who have
+succeeded in spoiling the historical aspect of the New Testament for
+many an imaginative Sunday-school attendant by giving us Bible folk in
+swarthy undress, in lunatic beards and in unwearable drapings. These
+terrible persons, descendants of Raphael's art, can never stir a human
+sympathy.
+
+Just here a word must be said of the workmen, the weavers of Brussels.
+For them certain fixed rules were made, but also they were allowed
+much liberty in execution. The artist might draw the big cartoons and
+thus become the governing influence, but much of the choice of colour
+and thread was left to the weaver. This made of him a more important
+factor in the composition than a mere artisan; he was, in fact, an
+artist, must needs be, to execute a work of such sublimity as the
+Raphael set.
+
+And as a weaver, his patience was without limit. Thread by thread, the
+warp was set, and thread by thread the woof was woven and coerced into
+place by the relentless comb of the weaver. Perhaps a man might make a
+square foot, by a week of close application; but "how much" mattered
+nothing--it was "how well" that counted. Haste is disassociable from
+labour of our day; we might produce--or reproduce--tapestries as good
+as the old, but some one is in haste for the hanging, and excellency
+goes by the board. The weaver of those days of perfection was content
+to be a weaver, felt his ambition gratified if his work was good.
+
+ [Illustration: EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CAESAR
+
+ Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the Arazzi,
+ Florence]
+
+ [Illustration: WILD BOAR HUNT
+
+ Flemish Cartoon and Weaving, Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the
+ Arazzi, Florence]
+
+Peter van Aelst was the master chosen to execute the Raphael
+tapestries, and the pieces were finished in three or four years. Those
+who think present-day prices high, should think on the fact that Pope
+Leo X paid $130,000 for the execution of the tapestries, which in
+1515 counted for more than now. Raphael received $1,000 each for the
+cartoons, almost all of which are now guarded in England. The
+tapestries after a varied history are resting safely in the Vatican, a
+wonder to the visitor.
+
+When Van Aelst had finished his magnificent work, the tapestries were
+sent to Rome. Those who go now to the Sistine Chapel to gaze upon
+Michael Angelo's painted ceiling, and the panelled sidewalls of
+Botticelli and other cotemporary artists, are more than intoxicated
+with the feast. But fancy what the scene must have been when Pope Leo
+X summoned his gorgeous guard and cardinals around him in this chapel
+enriched also with the splendour of these unparalleled hangings.
+
+And thus it came that Italy held the first place--almost the only
+place--in design, and Brussels led in manufacture.
+
+In 1528 appeared a mark on Brussels' tapestries which distinguished
+them from that time on. Prior to that their works, except in certain
+authenticated instances, are not always distinguishable from those of
+other looms--of which many existed in many towns. The mark alluded to
+is the famous one of two large B's on either side of a shield or
+scutcheon. This was woven into a plain band on the border, and the
+penalty for its misuse was the no small one of the loss of the right
+hand--the death of the culprit as a weaver. This mark and its laws
+were intended to discourage fraud, to promote perfection and to
+conserve a high reputation for weavers as well as for dealers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+RENAISSANCE TO RUBENS
+
+
+When the Raphael cartoons first came to Brussels the new method was a
+little difficult for the tapissier. His hand had been accustomed to
+another manner. He had, too, been allowed much liberty in his
+translations--if one may so call the art of reproducing a painted
+model on the loom. He might change at will the colour of a drapery,
+even the position of a figure, and, most interesting fact, he had on
+hand a supply of stock figures that he might use at will, making for
+himself suitable combination. The figures of Adam and Eve gave a
+certain cachet to hangings not entirely secular and these were slipped
+in when a space needed filling. There were also certain lovely ladies
+who might at one time play the role of attendant at a feast _al
+fresco_, at another time a character in an allegory. The weaver's hand
+was a little conventional when he began to execute the Raphael
+cartoons, but during the three years required for their execution he
+lost all restriction and was ready for the freer manner.
+
+ [Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
+
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
+
+ [Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
+
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
+
+It must not be supposed the Flemish artists were content to let the
+Italians entirely usurp them in the drawing of cartoons. The lovely
+refinement of the Bruges school having been thrust aside, the Fleming
+tried his hand at the freer method, not imitating its classicism but
+giving his themes a broader treatment. The Northern temperament
+failed to grasp the spirit of the South, and figures grew gross and
+loose in the exaggerated drawing. Borders, however, show no such
+deterioration; the attention to detail to which the old school was
+accustomed was here continued and with good effect. No stronger
+evidence is needed than some of these half savage portrayals of life
+in the Sixteenth Century to declare the classic method an exotic in
+Flanders.
+
+But with the passing of the old Gothic method, there was little need
+for other cartoonists than the Italian, so infinitely able and
+prolific were they. Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Giulio
+Romano, these are among the artists whose work went up to Brussels
+workshops and to other able looms of the day. We can fancy the fair
+face of Andrea's wife being lovingly caressed by the weaver's fingers
+in his work; we can imagine the beauties of Titian, the sumptuousness
+of Veronese's feasts, and the fat materialism of Giulio Romano's heavy
+cherubs, all contributing to the most beautiful of textile arts.
+
+Still earlier, Mantegna supplied a series of idealised Pompeian
+figures exquisitely composed, set in a lacy fancy of airy
+architectural detail, in which he idealised all the gods of Olympus.
+Each fair young goddess, each strong and perfect god, stood in its
+particular niche and indicated its _penchant_ by a tripod, a peacock,
+an apple or a caduceus, as clue to the proper name. Such airy beauty,
+such dainty conception, makes of the gods rulers of aesthetics, if not
+of fate. This series of Mantegna was the inspiration two centuries
+later of the _Triumphs of the Gods_, and similar hangings of the
+newly-formed Gobelins.
+
+Giulio Romano drew, among other cartoons, a set of _Children Playing_,
+which were the inspiration later at the Gobelins for Lebrun's _Enfants
+Jardiniers_.
+
+As classic treatment was the mode in the Sixteenth Century, so classic
+subject most appealed. The loves and adventures of gods and heroes
+gave stories for an infinite number of sets. As it was the fashion to
+fill a room with a series, not with miscellaneous and contrasting
+bits, several tapestries similar in subject and treatment were a
+necessity. The gods were carried through their adventures in varying
+composition, but the borders in all the set were uniform in style and
+measurement.
+
+In those prolific days, when ideas were crowding fast for expression,
+the border gave just the outlet necessary for the superfluous designs
+of the artist. He was wont to plot it off into squares with such
+architectonic fineness as Mina da Fiesole might have used, and to make
+of each of these a picture or a figure so perfect that in itself it
+would have sufficient composition for an entire tapestry. All honour
+to such artists, but let us never once forget that without the skill
+and talent of the master-weaver these beauties would never have come
+down to us.
+
+ [Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
+
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
+
+ [Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
+
+ First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]
+
+The collection of George Blumenthal, Esquire, of New York, contains as
+beautiful examples of Sixteenth Century composition and weaving as
+could be imagined. Two of these were found in Spain--the country
+which has ever hoarded her stores of marvellous tapestries. They
+represent the story of _Mercury_. (Frontispiece.) The cartoon is
+Italian, and so perfect is its drawing, so rich in invention is the
+exquisite border, that the name of Raphael is half-breathed by the
+thrilled observer. But if the artist is not yet certainly identified,
+the name of the weaver is certain, for on the galloon he has left his
+sign. It is none other than the celebrated Wilhelm de Pannemaker.
+
+In addition to this is the shield and double B of the Brussels
+workshop, which after 1528 was a requirement on all tapestries beyond
+a certain small size. In 1544 the Emperor Charles V made a law that
+the mark or name of the weaver and the mark of his town must be put in
+the border. It was this same Pannemaker of the Blumenthal tapestries
+who wove in Spain the _Conquest of Tunis_ for Charles V. (Plate facing
+page 62.)
+
+Mr. Blumenthal's tapestries must have carried with them some such
+contract for fine materials as that which attended the execution of
+the _Tunis_ set, so superb are they in quality. Indeed, gold is so
+lavishly used that the border seems entirely made of it, except for
+the delicate figures resting thereon. It is used, too, in an unusual
+manner, four threads being thrown together to make more resplendent
+the weave.
+
+The beauty of the cartoon as a picture, the decorative value of the
+broad surfaces of figured stuffs, the marvellous execution of the
+weaver, all make the value of these tapestries incalculable to the
+student and the lover of decorative art. Mr. Blumenthal has graciously
+placed them on exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
+York. Fortunate they who can absorb their beauty.
+
+That treasure-house in Madrid which belongs to the royal family
+contains a set which bears the same ear-marks as the Blumenthal
+tapestries. It is the set called _The Loves of Vertumnus and Pomona_.
+(Plates facing pages 72, 73, 74 and 75.) Here is the same manner of
+dress, the same virility, the same fulness of decoration. Yet the
+Mercury is drawn with finer art.
+
+The delight in perfected detail belonging to the Italian school of
+artists resulted in an arrangement of _grotesques_. Who knows that the
+goldsmith's trade was not responsible for these tiny fantastics, as so
+many artists began as apprentices to workers in gold and silver? This
+evidence of talented invention must be observed, for it set the
+fashion for many a later tapestry, notably the _Grotesque Months_ of
+the Seventeenth Century. Mingled with verdure and fruit, it is seen in
+work of the Eighteenth Century. But in its original expression is it
+the most talented. There we find that intellectual plan of design,
+that building of a perfect whole from a subtle combination of
+absolutely irreconcilable and even fabulous objects. Yet all is done
+with such beguiling art that both mind and eye are piqued and pleased
+with the impossible blending of realism and imagination.
+
+Bacchiacca drew a filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a
+ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the
+celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing
+pages 84 and 85.) These men at that time (1550) had set their
+Flemish looms in Italy.
+
+ [Illustration: TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED
+
+ Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid]
+
+ [Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA
+
+ Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
+ Carey, Esq., Boston]
+
+And so it came that the Renaissance swept all before it in the world
+of tapestry. More than that, with the increase of culture and of
+wealth, with the increased mingling of the peoples of Europe after the
+raid of Charles V into Italy, the demand for tapestries enormously
+increased. They were wanted for furnishing of homes, they were wanted
+as gifts--to brides, to monarchs, to ambassadors. And they were wanted
+for splendid decoration in public festivals. They had passed beyond
+the stage of rarity and had become almost as much a matter of course
+as clothing.
+
+Brussels being in the ascendency as a producer, the world looked to
+her for their supply, and thereby came trouble. More orders came than
+it was possible to fill. The temptation was not resisted to accept
+more work than could be executed, for commercialism has ever a hold.
+The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced
+his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the
+lessening of care in every department.
+
+Gradually it came about that expedition in a tapissier, the ability to
+weave quickly, was as great a desideratum as fine work. Various other
+expedients were resorted to beside the Sixteenth Century equivalent of
+"Step lively." Large tapestries were not set on a single loom, but
+were woven in sections, cunningly united when finished. In this manner
+more men could be impressed into the manufacture of a single piece. A
+wicked practice was introduced of painting or dyeing certain woven
+parts in which the colours had been ill-selected.
+
+All these things resulted in constantly increasing restrictions by the
+guild of tapissiers and by order of royal patrons. But fraud is hard
+to suppress when the animus of the perpetrator is wrong. Laws were
+made to stop one fault after another, until in the end the weavers
+were so hampered by regulations that work was robbed of all enthusiasm
+or originality.
+
+It was at this time that Brussels adopted the low-warp loom. In other
+words, after a brilliant period of prolific and beautiful production,
+Brussels began to show signs of deterioration. Her hour of triumph was
+past. It had been more brilliant than any preceding, and later times
+were never able to touch the same note of purity coupled with
+perfection. The reason for the decline is known, but reasons are of
+scant interest in the face of the deplorable fact of decadence.
+
+The Italian method of drawing cartoons was adopted by the Flemish
+cartoonists at this time, but as it was an adoption and not a natural
+expression of inborn talent, it fell short of the high standard of the
+Renaissance. But that is not to say that we of to-day are not ready to
+worship the fruit of the Italian graft on Flemish talent. A tapestry
+belonging to the Institute of Art in Chicago well represents this
+hybrid expression of drawing. (Plate facing page 78.) The principal
+figures are inspired by such as are seen in the _Mercury_ of Mr.
+Blumenthal's collection, or the _Vertumnus and Pomona_ series, but
+there the artist stopped and wandered off into his traditional
+Flemish landscape with proper Flemings in the background dressed in
+the fashion of the artist's day.
+
+ [Illustration: BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art, Chicago]
+
+ [Illustration: MEETING OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
+
+ Brussels Tapestry. Woven by Gerard van den Strecken. Cartoon
+ attributed to Rubens]
+
+The border was evidently inspired by Raphael's classic figures and
+arabesques, but the column of design is naively broken by the far
+perspective of a formal garden. The Italian cartoonist would have
+built his border, figure and arabesque, one above another like a
+fantastic column (_vide_ Mr. Blumenthal's _Mercury_ border). The
+Fleming saw the intricacy, the multiplied detail, but missed the
+intellectual harmony. But, such trifles apart, the Flemish examples of
+this style that have come to us are thrilling in their beauty of
+colour, and borders such as this are an infinite joy. This tapestry
+was woven about the last quarter of the Sixteenth Century by a weaver
+named Jacques Geubels of Brussels, who was employed by Carlier, a
+merchant of Antwerp.
+
+As the fruit of the Renaissance graft on Flanders coarsened and
+deteriorated, a new influence arose in the Low Countries, one that was
+bound to submerge all others. Rubens appeared and spread his great
+decorative surfaces before eyes that were tired of hybrid design. This
+great scene-painter introduced into all Europe a new method in his
+voluptuous, vigorous work, a method especially adapted to tapestry
+weaving. It is not for us to quarrel with the art of so great a
+master. The critics of painting scarce do that; but in the lesser art
+of tapestry the change brought about by his cartoons was not a happy
+one.
+
+His great dramatic scenes required to be copied directly from the
+canvas, no liberty of line or colour could be allowed the weaver. In
+times past, the tapissier--with talent almost as great as that of the
+cartoonist--altered at his discretion. Even he to whom the Raphael
+cartoons were entrusted changed here and there the work of the master.
+
+But now he was expected to copy without license for change. In other
+words, the time was arriving when tapestries were changing from
+decorative fabrics into paintings in wool. It takes courage to avow a
+distaste for the newer method, seeing what rare and beautiful hangings
+it has produced. But after a study of the purely decorative hangings
+of Gothic and Renaissance work, how forced and false seem the later
+gods. The value of the tapestries is enormous, they are the work of
+eminent men--but the heart turns away from them and revels again in
+the Primitives and the Italians of the Cinque Cento.
+
+Repining is of little avail. The mode changes and tastes must change
+with it. If the gradual decadence after the Renaissance was
+deplorable, it was well that a Rubens rose in vigour to set a new and
+vital copy. To meet new needs, more tones of colour and yet more, were
+required by the weaver, and thus came about the making of woven
+pictures.
+
+As one picture is worth many pages of description, it were well to
+observe the examples given (plate facing page 79) of the superb set of
+_Antony and Cleopatra_, a series of designs attributed to Rubens,
+executed in Brussels by Gerard van den Strecken. This set is in the
+Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ITALY
+
+FIFTEENTH THROUGH SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
+
+
+The history of tapestry in Italy is the story of the great families,
+their romances and achievements. These families were those which
+furnished rulers of provinces--kings, almost--which supplied popes as
+well, and folk who thought a powerful man's pleasurable duty was to
+interest himself seriously in the arts.
+
+With the fine arts all held within her hand, it was but logical that
+Italy should herself begin to produce the tapestries she was importing
+from the land of the barbarians as those beyond her northern borders
+were arrogantly called. First among the records is found the name of
+the Gonzaga family which called important Flemish weavers down to
+Mantua, and there wove designs of Mantegna, in the highest day of
+their factory's production, about 1450.
+
+Duke Frederick of Urbino is one of the early Italian patrons of
+tapestry whose name is made unforgettable in this connexion by the
+product of the factory he established toward the end of the Fifteenth
+Century, at his court in the little duchy which included only the
+space reaching from the Apennines to the Adriatic and from Rimini to
+Ancona. The chief work of this factory was the _History of Troy_ which
+cost the generous and enthusiastic duke a hundred thousand dollars.
+
+The great d'Este family was one to follow persistently the art,
+possibly because it habited the northern part of the peninsula and was
+therefore nearer Flanders, but more probably because the great Duke of
+Ferrara was animated by that superb pride of race that chafes at
+rivalry; this, added to a wish to encourage art, and the lust of
+possession which characterised the great men of that day.
+
+It was the middle of the Sixteenth Century that Ercole II, the head of
+the d'Este family, revived at Ferrara the factory of his family which
+had suffered from the wars. The master-weavers were brought from
+Flanders, not only to produce tapestries almost unequalled for
+technical perfection, but to instruct local weavers. These two
+important weavers were Nicholas and John Karcher or Carcher as it is
+sometimes spelled, names of great renown--for a weaver might be almost
+as well known and as highly esteemed as the artist of the cartoons in
+those days when artisan's labour had not been despised by even the
+great Leonardo. The foremost artist of the Ferrara works was chosen
+from that city, Battista Dosso, but also active as designer was the
+Fleming, Lucas Cornelisz. In Dosso's work is seen that exquisite and
+dainty touch that characterises the artists of Northern Italy in their
+most perfect period, before voluptuous masses and heavy scroll-like
+curves prevailed even in the drawing of the human figure.
+
+ [Illustration: THE ANNUNCIATION
+
+ Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin A.
+ Ryerson, Esq., Chicago]
+
+The House of Este had a part to play in the visit of the Emperor
+Charles V when he elected to be crowned with Lombardy's Iron Crown, in
+1530, at Bologna instead of in the cathedral at Monza where the relic
+has its home. "Crowns run after me; I do not run after them," he
+said, with the arrogance of success. At this reception at Bologna
+we catch a glimpse of the brilliant Isabella d'Este amid all the
+magnificence of the occasion. It takes very little imagination to
+picture the effect of the public square at Bologna--the same buildings
+that stand to-day--the square of the Palazzo Publico and the
+Cathedral--to fancy these all hung with the immense woven pictures
+with high lights of silk and gold glowing in the sun, and through this
+magnificent scene the procession of mounted guards, of beautiful
+ladies, of church dignitaries, with Charles V as the central object of
+pomp, wearing as a clasp to the cope of state the great diamond found
+on the field of Marat after the defeat of the Duke of Burgundy. The
+members of the House of Este were there with their courts and their
+proteges, their artists and their literati, as well as with their
+display of riches and gaiety.
+
+The manufactory at Ferrara was now allowed to sell to the public, so
+great was its success, and to it is owed the first impetus given to
+the weaving in Italy and the production of some of the finest hangings
+which time has left for us to enjoy to-day. It is a sad commentary on
+man's lust of novelty that the factory at Ferrara was ultimately
+abandoned by reason of the introduction into the country of the
+brilliant metal-illuminated leathers of Cordova. The factory's life
+was comprised within the space of the years 1534 to 1597, the years in
+which lived Ercole II and Alfonso II, the two dukes of the House of
+Este who established and continued it.
+
+It was but little wonder that the great family of the Medici looked
+with envious eyes on any innovation or success which distinguished a
+family which so nearly approached in importance its own. When Ercole
+d'Este had fully proved the perfection of his new industry, the
+weaving of tapestry, one of the Medici established for himself a
+factory whereby he, too, might produce this form of art, not only for
+the furtherance of the art, but to supply his own insatiable desires
+for possession.
+
+The _Arazzeria Medicea_ was the direct result of the jealousy of
+Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574. It was established in
+Florence with a success to be anticipated under such powerful
+protection, and it endured until that patronage was removed by the
+extinction of the family in 1737.
+
+It was to be expected that the artists employed were those of note,
+yet in the general result, outside of delicate grotesques, the drawing
+is more or less the far-away echo of greater masters whose faults are
+reproduced, but whose inspiration is not obtainable. After Michael
+Angelo, came a passion for over-delineation of over-developed muscles;
+after Raphael--came the debased followers of his favourite pupil,
+Giulio Romano, who had himself seized all there was of the carnal in
+Raphael's genius. But if there is something to be desired in the
+composition and line of the cartoons of the Florentine factory, there
+is nothing lacking in the consummate skill of the weavers.
+
+ [Illustration: ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas Karcher]
+
+ [Illustration: ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by G. Rost]
+
+The same Nicholas Karcher who set the standard in the d'Este works,
+gave of his wonderful skill to the Florentines, and with him was
+associated John Rost. These were both from Flanders, and although
+trade regulations for tapestry workers did not exist in Italy, Duke
+Cosimo granted each of these men a sufficient salary, a habitat, as
+well as permission to work for outsiders, and in addition paid them
+for all work executed for himself.
+
+The subjects for the set of tapestries had entirely left the old
+method of pious interpretation and of mediaeval allegory and revelled
+in pictured tales of the Scriptures and of the gods and heroes of
+mystical Parnassus and of bellicose Greece, not forgetting those
+dainty exquisite impossibilities called grotesques. It was about the
+time of the death of Cosimo I (1574), the founder of the Medicean
+factory, that a new and unfortunate influence came into the
+directorship of the designs. This was the appointment of Stradano or
+Johan van der Straaten, to give his Flemish name, as dominating
+artist.
+
+He was a man without fine artistic feeling, one of those whose eye
+delighted in the exaggerations of decadence rather than in the
+restraint of perfect art. He was inspired, not by past perfection of
+the Italians among whom he came to live, but by those of the decline,
+and on this he grafted a bit of Northern philistinism. His brush was
+unfortunately prolific, and at this time the fine examples of weaving
+set by Rost and Karcher had been replaced by quicker methods so that
+after 1600 the tapestries poured out were lamentably inferior.
+Florentine tapestry had at this time much pretence, much vulgar
+display in its drawing, missing the fine virtues of the time when
+Cosimo I dictated its taste, the fine virtues of "grace, gaiety and
+reflectiveness."
+
+Leo X, the great Medicean pope, was elected in 1513, he who ordered
+the great Raphael set of the _Acts of the Apostles_, but it was before
+the establishment of important looms in Italy, so to Flanders and Van
+Aelst are due the glory of first producing this series which afterward
+was repeated many times, in the great looms of Europe. Leo X emulated
+in the patronage of the arts his father Lorenzo, well-named
+Magnificent. What Lorenzo did in Florence, Leo X endeavoured to do in
+Rome; make of his time and of his city the highest expression of
+culture. His record, however, is so mixed with the corruption of the
+time that its golden glory is half-dimmed. It was from the
+licentiousness of cardinals and the wanton revels of the Vatican in
+Leo's time that young Luther the "barbarian" fled with horror to nail
+up his theses on the doors of the churches in Wittenberg.
+
+The history of tapestry in Italy at the Seventeenth Century was all in
+the hands of the great families. Italy was not united under a single
+royal head, but was a heterogeneous mass of dukedoms, of foreign
+invaders, with the popes as the head of all. But Italy had experienced
+a time of papal corruption, which had, as its effect, wars of
+disintegration, the retarding of that unity of state which has only
+recently been accomplished. State patronage for the factories was not
+known, that steady beneficent influence, changeless through changing
+reigns. Popes and great families regulated art in all its
+manifestations, and who shall say that envy and rivalry did not act
+for its advancement.
+
+ [Illustration: ITALIAN VERDURE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+The desire to imitate the cultivation and elegance of Italy was
+what made returning invaders carry the Renaissance into the rest of
+Europe; and in a lesser degree the process was reversed when, in the
+Seventeenth Century, a cardinal of the House of Barberini visited
+France and, on viewing in the royal residences a superb display of
+tapestries, his envy and ambition were aroused to the extent of
+emulation. He could not, with all his power, possess himself of the
+hangings that he saw, but he could, and did, arrange to supply himself
+generously from another source. He was the powerful Francesco
+Barberini, the son of the pope's brother (Pope Urban VIII, 1623-1644),
+and it was he who established the Barberini Library and built from the
+ruins of Rome's amphitheatres and baths the great palace which to-day
+still dominates the street winding up to its aristocratic elegance. It
+was to adorn this palace that Cardinal Francesco established ateliers
+and looms and set artists and weavers to work. This tapestry factory
+is of especial interest to America, for some of its chief hangings
+have come to rest with us. _The Mysteries of the Life and Death of
+Jesus Christ_, one set is called, and is the property of the Cathedral
+of St. John, the Divine, in New York, donated by Mrs. Clarke.
+
+Cardinal Francesco Barberini chose as his artists those of the school
+of Pietro di Cortona with Giovanni Francesco Romanelli as the head
+master. The director of the factory was Giacomo della Riviera allied
+with M. Wauters, the Fleming.[13] The former was especially concerned
+with the pieces now owned by the Cathedral of St. John, the Divine,
+in New York, and which are signed with his name. Romanelli was the
+artist of the cartoons, and his fame is almost too well known to dwell
+upon. His portrait, in tapestry, hangs in the Louvre, for in Paris he
+gained much fame at the Court of Louis XIV, where he painted portraits
+of the Grand Monarch, who never wearied of seeing his own magnificence
+fixed on canvas.
+
+It was the hard fate of the Barberini family to lose power and wealth
+after the death of their powerful member, Pope Urban VIII, in 1644.
+Their wealth and influence were the shining mark for the arrows of
+envy, so it was to be expected that when the next pope, Innocent X,
+was elected, they were robbed of riches and driven out of the country
+into France. This ended for a time the work of the tapestry factory,
+but later the family returned and work was resumed to the extent of
+weaving a superb series picturing scenes especially connected with the
+glory of the family, and entitled _History of Urban VIII_.
+
+Although Italy is growing daily in power and riches under her new
+policy of political unity, there were dreary years of heavy expense
+and light income for many of her famous families, and it was during
+such an era that the Barberini family consented to let their
+tapestries pass out from the doors of the palace they were woven to
+decorate. In 1889, the late Charles M. Ffoulke, Esq., became the
+possessor of all the Barberini hangings, and added them to his famous
+collection. Thus through the enterprise and the fine artistic
+appreciation of Mr. Ffoulke, is America able to enjoy the best
+expression of Italian tapestry of the Seventeenth Century.
+
+The part that Venice ever played in the history of tapestry is the
+splendid one of consumer. In her Oriental magnificence she exhibited
+in palace and pageant the superb products of labour which others had
+executed. Without tapestries her big stone palaces would have lacked
+the note of soft luxury, without coloured hangings her balconies would
+have been but dull settings for languid ladies, and her water-parades
+would have missed the wondrous colour that the Venetian loves. Yet to
+her rich market flowed the product of Europe in such exhaustless
+stream that she became connoisseur-consumer only, nor felt the need of
+serious producing. Workshops there were, from time to time, but they
+were as easily abandoned as they were initiated, and they have left
+little either to history or to museums. Venice was, in the Sixteenth
+Century, not only a buyer of tapestries for her own use, but one of
+the largest markets for the sale of hangings to all Europe. Men and
+monarchs from all Christendom went there to purchase. The same may be
+said of Genoa, so that although these two cities had occasional
+unimportant looms, their position was that of middleman--vendors of
+the works of others. In addition to this they were repairers and had
+ateliers for restoring, even in those days.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] E. Muentz, "La Tapisserie."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FRANCE
+
+WORKING UP TO GOBELINS FACTORY
+
+
+In following the great sweep of tapestry production we arrive now in
+France, there to stay until the Revolution. The early beginnings were
+there, briefly rivalling Arras, but Arras, as we have seen, caught up
+the industry with greater zeal and became the ever-famous leader of
+the Fifteenth Century, ceding to Brussels in the Sixteenth Century,
+whence the high point of perfection was carried to Paris and caused
+the establishment of the Gobelins. The English development under James
+I, we defer for a later considering.
+
+Francis I stands, an over-dressed, ever ambitious figure, at the
+beginning of things modern in French art. He still smacks of the
+Middle Ages in many a custom, many a habit of thought; his men clank
+in armour, in his chateaux lurk the suggestion of the fortress, and
+his common people are sunk in a dark and hopeless oppression. Yet he
+himself darts about Europe with a springing gait and an elegant
+manner, the type of the strong aristocrat dispensing alike arts of war
+and arts of the Renaissance.
+
+Was it his visits, bellicose though they were, to Italy and Spain,
+that turned his observant eye to the luxury of woven story and made
+him desire that France should produce the same? The Sforza Castle at
+Milan had walls enough of tapestry, the pageants of Leonardo da
+Vinci, organised at royal command of the lovely Beatrice d'Este,
+displayed the wealth of woven beauty over which Francis had time to
+deliberate in those bad hours after the battle at Milan's noted
+neighbour, Pavia.
+
+ [Illustration: THE FINDING OF MOSES
+
+ Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin. The Louvre
+ Museum]
+
+ [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF JUNO
+
+ Gobelins under Louis XIV.]
+
+The attention of Francis was also turned much to Spain through envy of
+that extraordinary man of luck and ability, the Emperor Charles V, and
+from whom he made abortive and sullen efforts to wrest Germany, Italy,
+anything he could get. In his imprisonment in Madrid, Francis had time
+in plenty on which to think of many things, and why not on the
+wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to
+make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little
+boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not
+whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one
+which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer
+of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the
+same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to
+remember in regard to the class of designs of his own and succeeding
+periods in France.
+
+How he got his ideas we can reasonably trace, and the result of them
+was that he established a royal tapestry factory in beautiful
+Fontainebleau, which lies hid in grateful shade, stretching to
+flowered fields but a reasonable distance from the distractions of
+Paris.
+
+It pleased Francis--and perhaps the beautiful Diane de Poitiers and
+Duchesse d'Etampes--to critique plays in that tiny gem of a theatre at
+the palace, or to feed the carp in the pool; but also it gave him
+pleasure to wander into the rooms where the high-warp looms lifted
+their utilitarian lengths and artists played at magic with the wools.
+
+Alas, one cannot dress this patronage of art with too much of
+disinterestedness, for these marvellous weavings were for the
+adornment of the apartments of the very persons who caused their
+productions.
+
+The grand idea of state ateliers had not yet come to bless the
+industry. For this reason the factory at Fontainebleau outlasted the
+reign of its founder, Francis I, but a short time.
+
+Nevertheless, examples of its works are still to be seen and are of
+great beauty, notably those at the Museum of the Gobelins in Paris.
+That a series called the _History of Diana_ was produced is but
+natural, considering the puissance at court of the famous Diane de
+Poitiers.
+
+When Francis' son, Henri II, enfeebled in constitution by the Spanish
+confinement, inherited the throne, it was but natural that he should
+neglect the indulgences of his father and prefer those of his own. The
+Fontainebleau factory strung its looms and copied its cartoons and
+produced, too, certain hangings for Henri's wife, the terrible
+Catherine de Medici, on which her vicious eyes rested in forming her
+horrid plots; but Henri had ambitions of his own, small ambitions
+beside those which had to do with jealousy of Charles Quint. He let
+the factory of Francis I languish, but carried on the art under his
+own name and fame.
+
+To give his infant industry a home he looked about Paris and decided
+upon the Hopital de la Trinite, an institution where asylum was found
+for the orphans of the city who seem, in the light of the general
+brutality of the time, to have been even in more need of a home than
+the parentless child of modern civilisation. A part of the scheme was
+to employ in the works such children as were sufficiently mature and
+clever to work and to learn at least the auxiliary details of a craft
+that is also an art.
+
+In this way the sixty or so of the orphans of La Trinite were given a
+means of earning a livelihood. Among them was one whose name became
+renowned. This was Maurice du Bourg, whose tapestries surpassed all
+others of his time in this factory--an important factory, as being one
+of the group that later was merged into the Gobelins.
+
+It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind
+that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things
+Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his
+school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but
+in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world
+found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinite
+that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an
+underscoring. This set was composed of fifteen pieces illustrating in
+sweeping design and gorgeous colouring the _History of Mausolus and
+Artemisia_. Intense local and personal interest was given to the set
+by making an open secret of the fact that by Artemisia, the Queen of
+Halicarnassus, was meant the widowed Queen of France, Catherine de
+Medici, who adored posing as the most famous of widows and adding
+ancient glory to her living importance. To this _History_ French
+writers accord the important place of inspirer of a distinctively
+French Renaissance.
+
+The weaver being Maurice du Bourg, the chief of the factory of La
+Trinite, the artists were Henri Lerambert and Antoine Carron, but the
+set has been many times copied in various factories, and Artemisia has
+symbolised in turn two other widowed queens of France.
+
+Into the throne of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under
+the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was
+filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at
+last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that
+grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his
+place, and the habit being strong upon him, he was in eternal
+conflict. Some there be who are developed by sympathy, but Henri IV
+was developed by opposition, and thus it was that although opposed in
+the matter by his Prime Minister, Sully, he established factories for
+the weaving of tapestries in both high and low warps.
+
+With the desire to see the arts of peace instead of evidences of war
+throughout his kingdom just rescued from conflict, he took all means
+to set his people in the ways of pleasing industry. The indefatigable
+Sully was plucking the royal sleeve to follow the path of the plough,
+to see man's salvation, material and moral, in the ways of
+agriculture. But Henri favoured townspeople as well as country
+people, and with the Edict of Nantes, releasing from the bondage of
+terror a large number of workers, he showed much industry in
+encouraging tapestry factories in and near Paris, and as these all
+lead to Gobelins we will consider them.
+
+ [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
+
+ Gobelins, Seventeenth Century]
+
+ [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
+
+ Gobelins Tapestry]
+
+Henri IV, notwithstanding his Prime Minister Sully's opposition to
+what he considered a favouring of vicious luxury, began to occupy
+himself in tapestry factories as early in his reign as his people
+could rise from the wounds of war. Taking his movements
+chronologically we will begin with his establishment in 1597 (eight
+years after this first Bourbon took the throne) of a high-warp
+industry in the house of the Jesuits in the Faubourg St. Antoine,
+associating here Du Bourg of La Trinite and Laurent, equally renowned,
+and the composer of the St. Merri tapestries.[14]
+
+Flemish workers in Paris were at this same time, about 1601,
+encouraged by the king and under protection of his steward. These
+Flemings were the nucleus of a great industry, for it was over them
+that two famous masters governed, namely, Francois de la Planche and
+Marc Comans or Coomans. In 1607 Henri IV established the looms which
+these men were called upon to direct.
+
+These two Flemings, great in their art, were men of family and of some
+means, for their first venture in the manufacture of tapestry was a
+private enterprise like any of to-day. They looked to themselves to
+produce the money for the support of the industry. Combining
+qualities of both the artist and the business man, they took on
+apprentices and also established looms in the provinces (notably Tours
+and Amiens) where commercialism was as prominent as in modern methods;
+that is to say, that by turning off a lot of cheaper work for smaller
+purses, a quick and ready market was found which supplied the money
+necessary for the production of those finer works of art which are
+left to delight us to-day.
+
+This manner of procedure of De la Planche and Comans has an interest
+far deeper than the mere financial venture of the men of the early
+Seventeenth Century, because it forces upon us the fact that at that
+time, and earlier, no state ateliers existed. It was Henri IV who
+first saw the wisdom of using the public purse in advancing this
+industry. He established Du Bourg in the Louvre. With Henri Laurent he
+was placed in the Tuileries, in 1607, and that atelier lasted until
+the ministry of Colbert in the reign of Louis XIV.
+
+In about 1627 the great De la Planche died and his son, Raphael,
+established ateliers of his own in the Faubourg St. Germain, turning
+out from his looms productions which were of sufficient excellence to
+be confused with those of his father's most profitable factory.
+Chronologically this fact belongs later, so we return to the influence
+of Henri IV and the master gentleman tapissiers, De la Planche and
+Comans.
+
+The very name of the old palace, Les Tournelles, calls up a crowd of
+pictures: the death of Henri II at the tournament in honour of the
+marriage of his son with Marie Stuart, the subsequent razing of this
+ancient home of kings by Catherine de Medici, and its reconstruction
+in its present form by Henri IV. It is here that Richelieu honoured
+the brief reign of Louis XIII by a statue, and it is here that Madame
+de Sevigne was born. But more to our purpose, it was here that, in
+1607, Henri IV cast his kingly eye when establishing a certain
+tapestry factory. It was here he placed as directors the celebrated
+Comans and De la Planche. It happened in time, that the looms of Les
+Tournelles were moved to the Faubourg St. Marceau and these two men
+came in time to direct these and all other looms under royal
+patronage.
+
+Examples are not wanting in museums of French work of this time,
+showing the development of the art and the progress that France was
+making under Henri IV, whose energy without limit, and whose interests
+without number, would to-day have given him the epithet of strenuous.
+
+Under his reign we see the activity that so easily led France up to
+the point where all that was needed was the assembling of the
+factories under the direction of one great master. The factories
+flourishing under Henri IV were La Trinite, the Louvre, the
+Savonnerie, the Faubourg St. Marceau and one in the Tuileries. But it
+needed the power of Louis XIV to tie all together in the strength of
+unity.
+
+The assassin Ravaillac, fanatically muttering through the streets of
+Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest
+month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal
+coach, not only gave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these
+industries that the king had cherished for his people against the
+opposition of his prime minister. The tale of tapestry is like a vine
+hanging on a frame of history, and frequent allusion therefore must be
+made to the tales of kings and their ministers.
+
+As it is not always a monarch, but often the power behind the throne
+that rules, we see the force of Richelieu surging behind the reign of
+the suppressed Louis XIII, whose rule followed that of the regretted
+Henri IV. The master of the then new Palais-Royal had minor interests
+of his own, apart from his generous plots of ruin for the Protestants,
+for all the French nobility, and for the House of Austria to which the
+queen belonged. Luxurious surroundings were a necessity to this man,
+refined in the arts of cruelty and of living. It was no wonder that
+under him tapestry weaving was not allowed to die, but was fostered
+until that day when the Grand Monarch would organise and perfect.
+
+In 1643, Louis XIV came to the throne under the guidance of Anne of
+Austria, but it was many years before he was able to make his
+influence appreciable. Meanwhile, however, others were fostering the
+elegant industry. It was as early as 1647 that two celebrated tapestry
+weavers came to Paris from Italy. They were Pierre Lefevre or Lefebvre
+and his son Jean. The first of these was the chief of a factory in
+Florence, whither he presently returned. Jean Lefebvre stayed in
+Paris, won his way all the better for being released from parental
+rule, and in time received the great honour of being appointed one
+of the directors of the Gobelins, when that factory was finally
+organised as an institution of the state.
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
+
+ [Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING
+
+ After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
+ Quatre, Pau]
+
+During the regency of Louis XIV there were also factories outside of
+Paris. The high-warp looms of Tours were of such notable importance
+that the great Richelieu placed here an order for tapestries of great
+splendour with which to soften his hours of ease. Rheims Cathedral
+still harbours the fine hangings which were woven for the place they
+now adorn, an unusual circumstance in the world of tapestry. These
+hangings (_The Story of Christ_) were woven at Rheims, where the
+factory existed well known throughout the first half of the
+Seventeenth Century. The church had previously ordered tapestries from
+another town executed by one Daniel Pepersack, and so highly approved
+was his work that he was made director of the Rheims factory.[15]
+
+A factory which lasted but a few years, yet has for us a special
+interest, is that of Maincy, founded in 1658. It is here that we hear
+of the great Colbert and of Lebrun, whose names are synonymous with
+prosperity of the Gobelins. For the factory at Maincy, Lebrun made
+cartoons of great beauty, notably that of _The Hunt of Meleager_,
+which now hangs in the Gobelins Museum in Paris. Louis Blamard was the
+director of the workmen, who were Flemish, and who were afterwards
+called to Paris to operate the looms of the newly-formed Gobelins, and
+the reason of the transference forms a part of the history of the
+great people of that day.
+
+Richelieu in dying had passed over his power to Mazarin, who had used
+it with every cruelty possible to the day. He had coveted riches and
+elegance and had possessed himself of them; had collected in his
+palace the most beautiful works of art of his day or those of a
+previous time. After Mazarin came Foucquet, the great, the
+iconoclastic, the unfortunate.
+
+It was at Foucquet's estate of Vaux near Maincy that this tapestry
+factory of short duration was established and soon destroyed. The
+powerful Superintendent of Finance, with his eye for the beautiful and
+desire for the luxury of kings, built for himself such a chateau as
+only the magnificence of that time produced. It was situated far
+enough from Paris to escape any sort of ennui, and was surrounded by
+gardens most marvellous, within a beauteous park. It lay, when
+finished, like a jewel on the fair bosom of France. The great
+superintendent conceived the idea of pleasing the young king, Louis
+XIV, by inviting the court for a wondrous fete in its lovely
+enclosure.
+
+Foucquet was a man of the world, and of the court, knew how to please
+man's lighter side, and how to use social position for his own ends.
+France calls him a "dilapidateur," but when his power and incidentally
+the revenues of state, were laid out to produce a day of pleasure for
+king and court, his taste and ability showed such a fete as could
+scarce be surpassed even in those days of artistic fetes champetres.
+
+The great gardens were brought into use in all the beauty of flower
+and vine, of lawn and bosquet, of terrace and fountain. When the
+guests arrived, weary of town life, they were turned loose in the
+enchanting place like birds uncaged, and to the beauty of Nature was
+added that of folk as gaily dressed as the flowers. The king was
+invited to inspect it all for his pleasure, asked to feast in the
+gardens, and to repose in the splendid chateau.
+
+He was young then, in the early twenties, and luxury was younger then
+than now, so he was pleased to spend the time in almost childish
+enjoyments. A play _al fresco_ was almost a necessity to a royal
+garden party, which was no affair of an hour like ours in the busy
+to-day, but extended the livelong day and evening. Moliere was ready
+with his sparkling satires at the king's caprice, and into the garden
+danced the players before an audience to whom vaudeville and _cafe
+chantant_ were exclusively a royal novelty arranged for their
+delectation.
+
+It is easy to see the elegant young king and his court in the setting
+of a sophisticated out-of-doors, wandering on grassy paths, lingering
+under arches of roses, plucking a flower to nest beside a smiling
+face, stopping where servants--obsequious adepts, they were
+then--supplied dainty things to eat and drink. Madame de Sevigne was
+there, she of the observant eye, an eye much occupied at this time
+with the figure of Superintendent Foucquet, the host of this glorious
+occasion. This gracious lady lacked none of the appearance of
+frivolity, coiffed in curls, draped in lace and soft silks, but her
+mind was deeply occupied with the signs of the times. All the elegance
+of the chateau, all the seductive beauty of terrace, garden, and
+bosquet, all the piquant surprises of play and pyrotechnics, what were
+they? Simply the disinterested effort of a subject to give pleasure
+to His Majesty, the King.
+
+There were those present who had long envied Foucquet, with his
+ever-increasing power and wealth, his ability to patronise the arts,
+to collect, and even to establish his tapestry looms like a king, for
+his own palace and for gifts. This grand fete in the lovely month of
+June did more than shower pleasure, more than gratify the lust of the
+eye. In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming
+men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an
+incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin.
+
+Among the observant guests at this wondrous fete champetre was
+Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in
+Foucquet's fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king.
+Foucquet's downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by
+ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches
+their own. Foucquet's unequalled entertainment of the king was made to
+count as naught. Louis, even before leaving for Paris, had begun to
+ask whence came the money that purchased this wide fertile estate
+stretching to the vision's limit, the money that built the chateau of
+regal splendour, the money that paid for the prodigal pleasures of
+that day of delights? Foucquet thought to have gained the confidence
+and admiration of the king. But, on leaving, Louis said coldly, "We
+shall scarce dare ask you to our poor palace, seeing the superior
+luxury to which you are accustomed." A fearful cut, but only a straw
+to the fate which followed, the investigations into the affairs of
+Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and
+then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with
+the superintendent's life. Madame de Sevigne saw him in the beginning,
+wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from his
+weary years.
+
+ [Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING
+
+ After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
+ Quatre, Pau]
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS GROTESQUE
+
+ Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris]
+
+With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Chateau of Vaux
+near Maincy, and so, too, came an end to the factory where so fine
+results had been obtained in tapestry weaving. Yet the effort was not
+in vain, for some of the tapestries remain and the factory was the
+school where certain celebrated men were trained.
+
+It may easily have been that Louis XIV discovered on that day at Vaux
+the excellence of Lebrun whom he made director at the Gobelins in
+Paris when they were but newly formed. Foucquet, wasting in prison,
+had many hours in which to think on this and on the advancement of the
+very man who had been keenest in running him to cover, the great
+Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry
+whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but
+we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy
+caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and
+daring, qualities of which the world has ever need.
+
+Foucquet's factory lasted three years. It was directed by Louis
+Blamard or Blammaert of Oudenarde, and employed a weaver named Jean
+Zegre, who came from the works at Enghien, works sufficiently known to
+be remarked. Lebrun composed here and fell under the influence of
+Rubens, an influence that pervaded the grandiose art of the day. The
+earliest works of Lebrun, three pieces, were later used to complete a
+set of Rubens' _History of Constantine_. _The Muses_ was a set by
+Lebrun, also composed for the Chateau of Vaux. The charm of this set
+is a matter for admiration even now when, alas, all is destroyed but a
+few fragments.
+
+The disgrace of Foucquet was the last determining cause of the
+establishment of the Gobelins factory under Louis XIV, an act which
+after this brief review of Paris factories (and an allusion to
+sporadic cases outside of Paris) we are in position at last to
+consider. Pursuit of knowledge in regard to the Gobelins factory leads
+us through ways the most flowery and ways the most stormy, through
+sunshine and through the dark, right up to our own times.
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV
+
+ Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]
+
+ [Illustration: THE VILLAGE FETE
+
+ Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] For the facts here cited see E. Muentz, "Histoire de la
+Tapisserie," and Jules Guiffrey, "Les Gobelins."
+
+[15] See Loriquet, "Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE GOBELINS FACTORY, 1662
+
+
+Colbert saw the wisdom of taking direction for the king, Louis XIV, of
+the looms of Foucquet's chateau. Travel being difficult enough to make
+desirable the concentration of points of interest, Colbert transferred
+the looms of Vaux to Paris. To do this he had first to find a habitat,
+and what so suitable as the Hotel des Gobelins, a collection of
+buildings on the edge of Paris by which ran a little brook called the
+Bievre. The Sieur Leleu was then the owner, and the sale of the
+buildings was made on June 6, 1662.
+
+This was the beginning only of the purchase, for Louis XIV added
+adjoining houses for the various uses of the large industries he had
+in mind, for the development of arts and crafts of all sorts, and for
+the lodging of the workers.
+
+The story of the original occupants of the premises is almost too well
+known to recount. The simple tale of the conscientious "dyers in
+scarlet" is told on the marble plaque at the present entry into the
+collection of buildings still standing, still open to visitors. It is
+a tale with a moral, an obvious simple moral with no need of Alice's
+Duchess to point it out, and it smacks strong of the honesty of a
+labour to which we owe so much.
+
+Late in the Fifteenth Century the brothers Gobelin came to the city
+of Paris to follow their trade, which was dyeing, and their ambition,
+which was to produce a scarlet dye like that they had seen flaunting
+in the glowing city of Venice. The trick of the trade in those days
+was to find a water of such quality that dyes took to it kindly. The
+tiny river, or rather brook, called the Bievre, which ran softly down
+towards the Seine had the required qualities, and by its murmuring
+descent, Jean and Philibert pitched the tents of their fortune.
+
+They succeeded, too, so well that we hear of their descendants in
+later centuries as having become gentlemen, not of property only, but
+of cultivation, and far removed from trades or bartering. Their name
+is ever famous, for it tells not only the story of the two original
+dyers, but of their subsequent efforts in weaving, and finally it has
+come to mean the finest modern product of the hand loom. Just as Arras
+gave the name to tapestry in the Fourteenth Century, so the Gobelins
+has given it to the time of Louis XIV, even down to our own day--more
+especially in Europe, where the word tapestry is far less used than
+here.
+
+The tablet now at the Gobelins--let us re-read it, for in some hasty
+visit to the Latin Quarter we may have overlooked it. Translated
+freely it reads, "Jean and Philibert Gobelin, merchant dyers in
+scarlet, who have left their name to this quarter of Paris and to the
+manufacture of tapestries, had here their atelier, on the banks of the
+Bievre, at the end of the Fifteenth Century."
+
+Another inscription takes a great leap in time, skips over the
+centuries when France was not in the lead in this art, and
+recommences with the awakening strength under the wise care of Henri
+IV. It reads:
+
+"April 1601. Marc Comans and Francois de la Planche, Flemish tapestry
+weavers, installed their ateliers on the banks of the Bievre."
+
+"September 1667, Colbert established in the buildings of the Gobelins
+the manufacture of the furniture (_meubles_) of the Crown, under the
+direction of Charles Lebrun."
+
+The tablet omits the date that is fixed in our mind as that of the
+beginning of the modern tapestry industry in France, the year 1662,
+but that is only because it deals with a date of more general
+importance, the time when the Gobelins was made a manufactory of all
+sorts of gracious products for the luxury of palaces and chateaux, not
+tapestries alone, but superb furniture, and metal work, inlay,
+mounting of porcelains and all that goes to furnish the home of
+fortunate men.
+
+In that year of 1667 was instituted the ateliers supported by the
+state, not dependent upon the commercialism of the workers. This made
+possible the development of such men as Boulle with his superb
+furniture, of Riesner with his marquetry, of Caffieri with his marvels
+in metal to decorate all _meubles_, even vases, which were then coming
+from China in their beauty of solid glaze or eccentric ornament.
+
+Here lies the great secret of the success of Louis XIV in these
+matters, with the coffers of the Crown he rewarded the artists above
+the necessity of mere living, and freed each one for the best
+expression of his own especial art. The day of individual financial
+venture was gone. The tapestry masters of other times had both to work
+and to worry. They had to be artists and at the same time commercial
+men, a chimerical combination.
+
+The expense of maintaining a tapestry factory was an incalculable
+burden. A man could not set up a loom, a single one, as an artist sets
+up an easel, and in solitude produce his woven work of art. Other
+matters go to the making of a tapestry than weaving, matters which
+have to do with cartoons for the design, dyes, wools, threads, etc.;
+so that many hands must be employed, and these must all be paid. The
+apprentice system helped much, but even so, the master of the atelier
+was responsible for his finances and must look for a market for his
+goods.
+
+What a relief it was when the king took all this responsibility from
+the shoulders and said to the artists and artisans, "Art for Art's
+sake," or whatever was the equivalent shibboleth of that day. Here was
+comfort assured for the worker, with a housing in the Gobelins, or in
+that big asylum, the Louvre, where an apartment was the reward of
+virtue. And now was a market assured for a man's work, a royal market,
+with the king as its chief, and his favourites following close.
+
+The ateliers scattered about Paris were allied in spirit, were all the
+result of the encouragement of preceding monarchs, but it remained for
+Le Grand Monarque to gather all together and form a state solidarity.
+
+Kings must have credit, even though others do the work. It was the
+labour of the able Colbert to organise this factory. He was in favour
+then. It was after his acuteness had helped in deposing the splendid
+brigand Foucquet, and his power was serving France well, so well that
+he brought about his head the inevitable jealousy which finally threw
+him, too, into unmerited disgrace.
+
+Colbert, then, although a Minister of State, head of the Army of
+France, and a few other things, had the fate of the Gobelins in his
+hand. As the ablest is he who chooses best his aids, Colbert looked
+among his countrymen for the proper director of the newly-organised
+institution. He selected Charles Lebrun.
+
+The very name seems enough, in itself. It is the concrete expression
+of ability, not only as an artist, but as a leader of artists, a
+director, an assembler, a blender. He called to the Gobelins, as
+addition to those already there, the apprentices from La Trinite, the
+weavers from the Faubourg St. Germain, and from the Louvre. He
+established three ateliers of high-warp under Jean Jans, Jean Lefebvre
+and Henri Laurent; also two ateliers of low-warp under Jean Delacroix
+and Jean-Baptiste Mozin. When charged with the decoration of
+Versailles he had under his direction fifty artists of differing
+scopes, which alone would show his power of assembling and leading, of
+blending and ordering. Workers at the Gobelins numbered as many as two
+hundred fifty, and apprentices were legion.
+
+Ten or twelve important artists composed the designs for tapestries,
+yet the mind of Lebrun is seen to dominate all; his genius was their
+inspiration. It was he whose influence pervaded the decorative art of
+the day. More than any others in that grand age he influenced the
+tone of the artistic work. We may say it was the king, we may have
+styles named for the king, but it was Lebrun who made them what they
+were. The spirit of the time was there, monarch and man made that, but
+it was Lebrun who had the talent to express it in art. It was a time
+when France was fully awake, more fully awake than Italy who had, in
+fact, commenced the somnolence of her art; she was strong with that
+brutal force that is recently up from savagery, and she took her
+grandeur seriously.
+
+At least that was the attitude of the king. No lightness, no
+effervescing cynical humour ever disturbed the heavy splendour of his
+pose. And this grand pose of the king, Lebrun expressed in the heavy
+sumptuousness of decoration. The tapestries of that time show the mood
+of the day in subject, in border and in colour. All is superb,
+grandiose.
+
+Rubens, although not of France, dominated Europe with his magnificence
+of style, a style suited to the time, expressing force rather than
+refinement, yet with a splendid decorative value in the art we are
+considering. Flanders looked to him for inspiration, and his lead was
+everywhere followed. His virile work had power to inspire, to transmit
+enthusiasm to others, and thus he was responsible for much of the
+improvement in decorative art, the re-establishment of that art upon
+an intellectual basis. Designs from his hands were full, splendid and
+self-assertive; harmony and proportion were there. A study of the
+_Antony and Cleopatra_ series and of the plates given in this volume
+will establish and verify this.
+
+ [Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]
+
+ [Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]
+
+Lebrun's century was the same as that of Rubens, but the former had
+the fine feeling for art of the Latin, who knows that its first
+province is to please. A comparison between the two men must not be
+carried too far, for Rubens was essentially a painter, attacking the
+field of decoration only with the overflow of imagination, while
+Lebrun's life and talent were wholly directed in the way of
+beautifying palaces and chateaux. Yet Rubens' work gave a fresh
+impulse to tapestry weaving in Brussels while Lebrun was inspiring it
+in France.
+
+Lebrun had, then, to direct the talent and the labour of an army of
+artists and artisans, and to keep them working in harmony. It was no
+mean task, for one artist alone was not left to compose an entire
+picture, but each was taken for his specialty. One artist drew the
+figures, another the animals, another the trees, and another the
+architecture; but it was the director, Lebrun, who composed and
+harmonised the whole. Thus, although the number of tapestries actually
+composed by him is few, it was his great mind that ordered the work of
+others. He was the leader of the orchestra, the others were the
+instruments he controlled.
+
+It was while at Vaux that Lebrun had more time for his own
+composition. He there produced a series called _Les Renommes_,
+masterpieces of pure decorative composition. These were designed as
+portieres for the Chateau of Maincy. They came to be models for the
+Gobelins, and were woven to hang at royal doors, the doors of Foucquet
+being at this time dressed with iron bars.
+
+The Gobelins wove seventy-two sets after this beautiful model which
+had made Lebrun's debut as an artist. Foucquet had given him a more
+pretentious work; it was to complete a suite, the _History of
+Constantine_, after Raphael. Rubens had given a fresh flush of
+popularity to this subject, which again became the mode. The _History
+of Meleager_ was begun at Vaux and finished at the Gobelins. Later,
+Vaux forgotten, or at least a thing of the past, Lebrun's decorative
+genius found expression in the series called _The Months_ or _The
+Royal Residences_, of which there were twelve hangings.
+
+In these last the scheme is the perfection of decoration, with the
+subject well subdued, yet so subtly placed that notwithstanding its
+modesty, the eye promptly seeks it. The castle in the distance, the
+motive holding aloft the sign of the Zodiac, are seen even before the
+splendid columns and the foliage of the middle-ground.
+
+Such a hanging has power to play pretty tricks with the imagination of
+him who gazes upon it. The columns, smooth and solid, declare him at
+once to be in a place of luxury. Beyond the foreground's columns, but
+near enough for touching, are trees to make a pleasant shade, and
+beyond, in the far distance, is the chateau set in fair gardens, even
+the chateau where the lovely Louise de la Valliere held her court
+until conscience drove her to the convent.
+
+The set of most renown, woven under Lebrun's generalship, was that
+splendid advertisement of the king's magnificence known as the
+_History of the King_. Louis demanded above all else that he should
+appear splendidly before men. He was jealous of the magnificence of
+all kings and emperors, whether living or dead. Even Solomon's
+glory was not to typify greater than his. With this end in view, pomp
+was his pleasure, ceremony was his gratification. Add to these an
+insatiable vanity that knows not the disintegrating assaults of a
+sense of humour, and we have a man to be fed on profound adulation.
+
+ [Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. DESIGN BY RUBENS
+
+ Royal Collection, Madrid]
+
+The subjects for the _History of the King_ were chosen from official
+solemnities during the first twelve years of his reign. Lebrun's task,
+into which he threw his whole soul, was to celebrate the power and the
+glory of his master, to show the king in perpetual picture as the
+greatest living personage, and to still his fears with regard to long
+defunct royal rivals. His life as a man was pictured, his marriage,
+his treaties with other nations, and his actions as a soldier in the
+various battles or military conquests. In the latter affairs he had
+not even been present, but poet's license was given where the
+glorification of the king was concerned. The flattery that surrounds a
+king thus gave him reason to think that his persecutions in the
+Palatinate and his constant warfare were greatly to his glory.
+
+It is the tapestry in this set that is called _Visit of Louis XIV to
+the Gobelins_ that interests us strongly, as being delightfully
+pertinent to our subject. The picture shows the king in chary
+indulgence standing just within the court of the Royal Factory, while
+eager masters of arts and crafts strenuously heap before him their
+masterpieces. (Plate facing page 114.)
+
+The borders of these sumptuous hangings are to be enjoyed when the
+original set can be seen, for the borders are Lebrun's special care.
+The three pieces added late in the reign are drawn with different
+borders, and no stronger example of deteriorating change can be given,
+the change in the composition of the border which took place after the
+passing of Lebrun. The pieces in the set of the _Life of the King_
+numbered forty; with the addition of the later ones, forty-three. They
+were repeated many times in the succeeding years, but on low-warp,
+reduced in size, and without the superb decorative border which was
+composed by Lebrun's own hand for the original series.
+
+Francois de la Meulen was Lebrun's able coadjutor in the direction of
+this famous set. Eight artists accustomed to the work were charged
+with the cartoons, but Lebrun headed it all. It is interesting to note
+that the temptation to sport in the fields of pure decoration, led him
+into the personal composition of the border. These borders are the
+very acme of perfection in decoration, full of strength, of grace, and
+of purity. They suggest the classic, yet are full of the warm blood of
+the hour; they are Greek, yet they are French, and they foreshadow the
+centuries of beautiful design which France supplies to the world.
+
+The colouring of these tapestries seems to us strong, but it is not a
+strength of tone that offends, rather it adds force to the subject. The
+charge is made that in this suite the deplorable change had taken place
+which lifted tapestries from their original intent and made of them
+paintings in wool. That change certainly did come later, as we shall
+see and deplore, but at present the colours kept comparatively low
+in number. The proof of this was that only seventy-nine tones were
+discoverable when the Gobelins factory in recent years examined this
+hanging for the purposes of reproducing it.
+
+ [Illustration: LOUIS XIV VISITING THE GOBELINS FACTORY
+
+ Gobelins Tapestry, Epoch Louis XIV]
+
+Lebrun's task in this series seems to us far more simple in point of
+picturesqueness than it did to him, for the affairs of the time were
+those depicted. They were the events of the moment, and the personages
+taking part in them were given in recognisable portraiture. Figure a
+tapestry of to-day depicting the laying of a cornerstone by our
+National President, every one in modern dress, every face a portrait,
+and Lebrun's task appears in a new light. Yet he was able to
+accomplish it in a way which gratified the overfed vanity of Louis and
+which more than gratifies the art lover of to-day.
+
+The set called the _History of Alexander_ is one of Lebrun's famous
+works. In subject it departs from the affairs of the time of the Sun
+King, to portray the Greek Conqueror, to whom Louis liked to be
+compared. For us the classic dress is less piquant than the gorgeous
+toilettes of France in the Seventeenth Century, and the battle of the
+Granicus is less engaging than scenes from the life of Louis XIV. But
+this is a famous set, and paintings of the same may be found in the
+Louvre.
+
+Originally the tapestries were but five, but the larger ones having
+been divided into three each, the number is increased. The Gobelins
+factory wove several sets, and, the model becoming popular, it was
+copied many times in Brussels and elsewhere, often with distressing
+alterations in drawing, in border, and in colour.
+
+There were other suites produced at the Gobelins at this wonderful
+time of co-operation between Colbert, the minister, and Lebrun, the
+artist. Colbert, in his wisdom of state economy, had repaired the
+ravages of the previous ministry, and had the coffers full for the
+government's necessities and the king's indulgences. Well for the
+liberal arts, that he counted these among the matters to be fostered
+in this wonderful time, which rises like a mountain ridge between
+feudal savagery and modern civilisation.
+
+But Colbert, powerful as was his position, had yet to suffer by reason
+of the despotism of the absolute monarch who ruled every one within
+borders of bleeding France. Louis began, before youth had left him,
+the terrible persecution of the people in the name of religion, and
+established also an indulgent left-hand court. The prodigious
+expenditures for these were bound to be liquidated by Colbert.
+Faithful to his master, he produced the money.
+
+The charm of royalty surrounded Louis, he was idealised by a people
+proud of his position as the most magnificent monarch of Europe; but
+Colbert was denounced as a tax collector and a persecutor, yet
+suffered in silence, if he might protect his king. Before he died,
+Louvois had undermined his credit even with the king, and his funeral
+at night, to avoid a mob, was a pathetic fact. France has now
+reinstated him, say modern men--but that is the irony of fate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)
+
+
+Colbert died most inopportunely in 1684 and was succeeded by his
+enemy, and for that matter, the enemy of France, the man of jealousy
+and cruelty, Louvois. He had long hated Colbert for his success,
+counting as an affront to himself Colbert's marvellous establishment
+of a navy which he felt rivalled in importance the army, over which
+the direction was his own.
+
+On finding Colbert's baton in his hand, it was but human to strike
+with it as much as to direct, and one of his blows fell upon the head
+of the Gobelins, Lebrun. Thus history is woven into tapestry. Lebrun
+was not at once deposed; first his magnificent wings were clipped, so
+that his flights into artistic originality were curtailed. This petty
+persecution had a benumbing effect. New models were not encouraged.
+Strangely enough, the scenes that glorified the king were no longer
+reproduced, nor those of antique kings like Alexander, whose greatness
+Louis was supposed to rival.
+
+It is not possible to tell the story of tapestry without telling the
+story of the times, for the lesser acts are but the result of the
+greater. There are matters in the life of Louis XIV that are
+inseparable from our account. These are the associating of his life
+with that of the three women whom he exalted far higher than his
+queen, Marie Therese, the well-known, much-vaunted mesdames, de la
+Valliere, de Montespan and de Maintenon.
+
+Even before the death of Colbert, Louvois, with his army, had
+encouraged the religious persecutions and wars of the king, and
+shortly after, the widow of the poet Scarron became the royal spouse.
+Relentless, indeed, were the persecutions then. It was in the same
+year of the marriage that Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, through
+the hand of the weak Le Tellier, an action which gave Louvois ample
+excuse for depleting the state coffers. Making military expense an
+excuse, he turned his blighting hand toward 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 role, 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 protege 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 Bievre
+rippled by unused; the buildings were silent and deserted. Some of the
+workers were happy enough to be taken in at Beauvais, some returned to
+Flanders, but many were at the miserable necessity of dropping their
+loved professions and of joining the royal troops, for which the
+relentless ambition of the king had such large and terrible use.
+
+The time when the factory remained inactive were the dolorous years
+from 1694 to 1697. It was in the latter year that peace was signed in
+the Holland town of Ryswick, which ended at least one of Louis' bloody
+oppressions, the fierce attacks in the Palatinate.
+
+The place of Colbert was never filled, so far as the Gobelins was
+concerned. Louvois had not its interests in his hard hands, nor had
+his immediate followers in state administrations up to 1708, which
+included Mansard (of the roofs) and the flippity courtesan, the Duc
+d'Antin. But power was later given to Jules Robert de Cotte to raise
+the fallen Gobelins by his own wise direction, assisted by his
+father's political co-operation (1699-1735). Once again can we smile
+in thinking of the factory where the wares of beauty were produced. Of
+course, the artists flocked to the centre, eager to express
+themselves. The one most interesting to us was Claude Audran. Others
+there were who contributed adorable designs and helped build up the
+most exquisite expressions of modern art, but, alas, their modesty was
+such that their names are scarce known in connexion with the art they
+vivified.
+
+The aged Louis was ending his forceful reign in increasing weakness,
+deserted at the finish by all but the rigid de Maintenon; and
+four-year-old Louis, the grandson of the Grand Dauphin, was succeeding
+under the direction of the Regent of Orleans. New monarchs, new
+styles, the rule was; for the newly-crowned must have his waves of
+flattery curling about the foot of the throne. Louis XIV, the Grand
+Monarque, lived to his pose of heavy magnificence even in the
+furnishing and decorating of the apartments where he ruled as king and
+where he lived as man. Sumptuous splendour, expressed in heavy design,
+in deep colouring, with much red and gold, these were the order of the
+day, and best expressed the reign.
+
+But with Philip as regent, and the young king but a baby, a gayer mood
+must creep into the articles of beauty with which man self-indulgently
+decorates his surroundings. Pomp of a heavy sort had no place in the
+regent's heart. He saw life lightly, and liked to foster the belief
+that a man might make of it a pretty play.
+
+Thus, given so good excuse for a new school of decoration, Claude
+Audran snatched up his talented brush and put down his dainty
+inspirations with unfaltering delicacy of touch. He wrote upon his
+canvas poems in life, symphonies in colour, created a whole world of
+tasteful fancy, a world whose entire intent was to please. He left the
+heavy ways of pomp and revelled in a world where roses bloom and
+ribbons flutter, where clouds are strong to support the svelte deity
+upon them, and where the rudest architecture is but an airy trellis.
+
+The classic, the Greek, he never forgot. It was ever his inspiration,
+his alphabet with which he wrote the spirit of his composition, but it
+was a classic thought played upon with the most talented of
+variations. Pure Greek was too cold and chaste for the temper of the
+time in which he lived and worked and of which he was the creature;
+and so his classic foundation was graced with curves, with colour,
+with artful abandon, and all the charming fripperies of one of the
+most exquisite periods of decoration. Gods and goddesses were a
+necessary part of such compositions, and a continual playing among
+amorini, but such deities lived not upon Olympus, nor anywhere outside
+France of the Eighteenth Century. The heavy human forms made popular
+by the inflation of the Seventeenth Century were banished to some dark
+haven reserved for by-gone modes, and these new gods were exquisite
+as fairies while voluptuous as courtesans. They were all caught young
+and set, while still adolescent and slender, in suitable niches of
+delicate surroundings.
+
+The talent of Audran, not content with figures alone, was lavishly
+expended on those ingenious decorative designs which formed the frame
+and setting of the figures, the airy world in which they lived and in
+the borders that confined the whole.
+
+Only a study of tapestries or their photographs can show the radical
+depth of the change from the styles prevailing under the influence of
+Madame de Maintenon to those produced by Audran and his school under
+the regence. The difference in character of the two dominations is the
+very evident cause. It is as though the severe moral pose of de
+Maintenon had suppressed a whole Pandora's box of loves and graces
+who, when the lid was lifted by the Regent, flew, a happy crew, to fix
+themselves in dainty decorative effect, trailing with them their
+complement of accessory flowers, butterflies, clouds and tempered
+grotesques.
+
+Philippe d'Orleans, under the influence of the corrupt cleverness of
+Cardinal du Bois, celebrated the few years of his regency by
+bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the
+time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by
+returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's
+mate--with war as the natural result of that insult.
+
+But he also let artists have their way, and the style that they
+supplied him, shows a talented invention unsurpassed. Audran we will
+place at the top, but only to fix a name, for there was a whole army
+of men composing the tapestry designs that so delighted the people of
+those days and that have gone on thrilling their beholders for two
+hundred years, and which distinguish French designs from all
+others--which give them that indefinable quality of grace and softness
+that we denominate French. Wizards in design were the artists who
+developed it and those who continue it in our own times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)
+
+
+Audran had in his studio Andre 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 _Portieres des Dieux_.
+
+That they were portieres, 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 _Portieres of the Gods_ was, then, a series of eight small
+hangings, four typifying the seasons and four the elements, with an
+appropriate Olympian forming the central point of interest and the
+excuse for an entourage of thrilling and graceful versatility. This
+set has been copied so many times that even the most expert must fail
+in trying to identify the date of reproduction. Two hundred and thirty
+times this set is known to have been reproduced, and such talented
+weavers were given the task as Jans and Lefebvre.
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XV]
+
+In this exquisite period, which might be called the adolescence of
+the style Louis XV, Audran and his collaborators produced another
+marvellous and inspired set of portieres. These were executed for the
+Grand Dauphin, to decorate his room in the chateau at Meudon, and were
+called the _Grotesque Months in Bands_. The most self-sufficient of
+pens would falter at a description of design so exquisite, which is
+arranged in three panels with a deity in each, a composition of
+extraordinary grace above and below them, and a bordering band of
+losenge or diaper, on which is set the royal double L and the
+significant dolphin who gave his name to kings' sons. The exquisite
+art of Audran and of the regence cannot be better seen than in this
+set of tapestries which was woven but once at the royal factory,
+although repeated many times elsewhere with the border altered,
+Audran's being too personal for other chambers than that of the prince
+for whom it was composed. Recently copies have been made without
+border.
+
+The name of the artist, Charles Coypel, must not be overlooked, for it
+was he who composed the celebrated suite of _Don Quixote_.
+Twenty-eight pieces composed the series, and they were drawn with that
+exquisite combination of romantic scenes and fields of pure decorative
+design that characterised the charm of the regence. In the centre of
+each piece (small pieces compared to those of Louis XIV) was a scene
+like a painting representing an incident from the adventure of the
+humorously pathetic Spanish wanderer; and this was surrounded with so
+much of refined decoration as to make it appear but a medallion on
+the whole surface. This set was so important as to be repeated many
+times and occupied the factory of the Gobelins from 1718 to 1794.
+Charles Coypel was but twenty when he composed the first design for
+this suite. Each year thereafter he added a new design, not supplying
+the last one until 1751. But, while all honour is due Coypel, Audran
+and Le Maire and their collaborators must be remembered as having
+composed the borders, the pure decorative work which expresses the
+tender style of transition, the suggestive period of early spring that
+later matured into the fulsome Rococo. America is enriched by five of
+these exquisite pieces through Mr. Morgan's recent purchase.
+
+But while artists were producing purity in art, those in political
+power were, with ever-increasing effect, plunging morals into the mud.
+Philippe, the Regent, died, the corrupt Duke of Bourbon took the place
+of minister, and poor Louis XV was still but thirteen years old, and
+unavoidably influenced by the lives of those around him. Even the
+Gobelins was under the hand of the shallow Duke d'Antin. Yet even when
+the king matured and became himself a power for corruption, the
+artists of the Gobelins reflected only beauty and light. It is to
+their credit.
+
+It is an ungrateful task to pick flaws with a period so firmly
+enthroned in the affections as that of the regence and the early years
+of the reign of Louis XV. The beauties of its pure decoration lead us
+into Elysian fields that are but reluctantly left behind. But the
+designs and tapestry weavers of that time left us two distinct
+classes of production, and to be learned in such matters, the amateur
+contemplates both. This second style is ungrateful because it trains
+us away from art, delicate and ingenious, and plants us before
+enormous woven paintings.
+
+Now it never had been the intention of tapestry to replace painting.
+Whenever it leaned that way a deterioration was evident. It was by the
+lure of this fallacy that Brussels lost her pre-eminence. It was
+through this that the number of tones was increased from the twenty or
+more of Arras to the twenty thousand of the Gobelins. It was through
+this that the true mission of tapestry was lost, which was the mission
+of supplying a soft, undulating lining to the habitat of man, and
+flashes of colour for his pageants.
+
+Under Louis XIV the pictures came thick and fast, as we have seen, but
+in deep-toned, simple colour-scheme. Now, with the De Cottes as
+directors at the Gobelins, and with a new reign begun, more pictures
+were called for.
+
+The splendid _History of the King_ of Louis XIV could not be
+forgotten; the history of his successor must be similarly represented,
+and what could this be but a series of woven paintings. The flower of
+the time was an exquisitely complicated decoration on a small scale.
+The larger expression was not spontaneous.
+
+Louis XV, poor boy, was not old enough to have had many events outside
+the nursery, so it took imagination--perhaps that of the elegant
+profligate, Duke d'Antin--to suggest an occasion of appropriate
+splendour and significance. The official reception of the Turkish
+ambassador in 1721 was the subject chosen, and under the direction of
+Charles Parrocel became a superb work, full of court magnificence of
+the day and a valuable portrayal to us of the boyhood of the king.
+
+The same type of big picture was continued in the series of _Hunts of
+Louis XV_, lovely forest scenes wherein much unsportsmanlike elegance
+displays itself in the persons of noble courtiers. The Duc d'Antin
+favoured these and they were reproduced until 1745.
+
+It is probable that the Bible fell into neglect in those days, too
+heavy a volume for pointed, perfumed fingers accustomed to no books at
+all. Bossuet, Voltaire, were they not obliged to set to the sonorous
+music of their voices the reforming and satirical attacks on manners
+and morals of the aristocrats at a time when books lay all unread? But
+at the Gobelins ateliers the Bible, wiped clean of dust, was much
+consulted for inspiration in cartoons. Charles Coypel dipped into the
+Old Testament, and Jouvenet into the New, with the result of several
+suites of tapestries of great elegance--all of which might much better
+have been painted on canvas and framed.
+
+Charles Coypel, the talented member of a talented family of painters,
+also made popular the heroine _Armide_, who seemed almost to come of
+the Bible, since Tasso had set her in his Christian _Jerusalem
+Delivered_. The seductive palace and entrancing gardens where Renaud
+was kept a prisoner, gave opportunity for fine drawing in this set.
+
+ [Illustration: HUNTS OF LOUIS XV
+
+ Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry]
+
+ [Illustration: ESTHER AND AHASUERUS SERIES
+
+ Gobelins, about 1730. Cartoon by J. F. de Troy; G. Audran, weaver]
+
+The Iliad of Homer came in for its share of consideration at the hands
+of Antoine and Charles Coypel, who made of it a set of five scenes. It
+was Romanelli, the Italian, who painted a similar set, a hundred
+years before, for Cardinal Barberini, which set came to America in the
+Ffoulke collection. After the death, in 1730, of the Duke d'Antin,
+that interesting son of Madame de Montespan, several directors had the
+management of the Gobelins in hand, the Count of Vignory and the Count
+of Angivillier being the most important prior to the Revolution. These
+were men who held the purse-strings of the state, and could thereby
+foster or crush a state institution, but the direction of the Gobelins
+itself, as a factory, was in the hands of architects, beginning with
+the able De Cotte. As the factory had many ateliers, these were each
+directed by painters, among whom appear such interesting men of talent
+as Oudry, Boucher, Halle.
+
+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 Francois de Troy, was sent to the weavers in 1737,
+and the last piece, which was painted in Rome, was finished in 1742.
+This set shows as ably as any can, the magnificent style of production
+of the period. It had from the beginning an immense popularity and was
+copied many times. Even now it is a favourite subject for those whose
+perverted taste leads them into the dubious art of copying tapestry in
+paints on cloth.
+
+The serious accusation against this set, which in composition seems
+much like the tableaux in grand opera, is that it invades the art of
+painting. And that is the fault of woven art at that period. The
+decline in tapestry in Paris began when both weavers and painters
+struggled for the same results, the weavers quite forgetting the
+strength and beauty that were peculiar to their art alone.
+
+This fault cannot be laid to the weavers only, who numbered such men
+as Neilson the able Scot, and Cozette, who, with wondrous touch, wove
+the set of _Don Quixote_; nor were the artists at fault, for they
+included such men as Audran and Boucher. No, it was the director who
+blighted and subverted talent, and the vitiated public taste that
+shifted restlessly and demanded novelty. The novelty that came in
+large hangings was a suppressing of the delicate subjects that delight
+the imagination by their playful grace, their association of human
+life with all that is gaily exquisite. The mode was for leaving the
+land of idealised mythology, for discarding the flowers, the scrolls,
+the happy loves and charming crew that lived among them, and for
+plunging into Roman history, real and ugly, enwrapped in drapings too
+full, cumbered with forced accessory, or into such mythology as is
+represented in _Cupid and Psyche_. (Plate facing page 132.)
+
+The _History of Esther_ illustrates the loss of imagination sustained
+by the border which had come to be a mere woven imitation, in shades
+of brown and yellow, of a carved and gilded, wooden frame. At the
+close of the reign of Louis XV, borders were frankly abandoned
+altogether. Compare this state of things with the days when Audran and
+Coypel were producing the sets of _The Seasons_, _The Months_, and
+_Don Quixote_. It is aridness compared to talented invention.
+
+ [Illustration: CUPID AND PSYCHE
+
+ Gobelins Tapestry. Eighteenth Century. Design by Coypel]
+
+ [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE OF RUSSIA
+
+ Gobelins under Louis XVI.]
+
+The top note of the imitation of painting was struck when the Gobelins
+set the task of becoming a portrait maker. (Plate facing page 133.)
+The work was done, it was bound to be, as royalty backed the demand.
+Portraits were woven of Louis XV (to be seen now at Versailles), and
+his queen, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and others less well
+known. A better scheme for limiting the talent of the weaver could not
+have been suggested by his most ingenious enemy. He was a man of
+talent or his art had not reached so high, and as such must be
+untrammelled; but here was given him a work where personal discretion
+was not allowed, where he must copy tone for tone, shade by shade, the
+myriad indefinite blendings of the brush.
+
+It is this practice, pursued to its end, that has made of the tapestry
+weaver a mere part of a machine, and tapestry-making a lost art, to
+remain in obscurity until weavers return to the time before the French
+decadence.
+
+The temper of those who hold in their hands the direction of the
+people, these are the determining causes of the products of that age.
+If d'Angivillier was responsible for displacing a transcendent art
+with a false one, if he routed a dainty mythology and its accessories
+with the heavy effort and paraphernalia of the Romans, on whom shall
+we place the entirely supportable responsibility of diminishing
+tapestries from noble draperies down to mere furniture coverings?
+
+The result came happily, with much fluttering of fans, dropping of
+handkerchiefs, with powder, patches, intrigues, naughty sports, and a
+general necessity for a gay company to divide itself into groups of
+four or two--a lady and a cavalier, forsooth--the inevitable man and
+maid. In the time of the preceding king, Louis XIV, the court lived in
+masses. Life was a pageant, a grand one, moving in slow dignity of
+gorgeous crowds, but a pageant on which beat the fierce light of a
+throne jealous of its grandeur. No chance was here for sweet escape
+and no chance for light communing.
+
+But all that saw a change. The needs of the lighter court and the
+lighter people, were for reminders that life is a merry dance in which
+partners change often, and sitting-out a figure with one of them is
+part of the game.
+
+Perhaps the huge apartments were not to the taste of Regent Philippe,
+and certainly they were not convenient to the life of the king when he
+came to man's estate. So, down came the ceiling's height, and closer
+drew the walls, until the model of the Petit Trianon was reached and
+considered the ideal--if that were not indeed the miniature Swiss
+Cottage.
+
+What place had an acre of tapestry in these little rooms? How could
+yards of undulating colour hang over walls that were already overlaid
+with the most exquisite low relief in wood that has ever been carved
+this side of the Renaissance in Italy? No place for it whatever. So,
+out with it--the fashions have changed.
+
+But there was the furniture. That, too, was smaller than hitherto. But
+this was the day of artists skilled in small design, and they must
+fill the need.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)
+
+
+And so it came about that tapestry fell from the walls, shrunk like a
+pricked balloon and landed in miniature on chairs, sofas and screens.
+
+How felt the artists about this domesticating of their art? We are not
+told of the wry face they made when, with ideals in their souls, they
+were set to compose chair-seats for the Pompadour. Her preference was
+for Boucher. Perhaps his revenge showed itself by treating the
+bourgeoise courtisane to a bit of coarseness now and then, slyly hid
+in dainties.
+
+The artist, Louis Tessier, appeased himself by composing for furniture
+a design of simple bouquets of flowers thrown on a damask background;
+but, with such surety of hand, such elegance, are these ornaments
+designed and composed, that he who but runs past them must feel the
+power of their exquisite beauty.
+
+In this manufacture of small pieces the Gobelins factory unhappily put
+itself on the same footing as Beauvais and much confusion of the
+products has since resulted. The dignity of the art was lowered when
+the size and purpose of tapestries were reduced to mere furniture
+coverings. The age of Louis XV, looked at decoratively, was an age of
+miniature, and the reign that followed was the same. When small
+chambers came into vogue, furniture diminished to suit them, and not
+only were walls too small for tapestries to hang on, but chairs, sofas
+and screens offered less space than ever before for woven designs, now
+preciously fine in quality and minutiae.
+
+Tapestry weaving now entered the region of fancy-work for the
+drawing-room's idle hour, and we see even the king himself, lounging
+idly among his favourite companions, working at a tiny loom, his
+latest pretty toy. Compare this trifling with the attitude of Henri IV
+and Louis XIV toward tapestry weaving, and we have the situation in a
+nutshell.
+
+Louis XV passed from the scene, likewise the charming bits of
+immorality who danced through his reign. However much we may
+disapprove their manner of life, we are ever glad that their taste
+sanctioned--more than that--urged, the production of a decorative
+style almost unsurpassed. To the artists belong the glory, but times
+were such that an artist must die of suppression if those in power
+refuse to patronise his art. So we are glad that Antoinette Poisson
+appreciated art, and that Jeanne Verbernier made of it a serious
+consideration, for, what was liked by La Pompadour and Du Barry must
+needs be favoured by the king.
+
+When Louis XVI came to the throne, the return to antiquity for
+inspiration had already begun, but did not fully develop until later
+on, when David became court painter under Napoleon. Yet the tonic note
+of decoration was classic. Designs were still small and details were
+from Greek inspiration. As tapestries were still but furniture
+coverings, this was not to be regretted, for nothing could be
+better suited to small spaces, nor could drawing be more exquisitely
+pure and chaste than when copied from Greek detail.
+
+ [Illustration: CHAIR OF TAPESTRY. STYLE OF LOUIS XV]
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY (DETAIL) CRAMOISEE. 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 debut 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 Berthelemy, depicting an event of the Fourteenth Century. This is
+what the temper of the times induced the Commission--among whom were
+artists too--to say: "Subject regarded as contrary to republican
+ideas; the pardon accorded to the people of Calais was given by a
+tyrant through the tears and supplications of the queen and child of a
+despot. Rejected. In consequence the tapestry will be arrested in its
+execution."
+
+The models allowed in this benumbing period were those of hunting
+scenes, and antique groups such as the _Muses_, or scenes from the
+life of Achilles.
+
+A vicious system of pay was added to the vicious system of art
+restriction. And so fell the Gobelins, to revive in such small manner
+as was accorded it in the Nineteenth Century.
+
+Its great work was done. It had lifted up an art which through
+inflation or barrenness Brussels had let train on the ground like a
+fallen flag, and it had given to France the glory of acquiring the
+highest period of perfection.
+
+To France came the inspiration of gathering the industry under the
+paternal care of the government, of relieving it from the exigencies
+of private enterprise which must of necessity fluctuate, of keeping
+the art in dignified prosperity, and of devoting to its uses the
+highest talent of both art and industry.
+
+The Revolution and the Directory both hesitated to kill an institution
+that had brought such glory to France, that had placed her above all
+the world in tapestry producing. But what deliberate intent did not
+accomplish, came near being a fact through scant rations. Operators at
+the Gobelins were irregularly paid, and the public purse found onerous
+the burden of support.
+
+But with the coming of Napoleon the personal note was struck again. A
+man was at the head, a man whose ambition invaded even the field of
+decoration. The Emperor would not be in the least degree inferior in
+splendour to the most magnificent of the hereditary kings of France.
+The Gobelins had been their glory, it should add to his.
+
+Louis David was the painter of the court, he whose head was ever
+turned over his shoulder toward ancient Greece and Rome, who not only
+preferred that source of inspiration, but who realised the flattery
+implied to the Emperor by using the designs of the countries he had
+conquered. It was a graceful reminder of the trophies of war.
+
+So David not only painted Josephine as a lady of Pompeii elongated on
+a Greek lounge, but he set the classic style for the Gobelins factory
+when Napoleon gave to the looms his imperial patronage. It was David
+who had found favour with Revolutionary France by his untiring efforts
+to produce a style differing fundamentally from the style of kings,
+when kings and their ways were unpopular. Technical exactness, with
+classic motives, characterises his decorative work for the Gobelins.
+
+The Emperor was hot for throne-room fittings that spoke only of
+himself and of the empire he had built. David made the designs,
+beautiful, chaste, as his invention ever was, and dotted them with the
+inevitable bees and eagles. Percier, the artist, helped with the
+painting, but the throne itself was David's and shows his talent in
+the floating Victory of the back and the conventionalised wreaths of
+the seat. The whole set, important enough to mention, embraced eight
+arm chairs and six smaller ones, besides two dozen classic seats of a
+kingly pattern, and screens for fire and draughts, all with a red
+background on which was woven in gold the pattern of wreaths and
+branches of laurel and oak.
+
+The Emperor made the Gobelins his especial care. He committed it to
+the discretion of no one, but was himself the director, and allowed no
+loom to set up its patterns unsanctioned by his order. Even his
+campaigns left this order operative. Is it to his credit as a genius,
+or his discredit as a tyrant, that the chiefs of the Gobelins had to
+follow him almost into battle to get permission to weave a new
+hanging?
+
+Portraits were woven--but let us not dwell on that. That portraits
+were woven at the Gobelins (portraits as such, not the resemblance of
+one figure out of a mass to some great personage) brings ever a sigh
+of regret. It is like the evidence of senility in some grand statesman
+who has outlived his vigour. It is like the portrait of your friend
+done in butter, or the White House at Washington done in a paste of
+destroyed banknotes. In other words, there is no excuse for it while
+paint and canvas exist.
+
+Napoleon's own portrait was made in full length twice, and in bust ten
+times. The Empress was pictured at full length and in bust, and the
+young King of Rome came in for one portrait. The summit of bad art
+seemed reached when it was proposed to copy in wool a painting of
+portrait busts, carved in marble. This work was happily unfinished
+when the empire gave place to the next form of government.
+
+It is unthinkable that Napoleon would not want his reign glorified in
+manner like to that of hereditary kings with pictured episodes, the
+conquests of his life, dramatic, superb. David the court painter,
+supplied his canvas _Napoleon Crossing the Alps_, and others followed.
+Copying paintings was the order at the Gobelins, remember, and that
+kind of work was done with infinite skill. Numbers of grand scenes
+were planned, some set up on the looms, but the great part were not
+done at all. Napoleon's triumph was full but brief; the years of his
+reign were few. He interrupted work on large hangings by his
+impatience to have the throne-room furniture ready for the reception
+of Europe's kings and ambassadors. And when the time came that another
+man received in that room, the big series of hangings which were to
+picture his reign, even as the _Life of the King_ pictured that of
+Louis XIV, were scarcely begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BEAUVAIS
+
+
+Another name to conjure with, after Gobelins is Beauvais. In general
+it means to us squares of beautiful foliage,--foliage graceful,
+acceptably coloured, and of a pre-Raphaelite neatness. But it is not
+limited to that class of work, nor yet to the chair-coverings for
+which the factory of Beauvais is so justly celebrated. This factory
+has woven even the magnificent series of Raphael, the designs without
+which the Sistine Chapel was considered incomplete. But this is
+anticipating, and an inquiry into how these things came about is a
+pleasure too great to miss.
+
+The factory at Beauvais was founded by Colbert, under Louis XIV, in
+1664. In that respect it resembles the Gobelins factory, but there
+existed an enormous difference which had to do with the entire fate of
+the enterprise. The Gobelins was founded for the king; Beauvais was
+founded for commerce. The Gobelins was royally conceived as a source
+of supply for palaces and chateaux of royalty and royalty's friends.
+Beauvais was intended to supply with tapestry any persons who cared to
+buy them, to the end that profit (if profit there were) should be to
+the good of the country.
+
+So the factory was founded at Beauvais as being convenient to Paris,
+although it was not known as a place where the industry had
+flourished hitherto, notwithstanding the old tapestries still in the
+cathedral which are accorded a local origin in the first half of the
+Sixteenth Century. And the king granted it letters patent, and large
+sums of money to start the enterprise, which had to be given a
+building, and men to manage it and to work therein, and materials to
+work with, in fact, the duplicate in less degree of the appropriations
+for the Gobelins, except that the furniture department was omitted.
+
+The idea was practically the same as that in the mind of the paternal
+Henri IV when he united the scattered factories with royal interest
+and patronage, but with always the large end in view of benefiting his
+people financially, as well as in the province of art. With our modern
+republican views we can criticise the disinterestedness of a monarch
+who maintains a factory at enormous public expense exclusively for the
+indulgence of kings.
+
+And yet, it seems impossible to make both an artistic and commercial
+success of a tapestry factory--at least this is the conclusion to
+which one is forced in a study of the Beauvais factory.
+
+Louis Hinart was the man appointed to construct the buildings and to
+stock them, and the royal appropriation therefor, was 60,000 livres.
+He was to engage a hundred workers for the first year, more to be
+added; and special prizes were temptingly offered for workmen coming
+from other countries, and to the contractor for each tapestry sold for
+exportation.
+
+ [Illustration: HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS
+
+ Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent]
+
+ [Illustration: HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTREES
+
+ 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 Behagle. As most of the workers were
+Flemish, this was probably not disagreeable to them.
+
+Behagle, 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, Behagle 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 Behagle 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 Behagle had not his capability. After
+his twenty years of prosperity the factory languished under the
+direction of his widow and sons, and that of the brothers Filleul, and
+Micou, up to the time when the Regent Philip was fumbling the reigns
+of government, and when everything but scepticism and Les Precieuses
+was sinking into feeble disintegration. The factory became a financial
+failure from which the regent had not power to lift it.
+
+Again we see the name of the son of Madame de Montespan, the Duke
+d'Antin, who was at this time director of buildings for the crown and
+in this capacity had the power of choosing the directors of both the
+Gobelins and Beauvais. The place of director at Beauvais was empty;
+d'Antin must have the credit of filling it wisely with the painter
+Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we
+are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high
+place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais
+from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to its most brilliant
+flowering.
+
+ [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
+
+ [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI
+
+ Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]
+
+It is only as the history of a factory touches us that we are
+interested in its changes. The result of Oudry's direction is one that
+we see so frequently in a small way that it is agreeable to recognise
+its cause. Oudry was pre-eminently a painter of animals. Add to this
+the tendency to draw cartoons in suites and the demand for furniture
+coverings, and at once we have the _raison d'etre_ 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 Moliere's
+comedies, which at least show him master of the human figure as well
+as of the lines of animals.
+
+We are now, it must be remembered, in the time of Louis XV, the time
+of beautiful gaiety and light sarcasm, of epigramme, and miniature,
+and of all that declared itself _multum in parvo_. Therefore it was
+that even wall-hangings were reduced in size and polished, so to
+speak, to a perfection most admirable. Paintings were copied, actually
+copied, on the looms, but however much the fact may be deplored that
+tapestry had wandered far from its original days of grand simplicity,
+it were unjust not to recognise the exquisite perfection of the manner
+in vogue in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, and of the
+perfection of the craftsman.
+
+The pieces of Beauvais that are accessible to us are indeed charming
+to live with, especially the verdures of Oudry on which he left the
+trace of his talent, never omitting the characteristic fox or dog, or
+ducks, or pheasants that give vital interest to a peep into the
+enchanted woodland. At the same time the factory of Aubusson, and
+looms in Flanders, were throwing upon the market a quantity of
+verdures, of which the amateur must beware. Oudry verdures or outdoor
+scenes are but few in model, and beautifully woven.
+
+ [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV]
+
+In the prosperity of Beauvais, ambition carried Oudry into a gay
+rivalry with the Gobelins. Charles Coypel had gained fame by a set of
+hangings in which scenes were taken from Don Quixote. Oudry asked
+himself why he should not rival them at Beauvais. The result was a
+similar series, but composed by Charles Natoire, the artist who had
+drawn a set of _Antony and Cleopatra_ for the Gobelins. The same idea
+extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well
+as to the _Fables_. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us
+nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand
+of the past accords to the seeker after the ancient.
+
+Exquisite indeed are the hangings by the great interpreter of the
+spirit of his time, Francois Boucher. His designs broke from the limit
+of the Gobelins, and were woven at Beauvais with the care and skill
+required for proper interpretation of his land of mythology. Such
+flushed skies of light, such clean, soft trees waving against them and
+such human elegance and beauty grouped beneath, have seldom been
+reproduced in tapestry, and almost make one wonder if, after all, the
+weavers of the Eighteenth Century were not right in copying a finished
+painting rather than in interpreting a decorative cartoon. But such
+thoughts border on heresy and schism; away with them.
+
+Casanova, Leprince, and a host of others are tacked onto the list of
+artists who painted models. We can no longer call them cartoons, so
+changed is the mode for Beauvais. But Oudry and Boucher are
+pre-eminent.
+
+To the former, who was director as well as artist, is attributed the
+fame of the factory and the resulting commercial success. The factory
+had a house for selling its wares under the very nose of the Gobelins;
+had another in the enemy's country, Leipzig. And kings were the
+patrons of these, as we know through the royal collections in Italy,
+and Stockholm, where the King of Sweden was an important collector.
+
+It was in 1755 that Beauvais found itself without the support of its
+leaders. Both Oudry and his partner in business matters, Besnier, had
+died. And we are well on toward the time when kingly support was a
+feeble and uncertain quantity. The factory lacked the inspiration and
+patronage to continue its importance.
+
+In a few years more fell the blight of the Revolution. The factory was
+closed.
+
+It re-opened again under new conditions, but its brilliant period was
+past. Will the conditions recur that can again elevate to its former
+state of perfection this factory that has given such keen delight,
+whose ancient works are so prized by the amateur? It has given us
+thrilling examples of the highly developed taste of tapestry weaving
+of the Eighteenth Century, it has left us lovable designs in
+miniature. We repulse the thought that these things are all of the
+past. The factory still lives. Will not the Twentieth Century see a
+restoration of its former prestige?
+
+If it were only for the reproduction of the sets of furniture of the
+style known as Louis XVI, the Beauvais loom would have sufficient
+reason for existing at the present day. Scenes from Don Quixote,
+however, and the pictured fables of La Fontaine which we see on old
+chairs, seem to need age to ripen them. These sets, when made new,
+shown in all the freshness and unsoiled colour, and unworn wool, and
+unfaded silk do not give pleasure.
+
+ [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY]
+
+ [Illustration: CHAIR COVERING
+
+ Beauvais Tapestry. First Empire]
+
+But the familiar garlands and scrolls adapted from the Greek, that
+were woven for the court of Marie Antoinette, these are ever old and
+ever new, like all things vital. On a background of solid colour, pale
+and tawny, is curved the foliated scroll to reach the length of a
+sofa, and with this is associated garlands or sprays of flowers that
+any flower-lover would worship. Nothing more graceful nor more
+tasteful could be conceived, and by such work is the Beauvais factory
+best known, and on such lines might it well continue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AUBUSSON
+
+
+Perhaps because of certain old and elegant carpets lying under-foot in
+the glow and shadows of old drawing-rooms that we love, the name of
+Aubusson is one of interesting meaning. And yet history of tapestry
+weaving at Aubusson lacks the importance that gilds the Gobelins and
+Beauvais.
+
+It just escaped that _sine qua non_, the dower of a king's favour. But
+let us be chronological, and not anticipate.
+
+If antiquity is the thing, Aubusson claims it. There is in the town
+this interesting tradition that when the invincible Charles Martel
+beat the enemies of Christianity and hammered out the word peace with
+his sword-blade, a lot of the subdued Saracens from Spain remained in
+the neighbourhood. It was at Poitiers in 732 that the final blow was
+given to show the hordes of North Africa that while a part of Spain
+might be theirs, they must stop below the Pyrenees.
+
+When swords are put by, the empty hand turns to its accustomed crafts
+of peace. Poitiers is a weary journey from Africa if the land ways are
+hostile, and all to be traversed afoot. Rather than return, the
+conquered Saracens stayed, so runs the legend of Aubusson, and quite
+naturally fell into their home-craft of weaving. They had a pretty
+gift indeed to bestow, for at that time, as in ages before, the
+world's best fabrics came from the luxurious East. And so the
+Saracens, defeated at Poitiers by Charles Martel, wandered to nearby
+Aubusson, wove their cloths and gave the town the chance to set its
+earliest looms at a date far back in the past.
+
+The centuries went on, however, without much left in the way of
+history-fabric or woven fabric until we approach the time when
+tapestry-history begins all over France, like sparse flowers glowing
+here and there in the early spring wood.
+
+When the Great Louis, with Colbert at his sumptuous side, was by way
+of patronising magnificently those arts which contributed to his own
+splendour, he set his all-seeing eye upon Aubusson, and thought to
+make it a royal factory.
+
+He was far from establishing it--that was more than accomplished
+already, not so much by the legendary Saracens as by the busy populace
+who had as early as 1637 as many as two thousand workers. Going back a
+little farther we find a record of four tapestries woven there for
+Rheims.
+
+It was, perhaps, this very prosperity, this ability to stand alone
+that made Louis and Colbert think it worth while to patronise the
+works at Aubusson. But it must be said that at this time (1664) the
+factory was deteriorating. Tapestry works are as sensitive as the
+veriest exotic, and without the proper conditions fail and fade. The
+wrong matter here was primarily the cartoons, which were of the
+poorest. No artist controlled them, and the workers strayed far from
+the copy set long before. Added to that, the wool was of coarse,
+harsh quality and the dyeing was badly done. All three faults
+remediable, thought the two chief forces in the kingdom.
+
+So Louis XIV announced to the sixteen hundred weavers of Aubusson that
+he would give their works the conspicuous privilege of taking on the
+name of the Royal Manufactory at Aubusson. And, moreover, he declared
+his wish to send them an artist to draw worthily, and a master of the
+important craft of dyeing fast and lovely colours.
+
+Colbert drew up a series of articles and stipulations, long papers of
+rules and restrictions which were considered a necessary part of fine
+tapestry weaving. These papers are tiresome to read--the constitution
+of many a nation or a state is far less verbose. They give the
+impression that the craft of tapestry weaving is beset with every sort
+of small deceit, so protection must be the arrangement between master
+and worker, and between the factory and the great outside world, lying
+in wait to tear with avaricious claws any fabric, woven or written,
+that this document leaves unprotected. You get, too, the impression
+that weavers took themselves a little too seriously. There must have
+been other arts and crafts in the world than theirs, but if so these
+men of long documents ignored it.
+
+Aubusson, then, took heart at the encouragement of the king and his
+prime minister, enjoyed their fine new title to flaunt before the
+world which lacked it, pored over their new Articles of Faith, and
+awaited the new artist and the new alchemist of colours.
+
+But Louis XIV was a busy man, and Paris presented enough activity to
+consume all his hours but the scant group he allowed himself for
+sleep. So Aubusson was forgot. Wars and pleasures both ravaged the
+royal purse, and no money was left for indulgences to a tapestry
+factory lying leagues distant from Paris and the satisfying Gobelins.
+
+Then came the agitation of religious conflict during which Louis XIV
+was persuaded, coerced, nagged into the condition of mind which made
+him put pen to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the document
+that is ever playing about the fortunes of tapestry weaving. This was
+in 1685. Aubusson had struggled along on hope for twenty years, under
+its epithet Royal, but now it had to lose its best workers to the
+number of two hundred. The Protestants had ever been among the best
+workers in Louis' kingdom, and by his prejudice he lost them. Germany
+received some of the fugitives, notably, Pierre Mercier.
+
+Near Aubusson were Felletin and Bellegarde, the three towns forming
+the little group of factories of La Marche. When the king's act
+brought disaster to Aubusson, her two neighbours suffered equally.
+
+There was also another reason for a sagging of prosperity. Beauvais
+was rapidly gaining in size and importance under the patronage of the
+king and the wise rule of its administrators. Beauvais with her
+high- and low-warp looms, her artists from Paris and her privilege to
+sell in the open market, lured from Aubusson the patronage that might
+have kept her strong.
+
+Thus things went on to the end of the Seventeenth Century and the
+first quarter of the Eighteenth. Then in 1731 came deliverers in the
+persons of the painters, Jean Joseph du Mons and Pierre de Montezert,
+and an able dyer who aided them. Prosperity began anew. Not the
+prosperity of the first half of the Seventeenth Century, which was its
+best period, but a strong, healthy productiveness which has lasted
+ever since. Two articles of faith it adheres to--that the looms shall
+be invariably low, and that the threads of the warp shall be of wool
+and wool only.
+
+Large quantities of strong-colour verdures from La Marche and notably
+from Aubusson are offered to the buyer throughout France. They are as
+easily adapted to the wood panels of a modern dining-room as is stuff
+by the yard, the pattern being merely a mass of trees divisible almost
+anywhere. The colour scheme is often worked out in blues instead of
+greens; a narrow border is on undisturbed pieces, and the reverse of
+the tapestry is as full of loose threads as the back of a cashmere
+rug. For the most part these fragments are the work of the Eighteenth
+Century. Older ones, with warmer colours introduced bring much higher
+prices.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+SAVONNERIE
+
+
+Those who hold by the letter, leave out the velvety product of La
+Savonnerie from the aristocratic society of hangings woven in the
+classic stitch of the Gobelins. They have reason. Yet, because the
+weave is one we often see in galleries, also on furniture both old and
+new, it is as well not to ignore its productions in lofty silence.
+
+Besides, it is rather interesting, this little branch of an exotic
+industry that tried to run along beside the greater and more artistic.
+It never has tried to be much higher than a man's feet, has been
+content for the most part to soften and brighten floors that before
+its coming were left in the cold bareness of tile or parquet. It crept
+up to the backs and seats of chairs, and into panelled screens a
+little later on, but never has it had much vogue on the walls.
+
+When we go back to its beginnings we come flat against the Far East,
+as is usual. The history of the fabric which is woven with a pile like
+that of heavy wool velvet, and which is called Savonnerie, runs
+parallel to the long story of tapestry proper, but to make its scant
+details one short concrete chronicle it is best to put them all
+together.
+
+From the East, then, came the idea of weaving in that style of which
+only the people of the East were masters. Oriental rugs as such were
+not attempted in either colour or design, but one of the rug stitches
+was copied.
+
+We have to run back to the time of Henri IV, a pleasing time to turn
+to with its demonstration of how much a powerful king loved the
+welfare of his people. When he interested himself in tapestry, one of
+the three important existing factories was stationed in the Louvre.
+This was primarily for the hangings properly called tapestry, but in
+the same place were looms for the production of work "after the
+fashion of Turkey." Sometimes it was called work of "long wool"
+(_longue laine_) and sometimes also "_a la facon de Perse, ou du
+Levant_," as well as "of the fashion of Turkey,"--all names giving
+credit to the East from whence the stitch came by means of crusades,
+invasions and other storied movements of the people of a dim past.
+
+How long ago this stitch came, is as uncertain as most things in the
+Middle Ages. We know how persistently the cultivated venturesome East
+overflowed Eastern Europe, and how religious Europe thrust itself into
+the East, and on these broad bases we plant our imaginings.
+
+Away back in Burgundian times there are traces of the use of this
+velvet stitch. Tapestries of Germany also woven in the Fifteenth
+Century, use this stitch to heighten the effect of details.
+
+But the formation of an actual industry properly set down in history
+and dignified by the name of its directors, comes in the very first
+years of the Seventeenth Century when Henri IV of France was living up
+to his high ideals.
+
+Pierre Dupont is the name to remember in this connexion. He is styled
+the inventor of the velvet pile in tapestry, but it were better to
+call him the adaptor. The name of Savonnerie came from the building in
+which the first looms were set up, an old soap factory, and thus the
+velvet pile bears the misnomer of the Savonnerie.
+
+Pierre Dupont (whose book "La Stromaturgie" might be consulted by the
+book-lover) was one of the enthusiasts included by Henri IV along with
+the best high-and low-warp masters of France at that time. Being
+placed under royal patronage, the Savonnerie style of weaving acquired
+a dignity which it has ever had trouble in retaining for the simple
+reason that the legitimate place for its products seems to be the
+floor.
+
+The Gobelins factory finally absorbed the Savonnerie, but that was
+after it had been established in the Louvre. Pierre Dupont who was
+director of tapestry works under Henri IV even goes so far as to vaunt
+the works of French production over those of "La Turquie." The taste
+of the day was doubtless far better pleased with the French colour and
+drawing than with the designs of the East.
+
+At any rate, this pretty wool velvet found such favour with kings that
+even Louis XIV encouraged its continuance, gathering it under the roof
+of the all-embracing Gobelins.
+
+A large royal order embraced ninety-two pieces, intended to cover the
+Grand Galerie of the Louvre. Many of these pieces are preserved to-day
+and are conserved by the State.
+
+If Savonnerie has never produced much that is noteworthy in the line
+of art, at least it has given us many pretty bits of an endearing
+softness, bits which cover a chair or panel a screen, to the delight
+of both eye and touch. The softness of the weave makes it especially
+appropriate to furniture of the age of luxurious interiors which is
+represented by the styles of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
+
+Portraits in this style of weave were executed at a time when
+portraits were considered improved by translation into wool, but
+except as curiosities they are scarcely successful. An example hangs
+in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Plate facing page 162.)
+In the Gobelins factory of to-day are four looms for the manufacture
+of Savonnerie.
+
+ [Illustration: SAVONNERIE. PORTRAIT SUPPOSABLY OF LOUIS XV
+
+ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
+
+ [Illustration: VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
+
+ Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+MORTLAKE
+
+1619-1703
+
+
+The three great epochs of tapestry weaving, with their three
+localities which are roughly classed as Arras in the Fifteenth
+Century, Brussels in the Sixteenth Century, and Paris in the
+Seventeenth, had, as a matter of course, many tributary looms. It is
+not supposable that a craft so simple, when it is limited to
+unambitious productions, should not be followed by hundreds of modest
+people whose highest wish was to earn a living by providing the market
+with what was then considered as much a necessity as chairs and
+tables.
+
+To take a little retrospective journey through Europe and linger among
+these obscurer weavers would be delectable pastime for the leisurely,
+and for the enthusiast. But we are all more or less in a hurry, and
+incline toward a courier who will point out the important spots
+without having to hunt for them. Artois had not only Arras; Flanders
+had not only Brussels; France had not only the State ateliers of Paris
+and Beauvais; but all these countries had smaller centres of
+production. The tapestries from some of these we are able to identify,
+even to weave a little history about them. These products are
+recognisable through much study of marks and details and much digging
+in learned foreign books, where careful records are kept--a congenial
+business for the antiquary.
+
+But even though we may neglect in the main the lesser factories, there
+is one great development which must have full notice. It is the
+important English venture known as Mortlake.
+
+Sully, standing at the elbow of Henri IV of France, called James I of
+England the wisest fool in Europe. A part of his wisdom was the
+encouraging in his own kingdom the royal craft of tapestry-making. To
+this end he followed the example set by that grand Henri of Navarre,
+and gave the crown's aid to establish and maintain works for tapestry
+production.
+
+The elegance of the Stuart came to the front, desiring gratification;
+but craftiness had a hand in the matter, too. After the introduction
+of Italian luxury into England by Henry VIII, and the continuance of
+art's revival through the brilliant period of Elizabeth, it is not
+supposable that no tapestry looms existed throughout the length and
+breadth of the land at the time that James came down from Scotland.
+
+They were there; documents prove it. But they were not of such
+condition as pleased the fastidious son of Marie Stuart, who needs
+must import his weavers and his artists. And therein was shown his
+craftiness, for he had coaxed secretly from Flanders fifty expert
+weavers before the canny Dutch knew their talented material was thus
+being filched away. Every weaver was bound to secrecy, lest the Low
+Countries, knowing the value of her clever workmen, put a ban upon
+their going before the English king had his full quota for the new
+venture.
+
+Wandering about old London, one can identify now the place where the
+king's factory had habitat. The buildings stood where now we find
+Queen's Court Passage, and near by, at Victoria Terrace, was the house
+set aside for the limners or artists who drew and painted for the
+works.
+
+To copy Henri IV in his success was dominant in the mind of James I.
+To the able Sir Francis Crane he gave the place of director of the
+works, and made with him a contract similar to that made with Francois
+de la Planche and Marc Comans in Paris by their king.
+
+If to James I is owed the initial establishment, to Crane is owed all
+else at that time. It was in 1619 that the works were founded and Sir
+Francis took charge. He was a gentleman born, was much seen at Court,
+had ambitions of his own, too, and was cultivated in many ways of mind
+and taste. Besides all this, he had a head for business and an
+enthusiasm rampant, which could meet any discouragement--and needed
+this faculty later, too.
+
+The king then gave him the management of the venture, started him with
+the royal favour, which was as good as a fortune, with a building for
+the looms, with imported workers who knew the tricks of the trade, and
+with a pretty sum of money to boot.
+
+Prudence was born with the enterprise; so the men from the Low
+Countries were advised to become naturalised to make them more likely
+to stay, and to bring other workers over, Walloons, malcontents,
+religious fugitives, or whatever, so long as the hands were skilful.
+Down in Kent, they say those cottages were built for weavers,--those
+lovable nests of big timbers, curved gables and small leaded panes
+which we are so keen to restore and live in these days.
+
+To swell the number of workers, and to have an eye for the future,
+there must be apprentices. The king looked about among the city's
+"hospitals" and saw many goodly boys living at crown expense, with no
+specified occupation during their adolescence. These he put as
+apprentices, for a term of seven years, to work under the fifty
+Flemish leaders. They were happy if they fell under the care of Philip
+de Maecht, he of Flanders, who had wandered down to Paris and served
+under De la Planche and Comans, and now had been enticed to the new
+Mortlake. He has left his visible mark on tapestries of his
+production--his monogram, P.D.M. (Plate facing page 70.)
+
+A designer for the factory, one who lived there, was an inseparable
+part of it. And thus it came that Francis Clein (or Cleyn) was
+permanently established. He came from Denmark, but had taken an
+enlightening journey to Italy, and had a fine equipment for the work,
+which he carried on until 1658. His name is on several tapestries now
+existing.
+
+Even kings tire of their fulfilled wishes. James wanted royal tapestry
+works, yet, when they were an established fact, he wearied of the
+drafts on his purse for their support. It was the old story of
+unfulfilled obligations, of a royal purse plucked at by too many vital
+interests to spend freely on art.
+
+And Sir Francis Crane bore the brunt of the troubles. Contracts with
+the king counted but lightly in face of his enthusiasm. He continued
+the work, paid his men the best he could, and let the king's debt to
+him stand unsued.
+
+In a few years--a very few, as it was then but 1623--he was obliged to
+petition the king. His private fortune was gone by the board, the
+workmen were clamouring for wages past due, and the factory trembled.
+
+Then it was the Prince of Wales showed the value of his interest in
+the tapestries that were demonstrating the artistic enterprise of
+England. The Italian taste was the ultimate note in England as well as
+elsewhere--the Italy of the Renaissance; and from Italy the prince had
+ordered paintings and drawings. What was more to the purpose at this
+hour of leanness, he ordered paid by the crown a bill of seven hundred
+pounds, which covered their expense. The king, unwillingly,--for needs
+pressed on all sides--paid also Sir Francis Crane in part for moneys
+he had expended, but left him struggling against the hard conditions
+of a ruined private purse and a thin royal one.
+
+At this juncture, 1625, James I died, and his son reigned in his
+stead. The Prince of Wales was now become that beribboned,
+picturesque, French-spirited monarch, whose figure on Whitehall
+eternally protests his tragic death.
+
+As Charles I, he had the power to foster the elegant industry which
+now grew and flowered to a degree that brought satisfaction then, and
+which yields a harvest of delight in our own times. Sir Francis Crane
+was at last to get the reward of enthusiasm and fidelity. Too much
+reward, said the envious, who tried in all ways, fair and foul, to
+drive him from what was now a lucrative and conspicuous post. The
+money he had advanced the factory came back to him, and more also.
+Ever a well-known figure at court, he now even aspired to closer
+relations with royalty, and built a magnificent country home, which
+was large enough to accommodate a visiting court. He even persuaded
+the king to visit the Mortlake factory, that the royal presence might
+enhance the value of art in the occult way known only to the subjects
+of kings.
+
+Debts from the crown were not always paid in clinking coin, but often
+in grants of land, and by these grants Sir Francis Crane became rich.
+But the prosperity of Crane was not worth our recording were it not
+that it evidenced the prosperity of Mortlake. From the death of James
+I in 1625 for a period of ten years, the factory flowered and fruited.
+Its productions were of the very finest that have ever been produced
+in any country.
+
+The reasons for this superiority were evident. First of all, Mortlake
+was the pet of the king; next, Crane was an able and devoted minister
+of its affairs; its artistic inspiration came from the home of the
+highest art--Italy--and its weavers were from that locality of sage
+and able weavers--Flanders. Add to this, tapestries were the fashion.
+Every man of wealth and importance felt them a necessary chattel to
+his elegance. And add to this, too, that Mortlake had almost a clean
+field. It was nearly without rival in fine tapestry-making at that
+time. Brussels had declined, and the Gobelins was not formed in its
+inspired combination.
+
+ [Illustration: VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
+
+ Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York]
+
+ [Illustration: VULCAN AND VENUS SERIES. MORTLAKE
+
+ Collection of Philip Hiss, Esq., New York]
+
+Besides this, were not the materials for the industry found best
+within the confines of the kingdom? What sheep in all the world
+produced such even, lustrous wool as the muttons huddling or wandering
+on the undulating _pres sales_ of Kent; and was not wool, par
+excellence, the ideal material for picture-weaving, better than silk
+or glittering gold?
+
+The hangings made then were superb. Thanks to destiny, we have some
+left on which to lavish our enthusiasm. The cartoons preferred came
+from Italy's great dead masters. First was Raphael. The Mortlake would
+try its hand at nothing less than the great series made to finish and
+soften the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. And so the _Acts of the
+Apostles_ were woven, and in such manner as was worthy of them. They
+can be seen now in the Garde Meuble. Van Dyck, the great Hollander,
+made court painter to the king, drew borders for them, and was proud
+to do it, too. Van Dyck's other work here was a portrait of Sir
+Francis Crane and one of himself.
+
+Rubens likewise associated his great decorative genius with the
+factory and gave to it his suite of six designs for the _Story of
+Achilles_. Cleyn, the Mortlake art-director, furnished a _History of
+Hero and Leander_, which found home among the marvellous tapestries of
+the King of Sweden.
+
+There were other classic subjects, and the months as well, but of
+especial interest to us is the _Story of Vulcan_. Several pieces of
+this series have been lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
+York, by their owners, Mrs. von Zedlitz, and Philip Hiss, Esq. Thus,
+without going far from home, thousands have been able to see these
+delightful examples of the highest period of England's tapestry
+production. The series was woven for Charles I when he was Prince of
+Wales, from cartoons by Francis Cleyn, and woven by the master, Philip
+de Maecht. The borders are especially interesting, and carry the
+emblematic three feathers of the prince, as well as his monogram, in
+Mrs. von Zedlitz's example, _The Expulsion of Vulcan_. (Coloured plate
+facing page 170.)
+
+It was this same series of _Vulcan_ that was used as a text by Crane's
+enemy to prove to the king, in 1630, that Crane was profiting unduly
+and dishonestly from the land grants given him in payment for arrears.
+The plaintiff speaks of this set as being "the foundation of all good
+tapestries in England." We are fortunate in having pieces from it in
+America.
+
+Only by actual contact with the tapestry itself can the beauty of the
+colour and the work be known. We well believe the superior quality of
+the English wool when it lies before us in smooth expanse of subtle
+colour. And as for even weaving, it is there unsurpassed. Every inch
+declares the talent and patience of the craftsman. As for colour, it
+is on a low scale that makes blues seem like remembrance of the sea,
+and reds like faint flushings planned in warm contrast, while over all
+is thrown a veil of delicate mist that may be of years, or may have
+been done with intent, but is there to give poetic value to the whole
+of the artist's scheme.
+
+ [Illustration: THE EXPULSION OF VULCAN FROM OLYMPUS]
+
+Sir Francis Crane died in 1636, and Captain Richard Crane succeeded
+him. And then began the decline of a factory which should have lived
+to save us deep regret. This second Crane could not carry on the work,
+and besought the king to relieve him by taking over the factory, which
+was thenceforth known as King's Works.
+
+But civil wars came on in 1642 and other matters were more urgent than
+the production of works of art. So evil days fell upon the weavers.
+
+Then came the black day when Charles was beheaded. The Commonwealth,
+to do it justice, tried to keep alive the industry. They put at its
+head a nobleman, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and, to inspire the workers,
+brought a new model for design.
+
+They went to Hampton Court and took from there _The Triumph of Caesar_,
+by Mantegna, to serve as new models. Some hope, too, lay in the
+weavers of the hour, clever Hollanders taken prisoners in the war; and
+all this while Cleyn directed.
+
+But there were too many circumstances in the way, too many hard knocks
+of fate. People were too poor to buy good tapestries, and loose-woven,
+cheaper ones were heavily imported--to the amount of $500,000
+yearly--from France and the Low Countries. Anti-Catholic feeling
+displayed hatred toward the able Catholic weavers, who were forced out
+of the country by proclamation.
+
+The sad end of this story is that in 1702 a petition was placed before
+the king asking permission to discontinue the Mortlake works. It was
+granted in 1703, and thus ended the English royal venture in England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IDENTIFICATIONS
+
+
+Identifying tapestries is like playing a game, like the solving of a
+piquant problem, like pursuing the elusive snark. I know of no keener
+pleasure than that of standing before a tapestry for the first time
+and giving its name and history from one's own knowledge, and not from
+a museum catalogue or a friend's recital. The latter sources of
+information may be faulty, but your own you can trust, for by
+delightful association with tapestries and their literature you have
+become expert. The catalogue is to be read, the friend is to be heard,
+in all humility, because these supply points that one may not know;
+but, who shall not say that an intensely human gratification is
+experienced when the owner of a tapestry with the Brussels mark tells
+you that it is a Gobelins, or one with the _History of Alexander_
+tells you it is the only set of that series ever woven, and you know
+better.
+
+The first thing that strikes the eye and the intelligence is the
+drawing, the general school to which it belongs. There is matter for
+placing the piece in its right class. It might be said to place it in
+its right century or quarter century, but that tapestries were so
+often repeated in later times, the cartoon having no copyright and
+therefore open to all countries in all centuries. Next, then, to fix
+it better, comes a study of the border, for therein lies many a
+secret of identity, and borders were of the epoch in which the weaving
+was done, even though the cartoon for the centre came from an earlier
+time.
+
+Last, as a finishing touch, come the marks in the galloon. This is put
+last because so often they are absent, and so often unknown, the sign
+of some ancient weaver lost in the mists of years, although a
+well-known mark so instantly identifies, that study of other details
+is secondary.
+
+But under these three generalising heads comes all the knowledge of
+the savant, for the truth about tapestries is most elusive. Knowledge
+is to be gained only by a lover of the objects, a lover willing to
+spend long hours in association with his love, prowling among
+collections, comparing, handling, studying designs, discerning
+colours, searching for details, and indulging withal a nice feeling
+for textures, a vision that feels them even without touch of the hand.
+
+If the study of design has not given a keen scent for the vague
+quality which we call "feeling," the eye would better be trained still
+further, for herein lies the secret of success in difficult places,
+and not only that, but if he have not this sense he is deprived of one
+of the most subtile thrills that the arts can excite.
+
+But this sense is not a matter of untrained intuition. It is the
+flower of erudition, the flame from a full heart, or whatever dainty
+thing you choose to call it. It has its origin primarily in keen
+observation of the various important schools of design that have
+interested the world for centuries. We unconsciously augment it even
+in following the side-path of history in this modest volume. Our
+studies here are but those of a summer morn or a winter eve, yet they
+are in vain if they have not set up a measuring standard or two within
+the mind.
+
+
+GOTHIC DRAWING
+
+First, and dearest to the lover of designs, comes the Gothic, the
+style practised by those conscientious romantic children-in-art, the
+Primitives. Their characteristics in tapestry are much the same as in
+painting, as in sculpture; for, weavers, painters, book-makers,
+sculptors, were all expressing the same matter, all following the same
+fashion. Therefore, to one's help comes any and every work of the
+primitive artists. Making allowance for the difference in medium, the
+same religious feeling is seen in the Burgundian set of _The
+Sacraments_ in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, as is found
+in stone carving of the time which decorated churches and tombs.
+
+The figures in the Gothic tapestries show a dignified restraint, a
+solemnity of pose, recalling the deadly seriousness with which
+children play the game of grown-ups. The artists of that day had to
+keep to their traditions; to express without over-expression, was
+their difficult task (as it is ours), but they had behind them the
+rigidity of the Byzantine and Early Christian, so that every free
+line, every vigorous pose or energetic action, was forging ahead into
+a new country, a voyage of adventure for the daring artist. Quite
+another affair was this from modern restraint which consists in
+pruning down the voluptuous lines following the too high Renaissance.
+
+Faces are serious, but not animated. Dress reveals charming matter
+concerning stuffs and modes in that far time. But apart from these
+characteristics is the one great feature of the arrangement of the
+figures, almost without perspective. And therein lies one immense
+superiority of the ancient designs of tapestries over the modern as
+pure decorative fabric. Men and women are placed with their
+accessories of furniture or architecture all in the foreground, and
+each man has as many cubits to his stature as his neighbour, not being
+dwarfed for perspective, but only for modesty, as in the case of the
+Lady's companion in the _Unicorn_ series--but that series is of a
+later Gothic time than the early works of Arras.
+
+A noticeable feature is that the centre of vision is placed high on
+the tapestry. The eye must look to the top to find all the strength of
+the design. The lower part is covered with the sweeping robes or
+finished figures of the folk who are playing their silent parts for
+the delight of the eye. This covers well the space with large and
+simple motive. No recourse is had to such artifice as distant lands
+seen in perspective, nor angles of rooms, but all is flat, brought
+frankly into intimate association with the room that is lived in, so
+that these people of other days seem really to enter into our very
+presence, to thrust vitally their quaint selves into our company. This
+feature of simple flatness is in so great contrast to later methods of
+drawing that one becomes keenly conscious of it, and deeply satisfied
+with its beauty. The purpose of decoration and of furnishing seems to
+be most adequately met when the attention is retained within the
+chamber and not led out of it by trick of background nor lure of
+perspective, no matter how enticing are the distant landscapes or how
+noble the far palace of royalty. Thus the Primitives struck a more
+intimately human note than the artists of later and more sophisticated
+times.
+
+The more archaic the tapestry, the simpler the motive, is the rule.
+The early weavers of Arras and of France were telling stories as
+naturally as possible, perhaps because the ways of their times were
+simple, and brushed aside all filigree with a directness almost
+brutal; but also, perhaps, because technique was not highly developed,
+either in him who drew with a pencil or him who copied that drawing in
+threads of silk and wool and gold. Whatever the cause, we can but
+rejoice at the result, which, alas, is shown to us by but lamentably
+few remnants outside of museums. These very archaic simple pieces are,
+for the most part, work of the latter part of the Fourteenth Century
+and the first part of the Fifteenth, and as the history of tapestry
+shows, were almost invariably woven in France or in Flanders. At the
+end of the time mentioned, designs, while retaining much the same
+characteristics already described, became more ambitious, more
+complicated, and introduced many scenes into one piece. This is easily
+proved by a comparison of the illustration of _The Baillee 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 scene_, 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
+naive 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
+Baillee 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 _debonnaire_, are
+springing about, clean-faced, clad in short, belted pelisse, showing
+sprightly legs equally ready to step quickly towards a lovely lady or
+to a field of battle.
+
+Soldiers--let a woman hesitate to speak of their dress and arms in any
+tone but that of self-depreciating humility. Suffice it to say that in
+the early work they wore the armour of the time, whether the scene
+depicted were an event of history cotemporaneous, or of the time of
+Moses. Fashions in dress changed with deliberation then, and it is to
+the arms carried by the men that we must sometimes look for exactness
+of date.
+
+
+LETTERING
+
+The presence of letters is often noticed in hangings of the
+Fourteenth, Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries. It was a fashion
+eminently satisfactory, a great assistance to the observer. It helped
+tell the story, and, as these old pictures had always a story to tell,
+it was entirely excusable--at least, so it seems to one who has stood
+confounded before a modern painting without a catalogue or other
+indication as to the why of certain agitated figures.
+
+The lettering was, in the older Gothic, explicit and unstinted, in
+double or quadruple lines, in which case it counts as decoration
+banded across top or bottom. Again, it is as trifling as a word or two
+affixed to the persons of the play to designate them. This lettering
+may be French or Latin.
+
+
+EARLY BACKGROUNDS
+
+Backgrounds of the early Fifteenth Century deal much in
+conventionalised, flat patterns, but fifty or sixty years later, when
+figures began to be more crowded, there was but little space left
+unoccupied by the participants in the allegory, and this was filled by
+the artifices of architecture or herbage that formed the divisions
+into the various scenes. Later the designing artists decided to let
+into the picture the light of distant fields and skies, and thus was
+introduced the suggestion of space outside the limit of the canvas.
+
+
+LATER DRAWING
+
+After the Gothic drawing, came the avalanche of the Renaissance. That
+altered all. The Italian taste took precedence, and from that time on
+the cartoons of tapestries represent modern art, trailing through its
+various fashions or modes of the hour. The purest Renaissance is
+direct from the Italian artist, in tapestry as well as in painting,
+but it is interesting to see the maladroitness of the Flemish hand
+when left to draw cartoons for himself after the new manner.
+
+After the Renaissance came exaggeration and lack of sincerity; then
+the improvement of the Seventeenth Century, notably in France, and
+after that the dainty fancies of the Eighteenth Century, and here we
+are dealing with art so modern that it needs no elucidation. The
+drawing in tapestries is a subject as fascinating as it is
+inexhaustible, but, however much one may read on it, nothing equals
+actual association with as many tapestries as are available, for the
+eye must be trained by vision and not by intellectual process alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+IDENTIFICATIONS (_Continued_)
+
+
+If the amateur can have the fortune to see in the same hour a tapestry
+of the early Fifteenth Century, and one a hundred years later, and
+then one about 1550, from Brussels, drawn by an Italian artist, he has
+before him an exposition of tapestry weaving in its golden age when it
+sweeps through its greatest periods and phases to marvellous
+perfection. The earliest example gives acquaintance with that almost
+fabled time of the Gothic primitives in art; the second shows the
+highest development of that art under the influence of civilisation,
+and the third shows the obsession of the new art of the Renaissance.
+It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that after the revival of classic
+art the power of producing spontaneous Gothic was lost forever. From
+that time on, every drawing has had certain characteristics, certain
+sophistications that the artist cannot escape except in a deliberate
+copy.
+
+Modern art, we call it. In tapestry it began with a freedom of drawing
+in figures, and an adoption of classic ornament and architecture. In
+this connexion it is interesting to note the introduction of Greek or
+Roman detail in the columns that divide the scenes, to see saints
+gathered by temples of classic form instead of Gothic. If Renaissance
+details appear in a hanging called Gothic, it is easy to see that the
+piece was woven after Europe was infected with modern art, and this is
+an assistance in placing dates; at least, it checks the tendency to
+slip back too far in antiquity, a tendency of which we in a new
+country are entirely guilty.
+
+Lest too long a lingering on the subject of design become wearisome, a
+mention of later designs is made briefly. The simplicity of the early
+Renaissance, the perfection of the high Renaissance, are both shown in
+tapestry as well as in paintings, and so, too, is exemplified the
+inflation that ended in tiresome exuberance.
+
+After the fruit was ripe it fell into decay. After Sixteenth Century
+perfection, Seventeenth Century designs fell of their own overweight,
+figures were too exaggerated, draperies billowed out as in a perpetual
+gale, architecture and landscapes were too important, and tapestries
+became frankly pictures to attract the attention. To this class of
+design belong all those monstrosities which reflected and distorted
+the art of Raphael, and which have been intimately associated with
+Scriptural subjects down to our own times.
+
+After Raphael, Rubens. Familiarity with this heroic painter is the key
+to placing all the magnificent designs similar to the set of _Antony
+and Cleopatra_ (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York).
+
+Then came the easily recognisable designs of the French ateliers of
+the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. These are so frequently
+brought before us as to seem almost like products of our own day. The
+earlier ones seem (as ever) the purer art, the less sensual,
+appealing to the more impersonal side of man, dealing in battles and
+in classic subjects. Later, the drawings, becoming more directly
+personal, in the time of Louis XIV portrayed events in the _Life of
+the King_; in the next reign, slipping into the pleasures of the
+_Royal Hunts_, from which the descent was easy into depicting nothing
+higher than the soft loveliness of the fantastic life of the time as
+led by those of high estate. From Lebrun to Watteau one can trace the
+gradual seductive decline, where heroic ideal lowers softly in
+alluring decadence into a mere tickling of the senses. And at this
+time the productions of great tapestries stopped.
+
+Before leaving the review of drawing or design, it is well to recall
+that the fleeting fashions of the day usually set the models, not in
+the manner of treatment which we have been considering broadly, but in
+the subject of designs. For example, the tendency to religious and
+morality subjects in the Gothic, the love for Greek gods and heroes in
+the Renaissance, the glorification of kings and warriors at all times,
+and the portrayal of royal pleasures in modern times. The months of
+the year were woven in innumerable designs and formed an endless theme
+for artists' ingenuity during and after the Renaissance.
+
+
+BORDERS
+
+It is but natural that, with the expansion in drawing, the freedom
+given the pencil, imagination leaped outside the pictured scene and
+worked fantastically on the border, and it is to the border that we
+turn for many a mark of identification. The subject being a full one,
+it has longer consideration in a separate chapter. First there is the
+simple outlying tape, then the designed border. The early Gothic was
+but a narrow line of flowers and berries; the later more sophisticated
+Gothic enlarged and elaborated this same motive without introducing
+another. The blossoms grew larger, the fruit fuller and the modest
+cluster of berries was crowded by pears, apples and larger fruit,
+until a general air of full luxury was given. The design was at first
+kept neatly within bordering lines of tape, but later, overleaped them
+with a flaunting leaf or mutinous flower.
+
+Ribbons appeared early, then came fragmentary glimpses of dainty
+columns which gave nice reasons for the erect upstanding of so heavy a
+decoration. These all were Gothic, but what came after shows the
+riotous imagination of the Renaissance. It seemed in that fruitful
+time, space itself were not large enough to hold the designs within
+the artist's brain. Certainly no corner of a tapestry could be left
+unfilled, and not that alone, but filled with perfect pictures instead
+of with a simple repeated scheme of decoration. It was in this rich
+time of production that the borders of tapestries grew to exceeding
+width, and were divided into squares, each square containing a scene.
+These scenes were often of sufficient importance in composition to
+serve as models for the centre of a tapestry, each one of them, which
+thought gives a little idea of the fertility of the artists in that
+untired period.
+
+It was the delight of the great Raphael himself to expend his talent
+on the border of his cartoons. From this artist others took their cue
+with varying skill, but with fine effect, and with unlimited interest
+to us. Those who run have time to remark only the great central
+picture in a hanging; but, to those who live with it, this added line
+of exquisite panorama is an unceasing delight for the contemplative
+hours of solitude. From this rich departure from Gothic simplicity the
+artists grew into the same fulness of design that ended in decadence.
+The border became almost obnoxious in its inflated importance and from
+voluptuous elegance changed to coarse overweight; and by these signs
+we know the early inspired work from its rank and monstrous
+aftergrowth in the Eighteenth Century.
+
+A quick glance at the plates showing the work of tapestry's next
+highwater mark, the hundred years of the Gobelins' best work,
+illustrates the difference between that time and others, and shows
+also the gradual drop into the border which is merely a woven
+representation of a gilded wood frame to enclose the woven picture as
+a painted one would be framed. The plate of _Esther and Ahasuerus_
+illustrates this sort of border in the unmistakable lines of Louis XV
+ornament.
+
+
+POINT OF INTEREST
+
+Allusion has been made to the placing of the point of interest in a
+tapestry, but this is a matter to be studied by much exercise of the
+eye. Perhaps the amateur knows already much about it, an unconscious
+knowledge, and needs only to be directed to his own store of
+observations. As much as anything this change of design depended on
+the uses the varying civilisation made of the hangings. So much
+interest lies in this that I find myself ever prone to recapitulate
+the very human facts of the past; the lining of rude stone walls and
+the forming of interior doors, which was the office of the early
+tapestries, and the loose full draping of the same; then the gradual
+increase of luxury in the finish of dwellings themselves, until
+tapestries were a decoration only; and then the minimising of grandeur
+under Louis XV when everything fell into miniature and tapestries were
+demanded only in small pieces that could be applied to screens or
+chairs--a prostitution of art to the royal demand for prettiness.
+
+Keeping these general ideas of the uses of tapestries in mind, it is
+easy to reason out the course of the point of interest in the design.
+The Gothic aim was to make warm and comfortable the austere apartment;
+the Renaissance sought to produce big decorative pictures to hang in
+place of frescoes; and the French idea--beginning with that same
+ideal--fell at last into the production of something that should
+accompany the other arts in making minutely ornate the home of man.
+Therefore, the Gothic artist placed the point of interest high; the
+artists of the Renaissance followed the rules of modern painting (even
+to the point of becoming academic); and the last good period of the
+Gobelins dropped into miniature and decoration.
+
+
+COLOURS
+
+Colours we have not yet considered, in this chapter of review for
+identification's sake. They follow the same line, have the same
+history, and this makes the beauty, the logic and the consistency of
+our work, the work of tracing to their source the products of other
+men and other times.
+
+Colours in the early Gothic--of what do they remind one so strongly as
+of the marvels of old stained glass, that rich, pure kaleidoscope
+which has lived so long in the atmosphere of incense ascending from
+censer and from heart. The same scale, rich and simple, unafraid of
+unshaded colour, characterise both glass and tapestry.
+
+The dyeing of colours in those days was a religion, a religion that
+believed in holding fast to the forefathers' tenets. Red was known to
+be a goodly colour, and blue an honest one; yellow was to conjure
+with, and brown to shade; but beyond twelve or perhaps twenty colours,
+the dyer never ventured. To these he gave the hours of his life, with
+these he subjugated the white of Kentish wool, and gave it honest and
+soft into the hand of the artist-weaver who, we must add, should have
+been thankful for this brief gamut. To say the least, we of to-day are
+grateful, for to this we owe the effect of cathedral glass seen in old
+tapestries like that of _The Sacraments_. The Renaissance having more
+sophisticated tales to tell, a higher intellectual development to
+portray, demanded a longer scale of colour, so more were introduced to
+paint in wool the pictures of the artists. At first we see them pure
+and true, then muddy, uncertain, until a dull confusion comes, and the
+hanging is depressing. When, at the last, it came that a tapestry was
+but a painting in wool, with as many thousand differently united
+threads as would reproduce the shading of brush-blended paint, the
+whole thing fell of its own weight, and we of to-day value less the
+unlimited pains of the elaborate dyer and weaver than we do the
+simpler work. The reason is plain. Time fades a little even the
+securest dyes, and that little is just enough to reduce to flat
+monotones a work in which perhaps sixty thousand tones are set in
+subtle shading.
+
+
+HAUTE LISSE
+
+The worker on tapestries, the modern restorer--to whom be much
+honour--finds a sign of identification in the handling of old
+tapestries that is scarcely within the province of the amateur, but is
+worth mentioning. It is the black tracing on the warp with which
+high-warp weavers assist their work of copying the artist's cartoon.
+Where this is present, the work is of the prized haute lisse or
+high-warp manufacture, instead of the basse lisse or low-warp. But the
+latter is not to be spoken of disparagingly, for in the admirable time
+of French production about the time of the formation of the Gobelins,
+low-warp work was almost as well executed as high-warp, and as much
+valued. Brussels made her fame by haute-lisse, but in France the
+low-warp was dubbed "_a la facon de Flandres_"; and as Flanders stood
+for perfection, the weavers did their best to make the low-warp
+production approach in excellence the famed work of the ateliers to
+the north, which had formerly so prospered.
+
+To find this black line is to establish the fact that the tapestry was
+woven on a high-warp loom, if nothing more. But that in itself means,
+as is explained in the chapter on looms and _modus operandi_, that a
+superior sort of weaver, an artist-artisan, did the work, and that he
+had enormous difficulties to overcome in his patient task.
+
+A black outline woven in the fabric is one which artists prior to the
+Seventeenth Century used to give greater strength to figures. It was
+the habit thus to trace the entire human form, to lift it clearly from
+its background, after the "poster" manner of to-day. It is as though a
+dark pencil had outlined each figure. This practice stopped in later
+years, and is not seen at all in the softer methods of the Gobelins.
+
+
+THE WEAVE
+
+The materials of tapestries we know to be invariably wool, silk and
+metal threads, yet the weaving of these varies with the talent of the
+craftsman. The manner of the oldest weavers was to produce a fabric
+not too thick, flexible rather--for was it not meant to hang in
+folds?--and of an engagingly even surface. It was not too fine, yet
+had none of the looseness associated with the coarse, hurried work of
+later and degenerate times. It was more like the even fabric we
+associate with machine work, yet as unlike that as palpitating flesh
+is like a graven image. It was the logical production of honest
+workmen who counted time well spent if spent in taking pains.
+
+This ability, to take detail as a religion, has left us the precious
+relics of the exquisite period immediately before the Italian artists
+had their way in Brussels. Notice the weave here. See the pattern of
+the fabrics worn by the personages of high estate. You could almost
+pluck it from the tapestry, shake out its folds, measure it flat, by
+the yard, and find its delicate, intelligent pattern neat and
+unbroken. Wonderful weaver, magic hands, infinite pains, were those to
+produce such an effect on our sated modern vision, all with a few
+threads of silk and wool and gold.
+
+Then there is the human face--it takes an artist to describe the
+various faces with their beauty of modelling, their infinite variety
+of type, their subtlety of expression. You can almost see the flushing
+of the capillaries under the translucent skin, so fine are the mediums
+of silk and wool under the magic handling of the talented weavers in
+brilliant epochs. Not a detail in one of these older canvases of the
+highest Gothic development has been neglected.
+
+The modern places his point of interest, and, knowing the observer's
+eye is to obediently linger there, he splashes the rest of his drawing
+into careless subserviency. But these careful older drawings showed in
+every inch of their execution a conscience that might put the Puritan
+to shame. Note, even, the ring that is being handed to the lady in the
+Mazarin tapestry of Mr. Morgan's (if yours is the happy chance to see
+it). It was not sufficient for the weaver that it be a ring, but it
+must be a ring set with a jewel, and that jewel must be the one
+celebrated ever for its value; so in the canvas glows a carefully
+rounded spot of pigeon-blood.
+
+This exquisitely fine weaving of the period which trembled between the
+Gothic and the Renaissance made possible the execution of the later
+work--and yet, and yet, who shall say that the later is the superior
+work? Vaunted as it is, one turns to it because one must, but with
+entire fidelity of heart for the preceding manner.
+
+In the high period of Brussels production, when the Renaissance was
+well established there, through the cartoons of the Italian artists,
+it is interesting to note the richness given to surfaces solidly
+filled in with gold by throwing the thread in groups of four. The
+light is thus caught and reflected, almost as though from a heap of
+cut topaz. This characterises the tapestries of the _Mercury_ series
+in the Blumenthal collection.
+
+Naturally, the evenness of the weaving has much to do with the value
+of the piece--otherwise the pains of the old weavers would have been
+futile. The surface smooth, free from lumps or ridges, strong with the
+even strength of well-matched threads, this is the beauty that
+characterises the best work this side of the Fifteenth Century.
+
+It is the especial prerogative of the merchant to touch with his own
+hands a great number of tapestries. It is by this handling of the
+fabric that he acquires a skill in determining the make of many a
+tapestry. There is an indefinable quality about certain wools, and
+about the manner of their weaving that is only revealed by the touch.
+Not all hands are wise to detect, but only those of the sympathetic
+lover of the materials they handle--and I have found many such among
+the merchant collector. But even he finds identification a task as
+difficult as it is interesting, and spends hours of thought and
+research before arriving at a conclusion--and even then will retract
+on new evidence.
+
+
+COPIES
+
+There are certain pitfalls into which one may so easily fall that they
+must never be out of mind. The worst of these, the pit which has the
+most engaging and innocent entrance, is that of the copy, the modern
+tapestry copied from the old a few decades ago.
+
+It is easy to find by reference to the huge volumes of French writers
+on tapestry just when certain sets of cartoons were first woven. Take,
+for example, the _Acts of the Apostles_ by Raphael; Brussels, 1519, is
+the authentic date. But after that the Mortlake factory in England
+wove a set, and others followed. This instance is too historic to be
+entirely typical, but there are others less known. It was the habit of
+factories that possessed a valuable set of cartoons to repeat the
+production of these in their own factory, and also to make some
+arrangement whereby other factories could also produce the same set of
+hangings.
+
+In the evil days that fell upon Brussels after her apogee, copying her
+own works took the place of new matters. Also, in the French factories
+in their prime, the same set was repeated on the same looms and on
+different ones, _vide_ _The Months_, _The Royal Residences_, _History of
+Alexander_, etc., and the gorgeous _Life of Marie de Medici_. If these
+notable examples were copied it is safe to conclude that many others
+were.
+
+The study of marks is left for another chapter, for, by this time,
+even the enthusiast is wearying. There seems so much to learn in this
+matter of investigating and identifying, and, after all, everything is
+uncertain. One looks about at identified pieces in museums and private
+collections, even among the dealers, and the discouraging thought
+comes that other people can tell at a glance. But this is very far
+from being true.
+
+Even the savant studies long and investigates much before he gives a
+positive classification of a piece that is not "pedigreed." Here is a
+Flemish piece, here is a French, he will declare, and for the life of
+you you cannot see the ear-marks that tell the ancestry. And so in all
+humility you ask, "How can you tell with a glance of the eye?" But he
+does not. No one can do that in every case. He must spend days at it,
+reflecting, reading, handling, if the piece is evidently one of value.
+He will show you, perhaps, as an honest dealer-collector showed me, a
+set of five fine pieces which he could not identify at all. "The
+weave," said he, "is Mortlake, the design in part German, these are
+Italian _putti_--yet when all is told, I put down the work as an
+Eighteenth Century copy of decadent Renaissance. But I am far from
+sure."
+
+If a dealer, surrounded by experienced helpers, can thus be
+nonplussed, there is little cause for humiliation on the part of the
+amateur who hesitates. It is not expected that one can know at a
+glance whether a piece of work was executed in France, or in Flanders
+at a given epoch. But the more difficult the work of identification,
+the keener the zest of the hunt. It is then that one calls into
+requisition all the knowledge of art that the individual has been
+unconsciously accumulating all the years of his life. The applied
+arts reflect the art feeling of the age to which they belong, and the
+diluted influence of the great artists directs them. This is true of
+drawing and of colour.
+
+History has ever its reflection on arts and crafts, but perhaps it has
+in tapestry its most intentional record. It is a forced and deliberate
+piece of egoism when a monarch or a conqueror has a huge picture drawn
+exhibiting his grandeur in battle or his elegance at home. In some
+hangings modesty limits to the border of an imaginary and decorative
+scene the monogram of the heroine of history for whose apartments the
+tapestry was woven. And so history is given a grace, a delicate
+meaning, a warm interest, which is one of the side-gardens of delight
+that show from the long path of identification study.
+
+This little book has as its aim the gentle purpose of pointing the way
+to a knowledge that shall be a guide in knowing gold from--not from
+dross, that is too simple, but gold from gold-plating let us say, for
+the mad lover of tapestries will not admit that any hand-woven
+tapestry is on the low level of dross. Any work which human hands have
+touched and lingered on in execution is deserving of the respect of
+the modern whose life must of necessity be lived in hasty execution.
+Every chapter, then, is but a caution or a counsel, and this one but a
+briefer statement of the same matter. If onto the fringe of the main
+thought hangs much of history, it is history inseparable from it, for
+history of nations gives the history of great men, and these regulate
+the doings of all the lesser ones below them.
+
+Identification, pure and simple, is for the rapt lover of art who
+pursues his game in museums and has his quiet delights that others
+little dream of. But in general, to the practical yet cultivated
+American, it is a means to expend wisely the derided dollars that we
+impress upon other nations to the artistic enrichment of our own
+country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+BORDERS
+
+
+If the artists of tapestries had never drawn nor ever woven anything
+but the borders that frame them, we would have in that department
+alone sufficient matter for happy investigation and acutely refined
+pleasure. I even go so far as to think that in certain epochs the
+border is the whole matter, and the main design is but an enlargement
+of one of the many motives of which it is composed. But that is in one
+particularly rich era, and in good time we shall arrive at its joys.
+
+First then--for the orderly mind grows stubborn and confused at any
+beginning that begins in the middle--we must hark back to the earliest
+tapestries. Tracing the growth of the border is a pleasant pastime, a
+game of history in which amorini, grotesques and nymphs are the
+personages, and garlands of flowers their perpetual accessories, but
+first comes the time when there were no borders, the Middle Ages.
+
+There were none, according to modern parlance, but it was usual to
+edge each hanging with a tape of monotone, a woven galloon of quiet
+hue, which had two purposes; one, to finish neatly the work, as the
+housewife hems a napkin; the other, to provide space of simple
+material for hanging on rude hooks the big pictured surface.
+
+This latter consideration was one of no small importance, as we can
+readily see by sending the thought back to the time when tapestries
+led a very different life (so human they seem in their association
+with men that the expression must be allowed) from that of to-day,
+when they are secured to stretchers, or lined, or even framed behind
+glass like an easel painting.
+
+In those other times of romance and chivalry a great man's tapestries
+were always en route. Like their owner, they were continually going on
+long marches, nor were they allowed to rest long in one place. From
+the familiar castle walls they were taken down to line the next
+habitat of their owner, and that might be the castle of some other
+lord, or it might be the tent of an encampment. Again, it might be
+that an open-air exposition for a pageant, was the temporary use.
+
+The tapestries thus bundled about, forever hung and unhung on hooks
+well or ill-spaced, handled roughly by unknowing varlets or dull
+soldiers, these tapestries suffered much, even to the point of
+dilapidation, and thus arose the need for a tape border, and thus it
+happens also that the relics of that time are found mainly among the
+religious pieces. These last found safe asylum within convent walls or
+in the sombre quiet of cathedral shades, and like all who dwell within
+such precincts were protected from contact with a rude world.
+
+One day, sitting solitary at his wools, it occurred to the weaver of
+the early Fifteenth Century to spill some of his flowers out upon the
+dark galloon that edged his work. The effect was charming. He
+experimented further, went into the enchanted wood of such a design as
+that of _The Lady and the Unicorn_ to pluck more flowers, and of them
+wove a solid garland, symmetrical, strong, with which to frame the
+picture. To keep from confounding this with the airy bells and starry
+corollas of the tender inspiring blossoms of the work, he made them
+bolder, trained them to their service in solid symmetric mass, and
+edged the whole, both sides, with the accustomed two-inch line of
+solid rich maroon or blue.
+
+It is easy to see the process of mind. For a long time there had been
+gropings, the feeling that some sort of border was needed, a division
+line between the world of reality and the world of fable. Examine the
+Arras work and see to what tricks the artist had recourse. The
+architectural resource of columns, for example; where he could do so,
+the artist decoyed one to the margin. Thus he slipped in a frame, and
+broke none of the canons of his art, and no more beautiful frame could
+have been devised, as we see by following up the development and use
+of the column. Once out from its position in the edge of the picture
+into its post in the border, it never stops in its beauty of growth
+until it reaches such perfection as is seen in the twisted and
+garlanded columns which flank the Rubens series, and those superb
+shafts in _The Royal Residences_ of Lebrun at the Gobelins under Louis
+XIV.
+
+The other trick of framing in his subject which was open to the Arras
+weaver whom we call Gothic, was to set verses, long lines of print in
+French or Latin at top or bottom.
+
+But his first real legitimate border was made of the same flowers and
+leaves that made graceful the finials and capitals of Gothic carving.
+Small clustered fruit, like grapes or berries, came naturally mixed
+with these, as Nature herself gives both fruit and flowers upon the
+earth in one fair month.
+
+Simplicity was the thing, and a continued turning to Nature, not as to
+a cult like a latter-day nature-student, but as a child to its mother,
+or a hart to the water brook. As even in a border, stayed between two
+lines of solid-coloured galloon, flowers and fruit do not stand
+forever upright without help, the weaver gave probability to his
+abundant mass by tying it here and there with a knot of ribbon and
+letting the ribbon flaunt itself as ribbons have ever done to the
+delight of the eye that loves a truant.
+
+By this time--crawling over the top of the Fourteen Hundreds--the
+border had grown wider, had left its meagre allowance of three or four
+inches, and was fast acquiring a foot in width. This meant more
+detail, a broader design, coarser flowers, bigger fruit, and these
+spraying over the galloon, and all but invading the picture. It was
+all in the way of development. The simplicity of former times was
+lost, but design was groping for the great change, the change of the
+Renaissance.
+
+The border tells quickly when it dawned, and when its light put out
+all candles like a glorious sun--not forgetting that some of those
+candles would better have been left burning. By this time Brussels was
+the centre of manufacture and the cartoonist had come to influence all
+weavings. Just as carpenters and masons, who were the planners and
+builders of our forefathers' homes, have now to submit to the
+domination of the _Ecole 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 amphorae,
+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 chateau, but here, here where the
+observer stands, is all elegance and grace and welcome shade, and
+close friendship with luxury.
+
+This work of Lebrun's is then the epitome of border. Greater than this
+hath no man done, to make a tapestry all border which yet so
+intensified the value of the small central design, that not even the
+royal patron, jealous of his own conspicuousness, discovered that art
+had replaced display.
+
+After that a great change came. As the picture ever regulates the
+border, that change was but logical. After the "Sun King" came the
+regency of the effeminate Philippe, whom the Queen Mother had kept
+more like a court page than a man. Artists lapped over from the
+previous reign, and these were encouraged to develop the smaller,
+daintier, more effeminate designs that had already begun to assert
+their charm. Borders took on the new method. And as small space was
+needed for the curves and shells and latticed bands, the border
+narrower grew.
+
+Like Alice, after the potent dose, the border shrank and shrank, until
+in time it became a gold frame, like the _encadrement_ of any easel
+picture. And that, too, was logical, for tapestries became at this
+time like painted pictures, and lost their original significance of
+undulating hangings.
+
+The well-known motives of the Louis XV decoration rippled around the
+edge of the tapestry, woven in shades of yellow silk and imitated well
+the carved and gilded wood of other frames, those of chairs and
+screens and paintings. There are those who deplore the mode, but at
+least it seems appropriate to the style of picture it encloses.
+
+And here let us consider a moment this matter of appropriateness. So
+far we have thought only of tapestries and their borders as
+inseparable, and as composed at the same time. But, alas, this is the
+ideal; the fact is that in the habit which weavers had of repeating
+their sets when a model proved a favourite among patrons, led them
+into providing variety by setting up a different border around the
+drawing. As this reproducing, this copying of old cartoons was
+sometimes done one or two hundred years after the original was drawn,
+we find an anachronism most disagreeable to one who has an orderly
+mind, who hates to see a telephone in a Venus' shell, for instance.
+The whole thing is thrown out of key. It is as though your old family
+portrait of the Colonial Governor was framed in "art nouveau."
+
+The big men, the almost divine Raphael, and later Rubens, felt so
+keenly the necessity of harmony between picture and frame, that they
+were not above drawing their own borders, and it is evident they
+delighted in the work. But Raphael's cartoons went not only to
+Brussels, but elsewhere, and somehow the borders got left behind; and
+thus we see his celebrated suite of _Acts of the Apostles_ with a
+different entourage in the Madrid set from what it bears in Rome.
+
+There is another matter, and this has to do with commerce more than
+art. An old tapestry is of such value that mere association with it
+adds to the market price of newer work. So it is that sometimes a
+whole border is cut off and transferred to an inferior tapestry, and
+the tapestry thus denuded is surrounded with a border woven nowadays
+in some atelier of repairs, copied from an old design.
+
+Let such desecrators beware. The border of a tapestry must appertain,
+must be an integral part of the whole design for the sake of artistic
+harmony.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[16] Frontispiece.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+TAPESTRY MARKS
+
+
+Regardless of what a man's longing for fame may have been in the
+Middle Ages, he let his works pass into the world without a sign upon
+them that portrayed their author. This is as true of the lesser arts
+as of the greater. It was not the fashion in the days of Giotto, nor
+of Raphael, to sign a painting in vermillion with a flourished
+underscore. The artist was content to sink individuality in the
+general good, to work for art's sake, not for personal fame.
+
+This was true of the lesser artists who wove or directed the weaving
+of the tapestries called Gothic, not only through the time of the
+simple earnest primitives, but through the brilliant high development
+of that style as shown at the studio of Jean de Rome, of the Brussels
+ateliers, through the years lying between the close of the Fifteenth
+Century and the Raphael invasion.
+
+Even that important event brought no consequence of that sort. The
+freemasonry among celebrities in those days showed its perfection by
+this very lack of signed work. Everybody knew the man by his works,
+and the works by their excellence.
+
+Tapestry marks were non-existent as a system until the Brussels edict
+of 1528 made them compulsory in that town. Documents and history have
+been less unkind to those early workers, and to those of us who like
+to feel the thrill of human brotherhood as it connects the artist and
+craftsman centuries dead with our own strife for the ideal. Nicolas
+Bataille in 1379 cannot remain unknown since the publishing of certain
+documents concerning his Christmas task of the _Apocalypse_, and there
+are scores of known master weavers reaching up through the ages to the
+time when marks began.
+
+The Brussels mark was the first. It was a simple and appropriate
+composition, a shield flanked with two letters B. These were capitals
+or not. One was reversed or not, with little arbitrariness, for the
+mark was legible and unmistakable in any case, even though the weaver
+took great liberties--as he sometimes did. The place for this mark was
+the galloon, and it was usually executed in a lighter colour, but a
+single tone.
+
+ [Illustration: BRUSSELS]
+
+So much for the town mark, which has a score or more of variations. In
+addition to this was the mark of the weaver or of the merchant who
+gave the commission. A pity it was thus to confound the two, to give
+such confusion between a gifted craftsman and a mere dealer. One was
+giving the years of his life and the cunning of his hand to the work,
+while the other did but please a rich or royal patron with his wares.
+But so it was, and we can but study over the symbols and glean at
+least that the tapestry was considered a worthy one, reached the high
+standard of the day, or it would have had no mark at all.
+
+For it was thus that the marks were first adopted. They were for the
+protection of every one against fraud. High perfection made Brussels
+famous, but fame brought with it such a rush of patronage that only by
+lessening the quality of productions could orders be filled in such
+hot haste.
+
+Tricks of the trade grew and prospered; there were tricks of dyeing
+after a tapestry was finished, in case the flesh tints or other light
+shades were not pleasing. There was a trick of dividing a large square
+into strips so that several looms might work upon it at once. And
+there was all manner of slighting in the weave, in the use of the comb
+which makes close the fabric, in the setting of the warp to make a
+less than usual number of threads to the inch. In fact, men tricked
+men as much in those days as in our own.
+
+The fame of the city's industry was in danger. It was the province of
+the guild of tapestry-makers to protect it against its own evils.
+Thus, in 1528, a few years after the weaving of the Raphael
+tapestries, the law was made that all tapestries should bear the
+Brussels mark and that of the weaver or the client. Small tapestries
+were exempt, but at that time small tapestries were not frequent, or
+were simple verdures, and, charming as they are, they lacked the same
+intellectual effort of composition.
+
+The Brussels guild stipulated the size at which the tapestry should be
+marked. It was given at six ells, a Flemish ell being about 271/2
+inches. Therefore, a tapestry under approximately thirteen feet might
+escape the order. But that was the day of large tapestries, the day
+of the Italian cartoonists, and important pieces reached that measure.
+
+The guild of the tapissiers in Brussels, once started on restrictions,
+drew article after article, until it seemed that manacles were put on
+the masters' hands. To these restrictions the decadence of Brussels is
+ascribed, but that were like laying a criminal's fault to the laws of
+the country. Primarily must have been the desire to shirk, the intent
+to do questionable work. And behind that must have been a basic cause.
+Possibly it was one of those which we are apt to consider modern, that
+is, the desire to turn effort into the coin of the realm. All of the
+enormous quantity of orders received by Brussels in the days of her
+highest prosperity could not have been accepted had not the master of
+the ateliers pressed his underlings to highest speed.
+
+Speed meant deterioration in quality of work, and so Brussels tried by
+laws to prevent this lamentable result, and to protect the fair fame
+of the symbol woven in the bordering galloon. The other sign which
+accompanied the town mark, of the two letters B, should have had
+excellent results, the personal mark of the weaver that his work might
+be known.
+
+In spite of this spur to personal pride, the standard lessened in a
+few years, but not until certain weavers had won a fame that thrills
+even at this distance. Unfortunately, a great client was considered as
+important as a weaver, and it was often his arbitrary sign that was
+woven. And sometimes a dealer, wishing glory through his dealings,
+ordered his sign in the galloon. And thus comes a long array of signs
+which are not identifiable always. In general, one or two initials
+were introduced into these symbols, which were fanciful designs that
+any idle pencil might draw, but in the lapse of years it is not
+possible to know which able weaver or what great purveyor to royalty
+the letter A or B or C may have signified.
+
+Happily the light of Wilhelm de Pannemaker could not be hid even by
+piling centuries upon it. His works were of such a nature that, like
+those of Van Aelst, who had no mark, they would always be known for
+their historic association. In illustration, there is his set of the
+_Conquest of Tunis_ (plate facing page 62), woven under circumstances
+of interest. Even without a mark, it would still be known that the
+master weaver of Brussels (whom all acknowledged Pannemaker to be) set
+up his looms, so many that it must have seemed to the folk of Granada
+that a new industry had come to live among them. And it is a matter of
+Spanish history that the great Emperor Charles V carried in his train
+the court artist, Van Orley, that his exploits be pictured for the
+gratification of himself and posterity.
+
+But Wilhelm de Pannemaker lived and worked in the time of marks, so
+his tapestries bear his sign in addition to the Brussels mark. Of
+symbols he had as many as nine or ten, but all of the same general
+character, taking as their main motive the W and the P of his name.
+
+ [Illustration: WILHELM DE PANNEMAKER]
+
+Incorporated into his sign, as into many others of the period, was a
+mark resembling a figure 4. Tradition has it that when this four was
+reversed, the tapestry was not for a private client, but for a dealer.
+One set of the _Vertumnus and Pomona_ at Madrid (plates facing pages
+72, 73, 74, 75) bears De Pannemaker's mark, while others have a
+conglomerate pencilling.
+
+The sign of Jacques Geubels is, like W. de Pannemaker's, made up of
+his initials combined with fantastic lines which doubtless were full
+of meaning to their inventor, little as they convey to us. The example
+of Jacques Geubels' weaving given in the plate is from the Chicago
+Institute of Art. His time was late Sixteenth Century.
+
+The _Acts of the Apostles_ of Raphael, the first set, was woven by
+Peter van Aelst without a mark, but the set at Madrid bears the marks
+of several Brussels weavers, some attributed to Nicolas Leyniers.
+
+The desirability of distinguishing tapestries by marks in the galloon
+appealed to other weaving centres, and the method of Brussels found
+favour outside that town. Presently Bruges adopted a sign similar to
+that of her neighbour, by adding to the double B and shield a small b
+traversed by a crown.
+
+ [Illustration: JACQUES GEUBELS]
+
+ [Illustration: NICOLAS LEYNIERS]
+
+ [Illustration: BRUGES]
+
+In Oudenarde, that town of wonderful verdures, the weavers, as though
+by trick of modesty, often avoided such clues to identity as a woven
+letter might be, and adopted signs. However significant and famous
+they may have been in the Sixteenth Century, they mean little now. The
+town mark with which these were combined was distinctly a striped
+shield with decoration like antennae.
+
+ [Illustration: OUDENARDE]
+
+Enghien is one of the tapestry towns of which we are gradually
+becoming aware. Its products have not always been recognised, but of
+late more interest is taken in this tributary to the great stream of
+the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
+
+The famous Peter or Pierre van Aelst, selected from all of Flanders'
+able craftsmen to work for Raphael and the Pope, was born in this
+little town, wove here and, more yet, was known as Pierre of Enghien.
+Yet it is the larger town of Brussels which wore his laurels.
+
+ [Illustration: ENGHIEN]
+
+The Enghien town marks are an easy adaptation of the arms of the
+place, and the weavers' marks are generally monograms.
+
+Weavers' marks, after playing about the eccentricities of cipher,
+changed in the Seventeenth Century to easily read initials, sometimes
+interlaced, sometimes apart. Later on it became the mode to weave the
+entire name. An example of these is the two letters C of Charles de
+Comans on the galloon of _Meleager and Atalanta_ (plate facing page
+68); and the name G. V. D. Strecken in the _Antony and Cleopatra_
+(plate facing page 79).
+
+Other countries than Flanders were wise in their generation, and
+placed the marks that are so welcome to the eye of the modern who
+seeks to know all the secrets of the tapestry before him. In the
+Seventeenth Century, when Paris was gathering her scattered decorative
+force for later demonstration at the Gobelins, the city had a pretty
+mark for its own, a simple fleur-de-lis and the initial P, and the
+initials of the weaver.
+
+ [Illustration: PARIS]
+
+ [Illustration: ALEX. DE COMANS]
+
+ [Illustration: CHARLES DE COMANS]
+
+That Jean Lefevre, who with his father Pierre was imported into Italy
+to set the mode of able weaving for the Florentines, had a sign
+unmistakable on the Gobelins tapestries of the _History of the King_.
+(Plate facing page 114.) It was a simple monogram or union of his
+initials. In the Eighteenth Century the Gobelins took the fleur-de-lis
+of Paris, and its own initial letter G. The modern Gobelins' marks
+combined the G with an implement of the craft, a _broche_ and a
+straying thread.
+
+ [Illustration: JEAN LEFEVRE]
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS, 18TH CENTURY]
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS, MODERN]
+
+In Italy, in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, we find the able
+Flemings, Nicholas Karcher and John Rost, using their personal marks
+after the manner of their country. Karcher thus signed his
+marvellously executed grotesques of Bacchiacca which hang in the
+gallery of tapestries in Florence. (Plates facing pages 48 and 49.)
+John Rost's fancy led him to pun upon his name by illustrating a fowl
+roasting on the spit. Karcher had a little different mark in the
+Ferrara looms, where he went at the call of the d'Este Duke.
+
+ [Illustration: KARCHER, FLORENCE]
+
+ [Illustration: JOHN ROST]
+
+ [Illustration: KARCHER, FERRARA]
+
+The Florence factory made a mark of its own, refreshingly simple,
+avoiding all of the cabalistic intricacies that are so often made
+meaningless by the passing of the years, and which were affected by
+the early Brussels weavers. The mark found on Florence tapestries is
+the famous Florentine lily, and the initial of the town. The mark of
+Pierre Lefevre, when weaving here, was a combination of letters.
+
+ [Illustration: PIERRE LEFEVRE, FLORENCE]
+
+ [Illustration: MORTLAKE]
+
+When the Mortlake factory was established in England, the date was
+sufficiently late, 1619, for marking to be considered a necessity. The
+factory mark was a simple shield quartered by means of a cross thrown
+thereon. Sir Francis Crane contented himself with a simple F. C., one
+a-top the other, as his identification. Philip de Maecht, he whose
+family went from Holland to England as tapissiers, directed at
+Mortlake the weaving of a part of the celebrated _Vulcan_ and _Venus_
+series, and his monogram can be seen on _The Expulsion of Vulcan from
+Olympus_ (coloured plate facing page 170), owned by Mrs. A. von
+Zedlitz, as well as in the other rare _Vulcan_ pieces owned by Philip
+Hiss, Esq. This same Philip de Maecht worked under De Comans in Paris,
+he having been decoyed thence by the wise organisers of Mortlake.
+
+ [Illustration: SIR FRANCIS CRANE]
+
+ [Illustration: PHILIP DE MAECHT]
+
+The marks on tapestries are as numerous as the marks on china or
+silver, and the absence of marks confronts the hunter of signs with
+baffling blankness, as is the case of many very old wares, whether
+china, silver or tapestries. Also, late work of poor quality is
+unmarked. Having thus disposed of the situation, it remains to
+identify the marks when they exist. The exhaustive works of the French
+writers must be consulted for this pleasure. There are hundreds of
+known signs, but there exist also many unidentified signs, yet the
+presence of a sign of any kind is a keen joy to the owner of a hanging
+which displays it.
+
+ [Illustration: TOURNAY]
+
+ [Illustration: LILLE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+HOW IT IS MADE
+
+
+Wanting to see the wheels go 'round is a desire not limited to babes.
+We, with our minds stocked with the history and romance of tapestry,
+yet want to know just how it is made in every particular, just how the
+loom works, how the threads are placed.
+
+It seems that there must be some obscure and occult secret hidden
+within the looms that work such magic, and we want to pluck it out,
+lay it in the sunlight and dissect its intricacies. Well, then, let us
+enter a tapestry factory and see what is there. But it is safe to
+forecast the final deduction--which must ever be that the god of
+patience is here omnipotent. Talent there must be, but even that is
+without avail if patience lacks.
+
+The factory for tapestries seems, then, little like a factory. The
+belt and wheel, the throb and haste are not there. The whole place
+seems like a quiet school, where tasks are done in silence broken by
+an occasional voice or two. It is a place where every one seems bent
+on accomplishing a brave amount of fancy-work; a kindergarten, if you
+like, for grown-ups.
+
+Within are many departments of labour. The looms are the thing, of
+course, so must be considered first, although much preparing is done
+before their work can be begun.
+
+The looms are classic in their method, in their simplicity. They have
+scarcely changed since the days when Solomon built his Temple and
+draped it with such gorgeous hangings that even the inspired writers
+digress to emphasise their richness with long descriptions that could
+not possibly have assisted the cause of their religion.
+
+The stitch made by the modern loom is the same as that made by the
+looms of the furthermost-back Egyptian, by the Greeks, by the Chinese,
+of primitive peoples everywhere, by the people of the East in the
+familiar Khelim rugs, and by the aborigines of the two Americas. There
+is nothing new, nothing obscure about it, being a simple weaving of
+warp and woof. Penelope's loom was the same almost as that in use
+to-day at the Gobelins factory in Paris. Archeologists have discovered
+pictures of the ancient Egyptian loom, and of Penelope's, and there is
+but little change from the times of these ladies to our days.
+
+The fact is, the work is hand-work, must always be so, and the loom is
+but a tool for its working, a tool which keeps in place the threads
+set by hand. That is why tapestry must always be valuable and original
+and no more possible to copy by machine than is a painting.
+
+High warp and low warp are the terms so often used as to seem a
+shibboleth. _Haute lisse_ and _basse lisse_ are their French
+equivalents. They describe the two kinds of looms, the former
+signifying the loom which stands upright, or high; the latter
+indicating the loom which is extended horizontally or low. On the high
+loom, the instrument which holds the thread is called the _broche_,
+and on the low loom it is called the _flute_.
+
+The stitch produced by the two is the same. The manner of producing
+it varies in convenience to the operators, the low-warp being the
+easier, or at least the more convenient and therefore the quicker
+method.
+
+The cynic is ever ready to say that the tyrant living within a man
+declares only for those things which represent great sacrifice of time
+and effort on the part of other men. Perhaps it is true, and that
+therein lies the preference of the connoisseur in tapestry for the
+works of the high-warp loom. Even the wisest experts cannot always
+tell by an examination of a fabric, on which sort of loom it was
+woven, high warp or low, other evidence being excluded.
+
+The high loom has, then, the threads of its warp hung like a weighted
+veil, from the top of the loom to the floor, with a huge wooden roller
+to receive the finished fabric at the bottom and one at the top for
+the yet unneeded threads. Each thread of the warp is caught by a loop,
+which in turn is fastened to a movable bar, and by means of this the
+worker is able to advance or withdraw the alternate threads for the
+casting of the _broche_ or _flute_, which is the shuttle. Behind the
+veil of the warp sits the weaver--_tissier_ or _tapissier_--with his
+supply of coloured thread; back of him is the cartoon he is copying.
+He can only see his work by means of a little mirror the other side of
+his warp, which reflects it. The only indulgence that convenience
+accords him is a tracing on the white threads of the warp, a copy of
+the picture he is weaving. Thus stands the prisoner of art, sentenced
+to hard labour, but with the heart-swelling joy of creating, to
+lighten his task.
+
+ [Illustration: WEAVER AT WORK ON LOW LOOM. HERTER STUDIO]
+
+ [Illustration: SEWING AND REPAIR DEPARTMENT. BAUMGARTEN ATELIERS]
+
+High-warp looms were those that made famous the tapestries of Arras in
+the Fifteenth Century, of Brussels in the Sixteenth, and of Paris in
+the Seventeenth, therefore it is not strange that they are worshipped
+as having a resident, mysterious power.
+
+To-day, the age of practicality, they scarcely exist outside the old
+Gobelins in Paris. But this is not the day of tapestry weaving.
+
+A shuttle, thrown by machine, goes all the width of the fabric, back
+and forth. The _flute_ or _broche_, which is the shuttle of the
+tapestry weaver, flies only as far as it is desired to thrust it, to
+finish the figure on which its especial colour is required. Thus, a
+leaf, a detail of any small sort, may mount higher and higher on the
+warp, to its completion, before other adjacent parts are attempted.
+
+The effect of this is to leave open slits, petty gashes in the fabric,
+running lengthwise of the warp, and these are all united later with
+the needle, in the hands of the women who thus finish the pieces.
+
+Unused colours wound on the hundreds of flutes are dropped at the
+demand of the pattern, left in a rich confusion of shades to be
+resumed by the workmen at will; but the threads are not severed, if
+the colour is to be used again soon.
+
+Low-warp work is the same except for the weaver's position in relation
+to his work. Instead of the warp like a thin wall before his face, on
+which he seems to play as on one side of a harp, the warp is extended
+before him as a table. It is easy to see how much more convenient is
+this method.
+
+The wooden rollers are the same, one for the yet unused length of
+warp, the other for the finished fabric, and over one of these rollers
+the worker leans, protected from its hostile hardness by a pillow.
+
+The pattern lies below, just beneath the warp, and easily seen through
+it, not the mere tracing as on the threads of the high-warp loom, but
+the coloured cartoon, so that shades may be followed as well as lines.
+It sometimes happens, however, in copying a valuable old tapestry,
+that a black and white drawing only is placed under the warp while the
+original is suspended behind the weavers, who look to it for colour
+suggestion.
+
+In low-warp the worker has the privilege of laying his flutes on top
+the work, the flutes not at the moment in use, and there they lie in
+convenient mass ready to resume for the figure abandoned for another.
+If the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see
+that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly
+lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal
+which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops which pass
+around alternate threads.
+
+That pressure lifts the threads, and the fingers of the left hand,
+deft and agile, limit and select those which the flute shall cover
+with its coloured woof.
+
+After the casting of a thread, or of a group of threads, the weaver
+picks up a comb of steel or of ivory, and packs hard the woof, one
+line against another, to make the fabric firm and even in the weaving.
+
+ [Illustration: BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY]
+
+ [Illustration: BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON]
+
+Such then is the simple process of the looms, far simpler seen than
+described and yet depending absolutely for its beauty on the talent
+and patience of gifted workers. It is as simple as the alphabet, yet
+as complicated as the dictionary.
+
+Patient years of apprenticeship must a man spend before he can become
+a good weaver, and then must he give the best years of his life to
+becoming perfect in the craft. But if the work is exacting, at least
+it is agreeable, almost lovable, and in delightful contrast to the
+labour of those who but tend machines driven by power. And if the art
+of tapestry weaving is almost a lost one to-day, at least the weavers
+can find in history much matter for pride. It is no mean ambition to
+follow the profession of conscientious Nicolas Bataille, of the able
+Pannemaker, of La Planche and Comans, of Tessier, Cozette, and a
+hundred others of family and fame.
+
+Much preparation is necessary before the loom can be set going. First
+is the design, the cartoon. There we are in the department of the
+artist, and must talk in whispers. Raphael belongs there, and
+Leonardo; and Rubens, Teniers, Lebrun, Boucher and David, train us
+through the past centuries into our own.
+
+But the cartoon of to-day is not so sacred a matter, and we may speak
+of it frankly--regretfully, too. Cartoons hang all over the walls of
+the tapestry factory, so much property for the setting of future
+scenes, and besides, they make a decoration which alone would lift the
+tapestry factory into the regions of art and class it among ateliers,
+instead of factories. The cartoons are painted, however, where the
+artist will, in his own studio or in one provided for the purpose by
+the director, as in the case of the Baumgarten works. They have the
+look of special designs. They are not done in the manner of a painting
+to be hung on a wall. Their brushwork is smooth and broad, dividing
+lines well distinguished by marked contrasts in colour to make
+possible their translation into the language of silk and wool.
+
+After the cartoon is ready, comes the warp. That is set with the
+closeness agreed upon. Naturally, the smaller the thread of the warp,
+the closer is it set, the more threads to the inch, and thus comes
+fine fabric. Coarser warp means fewer threads to the inch, quicker
+work for the weaver and less value to the tapestry. From ten to twenty
+threads to the inch carries the limits of coarseness and fineness. In
+fine weaving, a weaver will accomplish but a square foot a week. Think
+of that, you who wonder at the price of tapestries ordered for the new
+drawing-room.
+
+The warp comes to the factory all in big hanks of even thread.
+Nowadays it is usually of cotton, although they contend at the
+Gobelins that wool warp is preferable, for it gives the finished
+fabric a lightness and flexibility that the heavier, stiffer cotton
+destroys.
+
+Setting the warp is a matter of patience and precision, and we will
+leave the workman with it, to make it the whole length of the tapestry
+to be woven, and to fasten the loops of thread around each _chaine_
+and to fasten those in turn, alternating, to the bar by means of
+which they may be shifted to make the in-and-out of the weaving.
+
+Then after choosing the colours, the weaving begins. It is like
+nothing so much as a piece of fancy-work. If it were not for the
+cumbersome loom, I am sure ladies would emulate the king who wove for
+amusement, and would make chair-pieces on the summer veranda.
+
+But before the silks and wools go to the weaving they are treated to a
+beauty-bath in the dye-room. Hanks of wool and skeins of silk are but
+neutral matters, coming to the factory devoid of individuality, mere
+pale, soft bulk.
+
+A room apart, somewhere away from the studio of design and the rooms
+where the looms stand stolid, is a laboratory of dyes, a place which
+looks like a farmhouse kitchen on preserving day. You sniff the air as
+you go in, the air that is swaying long bunches of pendulous colour,
+and it smells warm and moist and full of the suggestions of magic.
+
+Over a big cauldron two men are bending, stirring a witches' broth to
+charm man's eye. One of the wooden paddles brings up a mass from the
+heavy liquid. It is silk, glistening rich, of the colour of melted
+rubies. Upstairs the looms are making it into a damask background onto
+which are thrown the garlands Boucher drew and Tessier loved to work.
+
+Dainties fished up from another cauldron are strung along a line to
+dry, soft wool and shining silk, all in shades of grapes, of asters,
+of heliotropes, telling their manifest destiny. And beyond, are great
+bunches of colour, red which mounts a quivering scale to salmon pink,
+blue which sails into tempered gray, greens dancing to the note of
+the forest. It is a nature's workshop, a laboratory where the rainbow
+serves, apprenticed.
+
+Jars, stone jars, little kegs, all ugly enough, are standing against
+the wall. But uncover one, touch the thick dark stuff within, and
+feast your eye on the colour left on a curious finger-tip. You are
+close to the cochineal, to indigo, and all the wonderful alchemy of
+colour.
+
+Aniline? Not a bit of the treacherous stuff. It takes the eye, but it
+is a fickle friend. They say a mordant has been found to stay the
+flight of its lovely colours. Perhaps; it may be. But what weaver of
+tapestry would be willing to confide his labour to the care of a dye
+that has not known the test of ages? Aniline dye, says the director of
+a tapestry factory, may last twenty years--but twenty years is nothing
+in the life of a tapestry. Over in Paris, at the Gobelins, a master
+rules as chemist of the dyes, with the dignity of a special laboratory
+for making them.
+
+In America, with no government assuming the expense, the dyes are
+bought in such form that only expert dyers can use them in the few
+factories which exist. But no new hazards are taken. The matter is too
+serious. Economy in dyes brings too great disaster to contemplate. It
+is only too true that a man, several men, may labour a year to produce
+a perfect work, and that all the labour may be ruined by an ephemeral
+dye, by the escape of tones skilfully laid. Let commerce cheat in some
+other way, if it must, but not in this. Let the dye be honest, as
+enduring as the colours imprisoned in gems.
+
+ [Illustration: BAUMGARTEN TAPESTRY. MODERN CARTOON]
+
+It is a modern economy. The ancients knew not of it, and were
+willing to spend any amount on colours. More than that a port, or a
+nation, was willing to rest its fame on a single colour. Purple of
+Tyre, red of Turkey, yellow of China, are terms familiar through the
+ages, and think not these colours were to be had for the asking. They
+brought prices which we do not pay now even in this age of money. The
+brothers Gobelins--their fame originally rested on their ambition to
+be "dyers of scarlet," that being an ultimate test of skill.
+
+It is a serious matter, that of dyeing wools and silks for tapestries,
+and one which the directors conduct within the walls of the tapestry
+factory. The Gobelins uses for its reds, cochineal or the roots of the
+madder; for blue, indigo and Prussian blue; for yellow, the vegetable
+colour extracted from gaude.
+
+In America there is a specialist in dyes: Miss Charlotte Pendleton, who
+gives her entire attention to rediscovering the dyes of the ancients,
+the dyes that made a city's fame. It is owing to her conscientious
+work that the tapestry repairers of museums can find appropriate
+threads.
+
+It is interesting to trace the differing gamut of colour through the
+ages. Old dyes produced, old weavers needed, but twenty tones for the
+old work. Tapestries of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries were as
+simple in scale as stained glass, and as honest. Flesh tints were
+neutral by contrast to the splendid reds, honest yellows and rich
+greens. Colours meant something, then, too; had a sentimental language
+all their own. When white predominated, purity was implied; black was
+mortification of the flesh; livid yellow was tribulation; red,
+charity; green, meditation.
+
+An examination of the colours in the series which depicts the life of
+Louis XIV, reveals a use of but seventy-nine colours. So up to that
+time, great honesty of dye, and fine decorative effect were preserved.
+The shades were produced by two little tricks open as the day,
+hatching being one, the other, winding two shades on the same broche
+or shuttle. Hatching, as we know, is merely a penman's trick, of
+shading with lines of light and dark.
+
+It was when they began to paint the lily, in the days of pretty
+corruption, that the whole matter of dyeing changed. In the Eighteenth
+Century when the Regent Philip, and then La Pompadour, set the mode,
+things greatly altered. When big decorative effects were no more, the
+stimulating effect of deep strong colour was considered vulgar, and,
+only the suave sweetness of Boucher, Nattier, Fragonard, were admired.
+Every one played a pretty part, all life was a theatre of gay comedy,
+or a flattered miniature.
+
+So, as we have seen, new times and new modes caused the Gobelins to
+copy paintings instead of to interpret cartoons--and there lay the
+destruction of their art. Instead of four-score tones, the dyers hung
+on their lines tens and tens of thousands. And the weavers wove them
+all into their fabric-painting, with the result that when the light
+lay on them long, the delicate shades faded and with them was lost the
+meaning of the design. And that is why the Gobelins of the older time
+are worth more as decoration than those of the later.
+
+We are doing a little better nowadays. There is a limit to the tones,
+and in all new work a decided tendency to abandon the copying of
+brush-shading in favour of a more restricted gamut of colour. By this
+means the future worker may regain the lost charm of the simple old
+pieces of work.
+
+Another room in the factory of tapestry interests those who like to
+see the creation of things. It is one of the prettiest rooms of all,
+and is more than ever like a kindergarten for grown-ups. Or, if you
+like, it is a chamber in a feudal castle where the women gather when
+the men are gone to war.
+
+Here the workers are all girls and women, each bending over a large
+embroidery frame supported at a convenient level from the floor. On
+one frame is a long flowered border with cartouches in the strong rich
+colours of Louis XIV. On another a sofa-seat copied from Boucher. They
+are both new, but like all work fresh from the loom are full of the
+open slits left in the process of weaving, a necessity of the changing
+colours and the requirements of the drawing.
+
+All these little slits, varying from half an inch to several inches in
+length, must be sewed with strong, careful stitches before the
+tapestry can be considered complete.
+
+On other frames are stretched old tapestries for repairs. At the
+Gobelins as many as forty women are thus employed. The malapropos
+deduction springs here that the demand for repaired old work is
+greater than that for new in the famous factory, for only six or eight
+weavers are there occupied.
+
+Repairing is almost an art in itself. The emperor established a small
+school at Berlin for training girls in this trade. The studio of the
+late Mr. Ffoulke in Florence kept twenty or thirty girls occupied. The
+Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a repair studio under a
+graduate of the Berlin school. The factories of Baumgarten and of
+Herter, in New York, also conduct repairs; and the museum at Boston as
+well.
+
+We cannot make old tapestries, but we can restore and preserve them by
+skilled labour in special ateliers. Restoration by the needle is the
+only perfect restoration, and this is as yet but little done here,
+although the method is so well known in Europe. We deplore the quicker
+way, to use the loom for weaving large sections of border or large
+bits which have gone into hopeless shreds, or have disappeared
+altogether by reason of the bitter years when tapestries had fallen
+into neglect. But the quicker way is the poorer, with these great
+claimants for time. The woven figures are relentless in this, that
+they claim of the living man a lion's share of his precious days. His
+reward is that they outlast him. Food for cynics lies there.
+
+The careful worker looks close and sees the warp exposed like fiddle
+strings here and there. She matches the colour of silk and wool to the
+elusive shades and covers stitch by stitch the bare threads, in
+perfect imitation of the loom's way.
+
+Sometimes the warp is gone. Then the work tests the best skill. The
+threads, the _chaine_, 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 employes always busy with repairs and restorations. Given
+even a fragment, the rest is supplied to make a perfect whole, in
+these studios where the manner of the old workers is so closely
+studied. For big repairs a drawing is made, a cartoon on the same
+principle as that of large cartoons, in colours, these following the
+old. Then it remains for the weaver to set his loom with the
+corresponding number of threads, that the new fabric may match the old
+in fineness. Then, too, comes the test of matching colours, a test
+that almost never discovers a worker equal to its exactions. That is
+as often as not the fault of the dyer who has supplied colours too
+fresh.
+
+It is the repairs done by the needle that give the best effect,
+although such restorations are costly and slow.
+
+Old repairs on old tapestries have been made, in some instances, very
+long ago. It often happens, in old sets, that a great piece of another
+tapestry has been roughly set in, like the knee-patches of a farm boy.
+The object has been merely to fill the hole, not to match colour
+scheme or figure. And these patches are by the judicious restorer
+taken out and their place carefully filled with the needle.
+
+Moths, say some, do not devour old tapestries. The reason given is
+that the ancient wool is so desiccated as to be no longer nutritious.
+A pretty argument, but not to be trusted, for I have seen moths
+comfortably browsing on a Burgundian hanging, keeping house and
+raising families on such precious stuff.
+
+Commerce demands that tricks shall be played in the repair room, but
+not such great ones that serious corruption will result. The coarse
+verdures of the Eighteenth Century that were thrown lightly off the
+looms with transient interest are sought now for coverings to antique
+chairs. To give the unbroken greens more charm, an occasional bird is
+snipped from a worn branch where he has long and mutely reposed, and
+is posed anew on the centre of a back or seat. It is the part of the
+repairer to see that he looks at home in his new surroundings.
+
+If metal threads have not been spoken of in this chapter on _modus
+operandi_, it is because metal is so little used since the time of
+Louis XV as to warrant omitting it. And the little that appears seems
+very different from the "gold of Cyprus" that made gorgeous and
+valuable the tapestries of Arras, of Brussels and of old Paris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
+
+A. D. 1066
+
+
+So long as one word continues to have more than one meaning, civilised
+man will continue to gain false impressions. The word tapestry suffers
+as much as any other--witness the attempt made for hundreds of years
+among all nations to set apart a word that shall be used only to
+designate the hand-woven pictured hangings and coverings discussed in
+this book; arras, gobelins, _toile peinte_, etc. In English, tapestry
+may mean almost any decorative stuff, and so comes it that we speak of
+the wonderful hanging which gives name to this chapter as the tapestry
+of Bayeux (plates facing pages 242, 243 and 244), when it is in
+reality an embroidery. But so much is it confused with true tapestry,
+and so poignantly does it interest the Anglo-Saxon that we will
+introduce it here, even while acknowledging its extraneous character.
+
+To begin with, then, we say frankly that it is not a tapestry; that it
+has no place in this book. And then we will trail its length through a
+short review of its history and its interest as a human document of
+the first order.
+
+In itself it is a strip of holland--brown, heavy linen cloth,
+measuring in length about two hundred and thirty-one feet, and in
+width, nineteen and two-thirds inches--remarkable dimensions which are
+accounted for in the neatest way. The hanging was used in the
+cathedral of the little French city of Bayeux, draped entirely around
+the nave of the Norman Cathedral, which space it exactly covered. This
+indicates to archeologists the original purpose of the hanging.
+
+On the brown linen is embroidered in coloured wools a panoramic
+succession of incidents, with border top and bottom. The colours are
+but eight, two shades each of green and blue, with yellow,
+dove-colour, red and brown.
+
+This, in brief, is the great Bayeux tapestry. But its threads breathe
+history; its stitches sing romance; and we who love to touch
+humorously the spirits of brothers who lived so long ago, find here
+the matter that humanly unites the Eleventh Century with the
+Twentieth.
+
+The subject is the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in
+1066. That is fixed beyond a doubt, so that the precious cloth cannot
+trail its ends any further back into antiquity than that event.
+However, even the most insatiable antiquarian of European specialties
+is smilingly content with such a date.
+
+Legend has it that Queen Matilda, the wife of the conqueror, executed
+the work as an evidence of the devotion and adulation that were his
+due and her pleasure: There are lovely pictures in the mind of Matilda
+in the safety of the chambers of the old castle at Caen, directing
+each day a corps of lovely ladies in the task of their historic
+embroidery, each one sewing into the fabric her own secret thoughts of
+lover or husband absent on the great Conqueror's business. In absence
+of direct testimony to the contrary, why not let us believe this
+which comes as near truth as any legend may, and fits the case most
+pleasantly?
+
+ [Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]
+
+ [Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]
+
+The history it portrays in all its seventy-odd yards is easy enough to
+verify. That is like working out a puzzle with the key in hand. But
+the history of this keenly interesting embroidery is not so easy.
+
+The records are niggardly. Inventories record it in 1369 and 1476. In
+an inventory of the Bishop of Bayeux it is mentioned in 1563. About
+this time it was in ecclesiastical hands and used for decorating the
+nave of the Bayeux Cathedral.
+
+Then the world forgot it.
+
+How the world rediscovered that which was never lost is interesting
+matter. Here is the story:
+
+In 1724 an antiquarian found a drawing of about ten yards long, taken
+from the tapestry. Here, said he and his fellow sages, is the drawing
+of some wonderful, ancient work of art, most probably a frieze or
+other decoration carved in wood or stone. Naturally, the desire was to
+find such a monument. But no one could remember such a carving in any
+church or castle.
+
+Father Montfaucon, of Saint Maur, with interest intelligent, wrote to
+the prior of St. Vigor's at Bayeux, and received the most satisfactory
+reply, that the drawing represented not a carving but a hanging in
+possession of his church, and associated with many yards more of the
+same cloth.
+
+So all this time the wonderful relic had lain safe in Bayeux, and
+never was lost, but only forgotten by outsiders. The rediscovery,
+so-called, aroused much comment, and England declared the cloth the
+noblest monument of her history.
+
+It was in use at that time, and after, once a year. It was hung around
+the cathedral nave on St. John's Day, and left for eight days that all
+the people might see it.
+
+The fact that it was not religious in subject, that it could not
+possibly be interpreted otherwise than as a secular history, makes
+remarkable its place in the cathedral. This is explained by the
+suggestion that while Bishop Odo established that precedent, all
+others but followed without thought.
+
+Since 1724 the world outside of Bayeux has never forgotten this
+panorama of a past age, and its history is known from that time on.
+
+The Revolution of France had its effect even on this treasure; or
+would have had if the clergy had not been sufficiently capable to
+defend it. It was hidden in the depositories of the cathedral until
+the storm was over.
+
+It seems there was no treasure in Europe unknown to Napoleon. He
+commanded in 1803 that the Bayeux tapestry, of which he had heard so
+much, be brought to the National Museum for his inspection. The
+playwrights of Paris seized on the pictured cloth as material for
+their imagination, and, refusing to take seriously the crude figures,
+wrote humorously of Matilda eternally at work over her ridiculous
+task, surrounded with simple ladies equally blind to art and nature.
+It is only too easy to let humour play about the ill-drawn figures.
+They must be taken grandly serious, or ridicule will thrust tongue in
+cheek. It is to these French plays of 1804 that we owe the firmness
+of the tradition that Queen Matilda in 1066 worked the embroidery.
+
+ [Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY (DETAIL), 1066]
+
+Napoleon returned the cloth to Bayeux, not to the church, but to the
+Hotel de Ville, in which manner it became the property of the civil
+authorities, instead of the ecclesiastic. It was rolled on cylinders,
+that by an easy mechanism it might be seen by visitors. But the fabric
+suffered much by the handling of a curious public. Even the most
+enlightened and considerate hands can break threads which time has
+played with for eight centuries.
+
+It was decided, therefore, to give the ancient _toile fatiguee_ a
+quiet, permanent home. For this purpose a museum was built, and about
+1835 the great Bayeux tapestry was carefully installed behind glass,
+its full length extended on the walls for all to see who journey
+thither and who ring the guardian's bell at the courtyard's handsome
+portico.
+
+Once since then, once only, has the venerable fabric left its cabinet.
+This was at the time of the Prussians when, in 1871, France trembled
+for even her most intimate and special treasures.
+
+The tapestry was taken from its case, rolled with care and placed in a
+zinc cylinder, hermetically sealed. Then it was placed far from harm;
+but exactly where, is a secret that the guardians of the tapestry do
+well to conserve. There might be another trouble, and asylum needed
+for the treasure in the future.
+
+The pictures of the great embroidery are such as a child might draw,
+for crudeness; but the archeologist knows how to read into them a
+thousand vital points. History helps out, too, with the story of
+Harold, moustached like the proper Englishman of to-day, taking a
+commission from William, riding gaily out on a gentleman's errand, not
+a warrior's. This is shown by the falcon on his wrist, that wonderful
+bird of the Middle Ages that marked the gentleman by his associations,
+marked the high-born man on an errand of peace or pleasure.
+
+In these travelling days, no sooner do we land in Normandy than Mount
+St. Michael looms up as a happy pilgrimage. So to the same religious
+refuge Harold went on the pictured cloth, crossed the adjacent river
+in peril, and--how pleasingly does the past leap up and tap the
+present--he floundered in the quicksands that surround the Mount, and
+about which the driver of your carriage across the _passerelle_ will
+tell you recent tales of similar flounderings.
+
+And when in Brittany, who does not go to tumbley-down Dinan to see its
+ancient gates and walls, its palaces of Queen Anne, its lurching crowd
+of houses? It is thither that Harold, made of threads of ancient wool,
+sped and gave battle after the manner of his time.
+
+Another link to make us love this relic of the olden time: It is the
+star, the star so great that the space of the picture is all too small
+to place it; so the excited hands of the embroiderers set it outside
+the limit, in the border.
+
+It flames over false Harold's head and he remembers sombrely that it
+is an omen of a change of rule. He is king now, has usurped a throne,
+has had himself crowned. But for how long is he monarch, with this
+flaming menace burning into his courage? The year finishing saw the
+prophecy fulfilled by the coming of the conqueror.
+
+It was this section of the tapestry that, when it came to Paris, had
+power to startle Napoleon, ever superstitious, ever ready to read
+signs. The star over Harold's head reminded him of the possible
+brevity of his own eminence.
+
+The star that blazed in 1066--we have found it. It was not imaginary.
+Behold how prettily the bits of history fit together, even though we
+go far afield to find those bits. This one comes from China. Records
+were better kept there in those times than in Christian Europe; and
+the Chinese astronomers write of a star appearing April 2, 1066, which
+was seen first in the early morning sky, then after a time disappeared
+to reappear in the evening sky, with a flaming tail, most agreeably
+sensational. It was Halley's comet, the same that we watched in 1910
+with no superstitious fear at all for princes nor for powers. But it
+is interesting to know that our modern comet was recorded in China in
+the Eleventh Century, and has its portrait on the Bayeux tapestry, and
+that it frightened the great Harold into a fit of guilty conscience.
+
+The archeologist gives reason for the faith that is in him concerning
+the Bayeux tapestry by reading the language of its details, such as
+the style of arms used by its preposterous soldiers; by gestures; by
+groupings of its figures; and we are only too glad to believe his
+wondrous deductions.
+
+There are in all fifteen hundred and twelve figures in this celebrated
+cloth, if one includes birds, beasts, boats, _et cetera_, with the
+men; and amidst all this elongated crowd is but one woman. Queen
+Matilda, left at home for months, immured with her ladies, probably
+had quite enough of women to refrain easily from portraying them.
+Needless to say, this one embroidered lady interests poignantly the
+archeologist.
+
+Most of the animals are in the border--active little beasts who make a
+running accompaniment to the tale they adorn. This excepts the very
+wonderful horses ridden by knights of action.
+
+Scenes of the pictured history of William's conquest are divided one
+from the other by trees. Possibly the archeologist sees in these
+evidences of extinct varieties, for not in all this round, green world
+do trees grow like unto those of the Bayeux tapestry. They are dream
+trees from the gardens of the Hesperides, and set in useful decoration
+to divide event from event and to give sensations to the student of
+the tree in ornament.
+
+Such is the Bayeux tapestry, which, as was conscientiously forewarned,
+is not a tapestry at all, but the most interesting embroidery of
+Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+TO-DAY
+
+
+The making of inspired tapestry does not belong to to-day. The _amour
+propre_ suffers a distinct pain in this acknowledgment. It were far
+more agreeable to foster the feeling that this age is in advance of
+any other, that we are at the front of the world's progress.
+
+So we are in many matters, but those matters are all bent toward one
+thing--making haste. Economy of time occupies the attention of
+scientist, inventor, labourer. Yet a lavish expenditure of time is the
+one thing the perfect tapestry inexorably demands, and that is the
+fundamental reason why it cannot now enter a brilliant period of
+production like those of the past.
+
+It is not that one atelier cannot find enough weavers to devote their
+lives to sober, leisurely production; it is that the stimulating
+effect is gone, of a craft eagerly pursued in various centres, where
+guilds may be formed, where healthy rivalry spurs to excellence, where
+the world of the fine arts is also vitally concerned.
+
+The great hangings of the past were the natural expression of
+decoration in those days, the natural demand of pomp, of splendour and
+of comfort. As in all things great and small, the act is but the
+visible expression of an inward impulse, and we of to-day have not the
+spirit that expresses itself in the reverent building of cathedrals,
+or in the inspired composition of tapestries.
+
+This is to be entirely distinguished from appreciation. That gift we
+have, and it is momentarily increasing. To be entirely commercial,
+which view is of course not the right one, one need only watch the
+reports of sales at home and abroad to see what this latter-day
+appreciation means in pelf. In England a tapestry was recently
+unearthed and identified as one of the series of seven woven for
+Cardinal Woolsey. It is not of extraordinary size, but was woven in
+the interesting years hovering above and below the century mark of
+1500. The time was when public favour spoke for the upholding of
+morality with a conspicuousness which could be called Puritanism, were
+the anachronism possible. Pointing a moral was the fundamental excuse
+for pictorial art. This tapestry represents one of _The Seven Deadly
+Sins_. Hampton Court displays the three other known pieces of the
+series, and he who harbours this most recent discovery has paid
+$33,000 for the privilege.
+
+But that is a tiny sum compared to the price that rumour accredits Mr.
+Morgan with paying for _The Adoration of the Eternal Father_ (called
+also _The Kingdom of Heaven_). And this is topped by $750,000 paid for
+a Boucher set of five pieces. One might continue to enumerate the
+sales where enormous sums are laid down in appreciation of the men
+whose excellence of work we cannot achieve, but these sums paid only
+show with pathetic discouragement the completeness with which the
+spirit of commercialism has replaced the spirit of art, at least in
+the expression of art that occupies our attention.
+
+ [Illustration: MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY, LOUIS XV INSPIRATION]
+
+ [Illustration: MODERN AMERICAN TAPESTRY FROM FRENCH INSPIRATION]
+
+If, then, this is not an age of production, but of appreciation,
+it, too, has its natural expression. First it is the acquiring at any
+sacrifice of the ancient hangings wherever they are found; and after
+that it is their restoration and preservation. This is the reason for
+recent high prices and the reason, too, for the establishment of
+ateliers of repair, which are found in all large centres in Europe as
+well as wherever any important museum exists in America.
+
+It would not be possible nor profitable to dwell on the tapestry
+repair shops of Europe. They have always been; the industry is one
+that has existed since the Burgundian dukes tore holes in their
+magnificent tapestries by dragging them over the face of Europe, and
+since Henry the Eighth, in eager imitation of the continentals,
+established in the royal household a supervisor of tapestry repairs.
+Paris is full of repairers, and in the little streets on the other
+side of the Seine old women sit in doorways on a sunny day, defeating
+the efforts of time to destroy the loved _toiles peintes_. But this
+haphazard repair, done on the knee, as a garment might be mended, is
+not comparable to the careful, exact work of the restorer at her
+frame. One ranks as woman's natural task of nine stitches, while the
+other is the work of intelligent patience and skilled endeavour.
+
+Wherever looms are set up, a department of repair is the logical
+accompaniment. As every tapestry taken from the loom appears punctured
+with tiny slits, places left open in the weaving, and as all of these
+need careful sewing before the tapestry is finished, a corps of
+needlewomen is a part of a loom's equipment. This is true in all but
+the ateliers of the Merton Abbey factory, of which we shall speak
+later.
+
+Apart from repairs, what is being done in the present day? So little
+that historians of the future are going to find scant pickings for
+their record.
+
+
+FRANCE
+
+The Gobelins factory being the last one to make a permanent
+contribution to art, the impulse is to ask what it is doing now. That
+is easily answered, but there is no man so optimistic that he can find
+therein matter for hope.
+
+France is commendably determined not to let the great industry die. It
+would seem a loss of ancient glory to shut down the Gobelins. Yet why
+does it live? It lives because a body of men have the patriotic pride
+to keep it alive. But as for its products, they are without
+inspiration, without beauty to the eye trained to higher expressions
+of art.
+
+The Gobelins to-day is almost purely a museum, not only in the
+treasures it exposes in its collection of ancient "toiles," but
+because here is preserved the use of the high-warp loom, and the same
+method of manufacture as in other and better times. A crowd of
+interested folk drift in and out between the portals, survey the
+Pavilion of Louis XIV and the court, the garden and the stream, then,
+turning inside, the modern surveys the work of the ancient, the
+remnants of time. And no less curious and no less remote do the old
+tapestries seem than the atelier where the high looms rear their
+cylinders and mute men play their colour harmonies on the warp. It
+all seems of other times; it all seems dead. And it is a dead art.
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Luxembourg, Paris]
+
+ [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+ Pantheon, Paris]
+
+The tapestries on the looms are garish, crude, modern art in its
+cheapest expression; or else they are brilliant-hued copies of
+time-softened paintings that were never meant to be translated into
+wool and silk.
+
+The looms are always busy, nevertheless. There is always preserved a
+staff of officers, the director, the chemist of dyes, and all that;
+and the tapissiers are careful workmen, with perfection, not haste, in
+view. The State directs the work, the State pays for it, the State
+consumes the products. That is the Republic's way of continuing the
+craft that was the serious pleasure of kings. But there is now no
+personal element to give it the vital touch. There is no Gabrielle
+d'Estrees, 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 Eugenie
+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 Rene's
+_Aurora_, Andrea del Sarto's _Charity_. There were many more, but this
+list gives sufficiently well the condition of inspiration at the
+Gobelins up to the third quarter of the Nineteenth Century.
+
+Paul Baudry appeared at about this time striking a clear pure note of
+delicate decoration. The few panels that he drew for the Gobelins
+charm the eye with happy reminiscences of Lebrun, of Claude Audran, a
+potpourri of petals fallen from the roses of yesterday mixed with the
+spices of to-day.
+
+But if the work of this talented artist illustrates anything, it is
+the change in the uses of tapestries. The modern ones are made to be
+framed, as flat as the wall against which they are secured. In a word,
+they take the place of frescoes. The pleasure of touching a mobile
+fabric is lost. A fold in such a dainty piece would break its beauty.
+Almost must a woven panel of our day fit the panel it fills as
+exactly as the wood-work of a room fits its dimensions.
+
+The Nineteenth Century at the Gobelins was finished by mistakenly
+copying Ghirlandajo, Correggio, others of their time.
+
+In the beginning of this century, the spirit of pure decoration again
+became animated. Instead of copying old painters, the Gobelins began
+to copy old cartoons. The effect of this is to increase the
+responsibility of the weaver, and with responsibility comes strength.
+
+The models of Boucher, and the _Grotesques_ of Italian Renaissance
+drawing are given even now to the weavers as a training in both taste
+and skill. But better than all is the present wisdom of the Gobelins,
+which has directly faced the fact that it were better to copy the
+tapestries of old excellence than to copy paintings of no matter what
+altitude of art.
+
+Modern cartoons are used, as we know, commanded for various public
+buildings in France, but the copying of old tapestries exercises a far
+happier influence on the weavers. If this is not an age of creation in
+art, at least it need not be an age of false gods, notwithstanding the
+seriousness given to distortions of the Matisse and post-impressionist
+school.
+
+A careful copying of old tapestries--and in this case old means those
+of the high periods of perfection--has led to a result from which much
+may be expected. This is the enormous reduction in the number of tones
+used. Gothic tapestries of stained glass effect had a restricted range
+of colour. By this brief gamut the weaver made his own gradations of
+colour, and the passage from light to shadow, by hatching, which was
+in effect but a weaving of alternating lines of two colours, much as
+an artist in pen-and-ink draws parallel lines for shading. Tapestries
+thus woven resist well the attacks of light and time.
+
+To sum up the present attitude of the Gobelins, then, is to say that
+the director of to-day encourages the education of taste in the
+weavers by encouraging them to copy old tapestries instead of
+paintings old or new, and in a reduction of the number of the tones
+employed. The talent of an artist is thus made necessary to the
+tapissier, for shadings are left to him to accomplish by his own skill
+instead of by recourse to the forty thousand shades that are stored on
+the shelves of the store-room.
+
+The manufactory at Beauvais, being also under the State, is associated
+with the greater factory in the glance at modern conditions. Both
+factories weave primarily for the State. Both factories keep alive an
+ancient industry, and both have permission to sell their precious
+wares to the private client. That such sales are rarely made is due to
+the indifference of the State, which stipulates that its own work
+shall have first place on the looms, that only when a loom is idle may
+it be used for a private patron. The length of time, therefore, that
+must elapse before an order is executed--two or three years,
+perhaps--is a tiresome condition that very few will accept.
+
+ [Illustration: THE ADORATION
+
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Figures by Burne-Jones]
+
+ [Illustration: DAVID INSTRUCTING SOLOMON IN THE BUILDING OF THE
+ TEMPLE
+
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Burne-Jones, Artist]
+
+Beauvais, with its low-warp looms, is more celebrated for its small
+pieces of work than for large hangings. The tendency toward the latter
+ended some time ago, and in our time Beauvais makes mainly those
+exquisite coverings for seats and screens that give the beholder a
+thrill of artistic joy and a determination to possess something
+similar. The models of Behagle, 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 AEsop'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 aesthetic school in England. Watts,
+Rossetti and Burne-Jones were harking back to antiquity for
+inspiration. Morris associated with him the latter, who drew wondrous
+figures of maids and men and angels, figures filled with the devout
+spirit of the time when religion was paramount, and perfect with the
+art of to-day.
+
+The romance of _The Holy Grail_ gave happy theme for the work, and
+three beautiful tapestries made the set. _The Adoration of the Magi_
+was another, made for Exeter College, Oxford. Sir Edward Burne-Jones
+designed all these wondrous pictures, and the wisdom of Morris
+decreed that the _Grail_ series should not be oft repeated. The
+first figure tapestry woven on the looms was a fancy drawn by Walter
+Crane, called _The Goose Girl_.
+
+ [Illustration: TRUTH BLINDFOLDED
+
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Byram Shaw, Artist]
+
+The most enchantingly mediaeval and most modernly perfect piece is by
+Burne-Jones, called _David Instructing Solomon in the Building of the
+Temple_. (Plate facing page 257.) In this the time of Gothic beauty
+lives again. Planes are repeated, figures are massed, detail is clear
+and impressive, yet modern laws of drawing concentrate the interest on
+the central action as strongly as though all else were subservient.
+
+_The Passing of Venus_ was Burne-Jones' last cartoon for Merton Abbey
+looms. (Plate facing page 260.) Although a critique of the art of this
+great painter would be out of place in a book on the applied arts, at
+least it is allowable to express the conviction that more beautiful,
+more fitting designs for tapestry it would be difficult to imagine.
+Modern work of this sort has produced nothing that approaches them,
+preserving as they do the sincerity and reverence of a simple people,
+the ideality of a conscientious age, yet softening all technical
+faults with modern finish. An unhappy fact is that this tapestry,
+which was considered by the Merton Abbey works as its _chef d'oeuvre_,
+was destroyed by fire in the Brussels Exhibition of 1910.
+
+Alas for tapestry weaving of to-day, the usual modern cartoon is a
+staring anachronism, and a conglomerate of modes. An "art nouveau"
+lady poses in a Gothic setting, a Thayer angel stands in a Boucher
+entourage, and both eye and intelligence are revolted. The master
+craftsman and artist, William Morris, alone has known how to produce
+acceptable modern work from modern cartoons. Other examples are
+_Angeli Laudantes_, and _The Adoration_. (Plates facing pages 261 and
+256.)
+
+A false note is sometimes struck, even in this factory of wondrous
+taste. In _Truth Blindfolded_ (plate facing page 258), Mr. Byram Shaw
+has drawn the central figure as Cabanel might have done a decade ago,
+while every other figure in the group might have been done by some
+hand dead these four hundred years.
+
+Morris' manner of procedure differed little from that of the decorator
+Lebrun, although his work was a private enterprise and in no way to be
+compared with the royal factory of a rich king. Burne-Jones drew the
+figures; H. Dearle, a pupil, and Philip Webb drew backgrounds and
+animals, but Morris held in his own hands the arrangement of all. It
+was as though a gardener brought in a sheaf of cut roses and the
+master hand arranged them. Mr. Dearle directed some compositions with
+skill and talent.
+
+With the passing of William Morris an inevitable change is visible in
+the cartoons. The Gothic note is not continued, nor the atmosphere of
+sanctity, which is its usual accompaniment. A tapestry of 1908 from
+the design of _The Chace_ by Heyward Sumner suggests long hours with
+the Flemish landscapists of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
+with a jarring note of Pan dragged in by the ears to huddle under
+foliage obviously introduced for this purpose.
+
+ [Illustration: THE PASSING OF VENUS
+
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-Jones]
+
+ [Illustration: ANGELI LAUDANTES
+
+ Merton Abbey Tapestry]
+
+But criticism of this aberration cannot hurt the wondrous inspired
+work directed by Morris, and which it were well for a beauty-loving
+world to have often repeated. Unhappily, the Merton Abbey works are
+bound not to repeat the superb series of the _Grail_. The entire set
+has been woven twice, and three pieces of it a third time--and there
+it ends. This is well for the value of the tapestries, but is it not a
+providence too thrifty when the public is considered? In ages to come,
+perhaps, other looms will repeat, and our times will glow with the
+fame thereof.
+
+Before leaving the subject of the Merton Abbey tapestries, it is
+interesting to note a technical change in the weaving. By
+intertwisting the threads of the chain or warp at the back, a way is
+found to avoid the slits in weaving that are left to be sewn together
+with the needle in all old work. This method has been proved the
+stronger of the two. The strain of hanging proves too great for the
+strength of the stitches, and on many a tapestry appear gaping wounds
+which call for yet more stitching. But in the new method the fabric
+leaves the loom intact.
+
+The determination of William Morris to catch old secrets by fitting
+his feet into old footsteps, led him to employ only the loom of the
+best weavers in the ancient long ago. The high-warp loom is the only
+one in use at the Merton Abbey works.
+
+
+AMERICA
+
+America makes heavy demands for tapestries, but the art of producing
+them is not indigenous here. We are not without looms, however. The
+first piece of tapestry woven in America--to please the ethnologist
+we will grant that it was woven by Zuni or Toltec or other aborigine.
+But the fabric approaching that of Arras or Gobelins, was woven in New
+York, in 1893, in the looms of the late William Baumgarten. It is
+preserved as a curiosity, as being the first. It is a chair seat woven
+after the designs popular with Louis XV and his court, a plain
+background of solid colour on which is thrown a floral ornament.
+
+The loom was a small affair of the low-warp type, and was operated by
+a Frenchman who came to this country for the purpose of starting the
+craft on new soil.
+
+The sequence to this small beginning was the establishment of tapestry
+ateliers at Williamsbridge, a suburb of New York. Like the Gobelins
+factory, this was located in an old building on the banks of a little
+stream, the Bronx. Workmen were imported, some from Aubusson, who knew
+the craft; these took apprentices, as of old, and trained them for the
+work. The looms were all of the low-warp pattern.
+
+It may be of interest to those who like figures, to know that the work
+of the Baumgarten atelier averages in price about sixty dollars a
+square yard. Perhaps this will help a little in deciding whether or
+not the price is reasonable when a dealer seductively spreads his
+ancient wares. Modern cartoons of the Baumgarten factory lack the
+charm of the old designs, but the adaptations and copies of ancient
+pieces are particularly happy. No better execution could be wished
+for. The factory has increased its looms to the number of twenty-two,
+and has its regular corps of tapissiers, dyers, repairers, etc.
+Nowhere is the life of the weaver so nearly like that of his prototype
+in the golden age of tapestry. The colony on the Bronx is like a bit
+of old Europe set intact on American soil.
+
+ [Illustration: AMERICAN (BAUMGARTEN) TAPESTRY COPIED FROM THE GOTHIC]
+
+ [Illustration: DRYADS AND FAUNS
+
+ From Herter Looms, New York, 1910]
+
+It is odd that New York should have more tapestry looms at work than
+has Paris. The Baumgarten looms exceed in number the present Gobelins,
+and the Herter looms add many more. The ateliers of Albert Herter are
+in the busiest part of New York, and here are woven by hand many
+fabrics of varying degrees of excellence. It is not Mr. Herter's
+intention to produce only fine wall hangings, but to supply as well
+floor coverings "a la facon 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 portieres of artistic value.
+
+Apart from this commendable aim, the Herter looms are also given to
+making copies of the antique in the finest of weaving, and to
+producing certain original pieces expressing the decorative spirit of
+our day. Besides this, the work is distinguished by certain
+combinations of antique and modern style that confuse the seeker after
+purity of style. That the effect is pleasing must be acknowledged as
+illustrated in the plate showing a tapestry for the country house of
+Mrs. E. H. Harriman. (Plate facing page 263.) It is not easy in a
+review of tapestry weaving of to-day to find any great encouragement.
+
+These are times of commerce more than of art. If art can be made
+profitable commercially, well and good. If not, it starves in a garret
+along with the artist. If the demand for modern tapestries was large
+enough, the art would flourish--perhaps. But it is not a large demand,
+for many reasons, chief among which is the incontrovertible one that
+the modern work is seldom pleasing. The whole world is occupied with
+science and commerce, and art does not create under their influence as
+in more ideal times. What can the trained eye and the cultivated taste
+do other than turn back to the products of other days?
+
+We have artists in our own country whose qualities would make of them
+marvellous composers of cartoons. The imagination and execution of
+Maxfield Parrish, for example, added to his richness of colouring,
+would be translatable in wool under the hands of an artist-weaver. And
+the designs which take the name of "poster" and are characterised by
+strength, simplicity and few tones, why would they not give the same
+crispness of detail that constitutes one of the charms of Gothic work?
+Perhaps the factories existent in America will work out this line of
+thought, combine it with honesty of material and labour, and give us
+the honour of prominence in an ancient art's revival.
+
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+
+BEST PERIODS AND THEIR DATES
+
+
+ EARLIEST TAPESTRY LOOMS Prehistoric
+ EUROPEAN EARLY ATTEMPTS Twelfth To Fourteenth Centuries
+ ARRAS AND BURGUNDIAN TAPESTRY Early Fifteenth Century
+ GOTHIC PERFECTION, FLANDERS About Fifteen Hundred
+ GOTHIC PERFECTION, FRANCE About Fifteen Hundred
+ ITALIAN FACTORIES Fifteenth Century
+ RAPHAEL CARTOONS IN FLANDERS 1515-1519
+ RENAISSANCE PERFECTION, FLANDERS 1515 To Second Half of Century
+ BRUSSELS MARK 1528
+ FLEMISH DECADENCE End of Sixteenth Century
+ FRENCH RISE End of Sixteenth Century
+ FRENCH ORGANISATION 1597, Reign of Henri IV
+ ENGLISH SUPREMACY, MORTLAKE
+ ESTABLISHED 1619
+ ESTABLISHMENT OF GOBELINS 1662, Reign of Louis XIV
+ BEST HEROIC PERIOD OF GOBELINS Last Half of Seventeenth Century
+ BEST DECORATIVE PERIOD OF
+ GOBELINS Middle of Eighteenth Century
+ DECADENCE OF GOBELINS End of Eighteenth Century
+ RECENT TIMES, ENGLAND, WM. MORRIS End of Nineteenth Century
+ RECENT TIMES, AMERICA End of Nineteenth Century
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ Abbot Robert, 20.
+
+ _Achilles, Story of_, 169.
+
+ Adelaide, Queen, 22.
+
+ _Adoration of the Eternal Father, The_, 59, 250, 260.
+
+ _Adoration of the Magi, The_, 258.
+
+ _Acts of the Apostles_, 64, 86, 147, 169, 197, 205, 214, 221.
+
+ _Alcisthenes, Mantle of_, 19.
+
+ _Alexander, History of_, 115, 172, 197.
+
+ Alfonso II (d'Este), 83.
+
+ America, 261-264.
+
+ American interest, 10.
+
+ Amorini, 209.
+
+ Andrea del Sarto, 73.
+
+ _Angeli Laudantes_, 260.
+
+ Angers, 29, 30.
+
+ Angivillier, Count of, 131, 133, 137.
+
+ _Annunciation, The_, 61.
+
+ Antin, Duke d', 128, 130, 131, 148.
+
+ _Antony and Cleopatra_, 80, 110, 151, 187, 210, 222.
+
+ _Apocalypse_, 23, 25, 30, 45, 217.
+
+ Apprentices, 5.
+
+ Architectural detail, 177-179.
+
+ _Armide_, 130.
+
+ Arras, 28, 32, 34, 38, 47, 48, 51, 54, 66, 90, 106, 129, 163, 176,
+ 203, 229.
+
+ Arazzeria Medicea, 84.
+
+ Artemisia, 93, 94.
+
+ Artois, 32, 34, 163.
+
+ Aubusson, 150, 152-158.
+
+ Audran, Claude, 122-124, 126-128, 132.
+
+ Audran, Jean, 138.
+
+ _Aurora_, 254.
+
+
+ Babylon, 18.
+
+ Bacchiacca, 76, 223.
+
+ Backgrounds, 185.
+
+ _Baillee 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, Ecole des, 204.
+
+ Behagle, Philip, 147, 148, 257.
+
+ Belle, Augustin, 138.
+
+ Bellegarde, 157.
+
+ Berne, Cathedral of, 37, 53.
+
+ Bernini, 10.
+
+ Berthelemy, 141.
+
+ Besnier, 152.
+
+ Bible, influence of, 130.
+
+ Bievre, 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 Temeraire, 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.
+
+ Halle, 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.
+
+ Lefevre (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.
+
+ Liege, tapestries of, 48.
+
+ _Life of Marie de Medici_, 197.
+
+ _Life of the King_, 114, 144, 188.
+
+ Lisse, 3, 193.
+
+ Loches, church of, 41.
+
+ London, 165.
+
+ "Long wool" (_longue laine_), 160.
+
+ Looms, 3, 226-230.
+
+ Lorenzo the Magnificent, 86.
+
+ Louis XI, 36, 47, 48, 50, 54.
+
+ Louis XII, 48.
+
+ Louis XIII, 98.
+
+ Louis XIV, 10, 97-107, 117, 118, 122, 129, 145, 155-157, 161, 188,
+ 203, 211, 212.
+
+ Louis XV, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 150, 162, 191, 205,
+ 213.
+
+ Louis XVI, 133, 136, 137, 152, 162.
+
+ Louvois, 116-121.
+
+ Louvre, 97, 108, 109, 115, 160, 161.
+
+ _Loves of the Gods_, 132.
+
+ Low-warp, 3, 78, 109, 114, 147, 157, 158, 193, 227, 228, 230.
+
+
+ Maecht, Philip de, 166, 170, 223, 224.
+
+ Maincy, factory of. _See_ Vaux.
+
+ Maintenon, Mme. de, 118, 122, 124.
+
+ Mangelschot, 138.
+
+ Mantegna, Andrea, 61, 73, 81, 171.
+
+ Manufactory, Royal (Aubusson), 156.
+
+ Marie Antoinette, 133, 137, 152.
+
+ _Marie de Medici, Life of_, 197.
+
+ Marie Therese, 118.
+
+ Marks, 216-224.
+
+ Martel, Charles, 154, 155.
+
+ Mary's Chamber at Holyrood, 65.
+
+ Master-weaver, 6.
+
+ Matilda (Queen), 21, 242, 245.
+
+ _Mausolus and Artemisia_, 93.
+
+ Mazarin, Cardinal, 59, 100.
+
+ Mazarin tapestry, 56, 196.
+
+ Medici, 84, 92, 94.
+
+ _Meleager and Atalanta_, 222.
+
+ Memling, 55.
+
+ Mercier, Pierre, 157.
+
+ _Mercury_, 75, 76, 78, 196.
+
+ Merton Abbey, 252, 257-261.
+
+ Metropolitan Museum of Art, 15, 40, 42, 46, 52, 58, 59, 76, 80,
+ 162, 170, 174, 176, 187, 210, 238.
+
+ Meulen, Francois de la, 114.
+
+ Michael Angelo, 84.
+
+ Micou, 148.
+
+ Middle Ages, 5, 6, 7, 19, 21, 27, 42, 201.
+
+ Mignard, Pierre, 119, 120, 121.
+
+ Millefleurs, 4, 13.
+
+ Missals, 5.
+
+ Monasteries, influence of, 21, 22.
+
+ Montespan, Mme. de, 118, 131, 148.
+
+ Montezert, Pierre de, 158.
+
+ _Months, The_, 112, 133, 197, 212.
+
+ Morgan, J. P., 40, 56, 59, 128, 196, 250.
+
+ Morris, William, 257-261.
+
+ Mortlake, 163-171, 197, 223.
+
+ Mozin, Jean Baptiste, 109.
+
+ _Muses_, 104, 141.
+
+ Museums, Boston Fine Arts, 15, 46, 56, 238;
+ Chicago Institute of Art, 47, 78, 221;
+ Cluny, 44, 54;
+ Gobelins (Paris), 92, 99, 252;
+ Metropolitan (New York), 15, 40, 42, 52, 58, 59, 76, 80, 162,
+ 170, 174, 176, 187, 210, 238;
+ Nancy, 37.
+
+ _Mysteries of the Life and Death of Jesus Christ, The_, 87, 208.
+
+
+ Nancy, Museum of, 37.
+
+ Nantes, Edict of; its effect, 95, 118, 157.
+
+ Napoleon, 136, 142, 143, 144, 208.
+
+ _Napoleon Crossing the Alps_, 144.
+
+ Natoire, Charles, 151.
+
+ Neilson, 132.
+
+ Nineteenth Century, 255.
+
+ Notre Dame, 21.
+
+
+ Otho, Count of Burgundy, 32.
+
+ Oudenarde, 221.
+
+ Oudry, 131, 148-152, 257.
+
+
+ Pannemaker, Wilhelm de, 62, 75, 220.
+
+ Paris, 10, 28, 29, 30, 47, 51, 90, 98, 132, 163, 222, 229.
+
+ Parrish, Maxfield, 264.
+
+ Parrocel, Charles, 130.
+
+ _Passing of Venus, The_, 259.
+
+ Pendleton, Charlotte, 235.
+
+ Penelope, 15, 16, 21, 227.
+
+ Pepersack, Daniel, 99.
+
+ Percier, 143.
+
+ "_Perse, a la facon de, ou du Levant_," 160.
+
+ Persia, 19.
+
+ Personages, 4.
+
+ Perspective, 175-177.
+
+ Pharaohs, 18, 57.
+
+ Philip the Good, 36.
+
+ Philip the Hardy, 22, 29, 33, 34, 35, 45.
+
+ Philippe (Regent), 122, 128, 134, 148, 236.
+
+ Pickering, Sir Gilbert, 171.
+
+ Pius X, Pope, 9.
+
+ Planche, Francois de la, 95, 96, 97, 107.
+
+ Poitiers, 23, 154, 155.
+
+ Poitou, Count of, 23.
+
+ _Portieres des Dieux_, 126.
+
+ Portraits, 133, 140, 143, 162, 253.
+
+ _Presentation in the Temple, The_, 30.
+
+
+ Quedlimburg Hanging, 25.
+
+ Quentin Matsys, 58, 59.
+
+
+ Raphael, 9, 64, 67, 69, 70, 71, 79, 84, 118, 119, 145, 169, 187,
+ 189, 205, 207, 214, 216, 221.
+
+ Ravaillac, 97.
+
+ Renaissance, influence of, 9, 53, 61, 67, 68, 69, 70, 77, 78, 174,
+ 178, 182, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192.
+
+ _Renommes, Les_, 111.
+
+ Repairs, 237-240.
+
+ Revolution, French, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 152.
+
+ _Reward of Virtue, The_, 51.
+
+ Rheims, 99, 155.
+
+ Richelieu, 99.
+
+ Riesner, 107.
+
+ Riviera, Giacomo della, 87.
+
+ Rococo, 128.
+
+ Roman influence, 186.
+
+ Romanelli, 87, 88, 130.
+
+ Romano, Giulio, 73, 74, 84, 93, 118.
+
+ Rome, 18, 27.
+
+ Rome, Jean de, or Jan von Room, 56, 58, 59, 216.
+
+ Rost, John, 76, 84, 85, 223.
+
+ Rouen, 21.
+
+ Royal Collection, Madrid, 187.
+
+ _Royal Hunts, The_, 130, 188.
+
+ _Royal Residences, The_, 112, 197, 203, 212.
+
+ Rubens, 79, 104, 110, 111, 112, 169, 187, 209, 210, 211, 214.
+
+ Ryerson collection, 59, 60, 61.
+
+ Ryswick, Peace of, 121.
+
+
+ _Sack of Jerusalem, The_, 45, 176.
+
+ _Sacraments, The_, 38, 46, 52, 174, 176, 192.
+
+ _Sacred and Profane Love_, 254.
+
+ St. Denis, abbey of, 22.
+
+ St. Florent, Abbot of, 23.
+
+ St. Germain, 109.
+
+ St. John the Divine, Cathedral of, 87, 88, 208.
+
+ St. Marceau, 97.
+
+ St. Merri, 95.
+
+ Saracens, 28, 154, 155, 178.
+
+ Sarrazinois, 28, 29, 47.
+
+ Saumur, 20.
+
+ Savonnerie, 97, 159-162.
+
+ _Seasons, The_, 132.
+
+ _Seven Cardinal Virtues, The_, 34.
+
+ _Seven Cardinal Vices, The_, 34.
+
+ _Seven Deadly Sins, The_, 6, 250.
+
+ Seventeenth Century, 10, 76, 86, 96, 99, 123, 158, 160, 163, 180,
+ 185, 187, 194, 207, 208, 211.
+
+ Sevigne, Mme. de, 101, 103.
+
+ Sforza Castle, 90.
+
+ Shaw, Byram, 260.
+
+ Shuttle, 4.
+
+ _Siege of Calais_, 141.
+
+ Silver, use of, 6.
+
+ Sixteenth Century, 29, 54, 56, 58, 62, 73, 74, 79, 163, 183, 187,
+ 221, 223.
+
+ Sorel, Agnes, 41.
+
+ Spain, 54.
+
+ Spitzer, collection of Baron, 59, 60, 61.
+
+ _Spring_, 180.
+
+ Stockholm, 152.
+
+ _Story of Christ, The_, 99.
+
+ "Stromaturgie, La," 161.
+
+ Stradano, 85.
+
+ Sully, 94, 95, 164.
+
+ Sumner, Howard, 260.
+
+
+ Tapissiers, 4, 5, 228.
+
+ Tenth Century, 20, 22.
+
+ Tessier, Louis, 135.
+
+ Thirteenth Century, 25, 26, 27, 28.
+
+ Titian, 73.
+
+ Tournelles, 96, 97.
+
+ Tours, 99.
+
+ _Transfiguration, The_, 254.
+
+ "Tres Riches Heures, Les," 41.
+
+ Trinite, Hopital de la, 92, 93, 95, 97, 109.
+
+ _Triumph of Caesar, The_, 171.
+
+ _Triumph of Right, The_, 51.
+
+ _Triumphs of the Gods_, 74.
+
+ _Troy, History of_, 81.
+
+ Troy, J. F. de, 131.
+
+ _Truth Blindfolded_, 260.
+
+ Tuileries, 97.
+
+ Tuscans, 27.
+
+ Twelfth Century, 23, 28.
+
+
+ Urban VIII, History of, 88.
+
+ Urbino, Duke Frederick of, 81.
+
+
+ Valliere, Mme. de la, 118.
+
+ Van Aelst, 70, 71, 86, 220, 221, 222.
+
+ Van den Strecken, Gerard, 80, 222.
+
+ Van der Straaten, Johan, 85.
+
+ Van Dyck, 169.
+
+ Van Eycks, 27, 55, 58.
+
+ Van Orley, Bernard, 55, 220.
+
+ Vaux, factory of, 99, 103, 105, 111, 112.
+
+ Venice, 10, 89.
+
+ _Venus_, 180.
+
+ Verdure, 4, 158, 222.
+
+ Vermeyen, Jan, 62.
+
+ Veronese, Paolo, 73.
+
+ Versailles, 109.
+
+ _Vertumnus and Pomona, The Loves of_, 76, 78, 220.
+
+ Vignory, Count of, 131.
+
+ _Virgin and Saints_, 21.
+
+ _Visit of Louis XIV to the Gobelins_, 113.
+
+ Von Zedlitz, Anna, 170, 224.
+
+ Vouet, Simon, 211.
+
+ _Vulcan, The Expulsion of_, 170, 224.
+
+ _Vulcan, Story of_, 169.
+
+
+ Warp, 232.
+
+ Watteau, Andre, 126, 188.
+
+ Wauters, 87.
+
+ Weave, 194-196.
+
+ Weavers, 5.
+
+ Webb, Philip, 260.
+
+ William the Conqueror, 242.
+
+ Williamsbridge, 262.
+
+ Winterhalter, 253.
+
+ Woolsey, Cardinal, 250.
+
+
+ Zegre, Jean, 103.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Minor typographic errors of spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have
+been repaired. Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved as
+printed.
+
+The following errors in facing page number references have been repaired:
+
+ Page 61--plate reference to page 81 amended to 82.
+
+ Page 76--plate references for the "Vertumnus and Pomona"
+ series amended from 39 through 42 to 72 through 75.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Tapestry Book, by Helen Churchill Candee
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAPESTRY BOOK ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26151.txt or 26151.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+ https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/1/5/26151/
+
+Produced by Eileen Gormly, Alicia Williams (who did the
+scanning, image prep, and OCR), Sam W. and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+ the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+ you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
+ owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+ has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+ Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
+ must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+ prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+ returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+ sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+ address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+ the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+ you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+ does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+ License. You must require such a user to return or
+ destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+ and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+ Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+ money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+ electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+ of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+ distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+ Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+ Chief Executive and Director
+ gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+ https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-06-15 21:39:11 +0000