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.





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.





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.





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.



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.





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.



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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.



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.





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.



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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.