The chair of king Dagobert
The earliest example of mediæval furniture in the Kensington museum is a cast of the chair known as that of Dagobert, in the Louvre. A full description and history of this chair is to be found in the large catalogue, no.68: and we here give a woodcut of it. This work (it is said) was executed by a monk.
When we consider the rapacity of the barbarian inroads into Italy and Rome, and the amount of spoil carried bodily away from Constantinople, Rome, and the great municipal centres of Italy, it is remarkable that so little precious furniture should have survived in other parts of Europe. The Goths under Adolphus in the fifth century carried an immense plunder into Gaul and Spain. "When the treasuries, after the conquest of Spain," says Gibbon, "were plundered by the Arabs, they admired, and they have celebrated, a table of considerable size, of one single piece of solid emerald [that is, glass], encircled with three rows of fine pearls, supported by three hundred and sixty-five feet of gems and massy gold, estimated at the price of five hundred thousand pieces of gold,"—probably the most expensive table on record. It is the value of the materials that has prevented the preservation of many such objects, while the chair of Dagobert is of gilt bronze only.
Early mediæval art, included under the general name of Gothic,continued down to the twelfth century full of Romanesque forms and details. Figures were clothed in classic draperies, but stiff and severe with upright lines and childish attempts to indicate the limbs or joints beneath. Nevertheless, the work of these centuries, rude and archaic as it is, is full of dignity and force. The subjects were often sacred, sometimes of war or incidents of the chase. These last were commonly mixed with animals, lions and dogs, or eagles and hawks, or leaves of the acanthus and other foliage. Throughout these ages the foliated sculpture, the paintings of books and carving of ivory, and no doubt of wood also, was, moreover, composed in endless convolutions, such as may be seen on sculptured stones in Ireland and on the Norwegian doors of the twelfth century. Whether the different convolutions are formed by figures or dragons, or by stalks of foliage twined and knotted together in bold curved lines, symmetrically arranged, each portion is generally carefully designed and traceable through many windings as having a distinct intention and purpose. Ornamental work was thus apparently conventional, but made up of individual parts separately carried out, and in some degree, though not altogether, realistic: a character gradually lost after the early thirteenth century till the new revival in the sixteenth.
The tenth century was not favourable to the development of the requirements or comfort of personal life. Towards the year one thousand a superstition prevailed over many parts of Europe that the world would come to an end when the century was completed; and many fields were left uncultivated in the year 999. The eleventh century made a great advance in architecture and other arts, but down to the Norman invasion our own country was far behind the continental nations in the fine arts; metallurgy only excepted. The Anglo-saxons perhaps advanced but very slowly, as the century wore on to the period of the Norman conquest; and manners remained exceedingly simple.
Early illuminations, though conventional, give us some details of Anglo-saxon houses. They were of one story, and containedgenerally only one room. The addition of a second was rare before the Norman conquest. The furniture of the room consisted of a heavy table, sometimes fixed; on which the inhabitants of the house and the guests slept. A bedstead was occasionally reserved for the mistress of the house. Bedsteads when used by the women or the lord of the house were enclosed in a shed under the wall of enclosure and had a separate roof, as may be seen in many manuscripts. In the Bayeux tapestry a bed roof is tiled, and the framework shut in with curtains. In many instances such a design represents only a tester with posts. Otherwise beds of straw stuffed into a bag or case were spread on the table, and soldiers laid their arms by their heads ready for use in case of alarm. Benches, some with lion or other heads at the corners, like elongated chairs or settles (with backs, for the lord and lady of the house), were the usual seats. Thrones, something like that of Dagobert, were the property of kings. King Edward the Confessor is seated on such a chair (metal, and in the Roman shape) in the Bayeux tapestry, and folding chairs of various forms, more or less following classical types, were used by great personages. Benches were also used as beds; so were the lids or tops of chests, the sack or bag being sometimes kept in it and filled with straw when required. The tables were covered with cloths at dinner. Stained cloths and tapestries, commonly worked with pictorial designs, were used to hang the walls of the house or hall. They were called wah-hrægel, wall coverings. Personal clothing was kept in chests of rude construction. Silver candlesticks were used in churches. Candles were stuck anywhere in houses, on beams or ledges.
With regard to carriages during the Saxon and Anglo-norman period, carts on two wheels were common for agricultural use, and served to transport the royal property. Four-wheeled cars drawn by hand labour are used for carrying warlike stores in the Bayeux tapestry. In the battle of the Standard the standard of the English host was carried on a wheeled car orplatform, and remained as the head-quarters or rallying point during action.
The Norman invasion of England caused a new advance in the luxury and refinement, such as it was, of daily life. The houses began to grow—upper rooms or rooms at the side of the great hall were added, called solars (solaria), the sunny or light rooms. These seem to have been appropriated to the ladies. In due time they added a parloir or talking room, a name derived from the rooms in which conversation was allowed in monasteries where silence was the general rule. In the upper rooms fireplaces were made occasionally, but not always chimneys. In the halls, when the upper room did not cover the whole under room or when an upper room was not constructed, fire was made in the centre of the floor. Stairs were of wood. Glass was all but unknown in the windows of houses, and wooden shutters kept out the weather.
The houses of landowners in England were called manoir or manor. The furniture was simple and consisted of few objects. The table was on trestles; the seats were benches.Armaria, armoires, cupboards or presses, either stood in recesses in the wall or were complete wooden enclosures. These had doors opening horizontally. The frames were not panelled. The doors were ledge doors of boards, nailed to stout cross bars behind, and decorated with iron hinges and clamps beaten out into scrolls and other ornaments.
Anglo-norman bedstead
Bedrooms were furnished with ornamental bed testers, and benches at the bed foot. Beds were furnished with quilts and pillows, and with spotted or striped linen sheets; over all was laid a covering of green say, badgers' furs, the skins of beavers or ofmartin cats, and a cushion. A perch for falcons to sit on was fixed in the wall. A chair at the bed head, and a perch or projecting pole on which clothes could be hung, completed the furniture of the Anglo-norman bedroom. In the foregoing woodcut from Willemin there is no tester, but carving on the posts, and the coverings are of the richest description.
Woodwork was decorated with painted ornament or with fanciful work on the hinges; and nails and clamps were applied to hold it together, rather than with sculpture, down to the fourteenth century; and in England, France, and Germany, oak was the wood employed for furniture. Both in England and in the countries which had retained old artistic traditions on the continent, such as Italy, France, and Spain (which profited by the skill of the Moors in painted decoration), colour was used not less on walls and wood than on metal and pottery. Tapestry was an important portion of the furniture of all houses of the richer classes.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries mediæval art in Europe reached its greatest perfection. The classic traditions were at last forgotten everywhere except in Rome itself, where a chain lingered almost continuous between the old ideas and those which succeeded in the sixteenth century. Elsewhere the feeling in sculpture, whether of wood or other materials, was in unison with the pointed architecture and reigned unchallenged. All sorts of enrichments were used in the decoration of furniture. A chest of the time of John is preserved in the castle of Rockingham. It is of oak richly decorated with hammered iron plates, hinges, &c. The jewel chest of Richard of Cornwall was long preserved in the state treasury of Aix-la-Chapelle, and is now at Vienna. It belongs to the first half of the century, and was left at Aix when Richard was crowned king of the Romans. The body is of oak decorated with wrought-iron hinges, lock, and clamps, and with bosses of metal on which are enamelled heraldic shields.
The construction of woodwork gradually became more careful and scientific. Panelled framework came into use, though seldom for doors of rooms. With this method of construction the chests were put together that formed the chief article of furniture during two centuries in the mediæval sleeping, sitting, or private room.
In the middle of the thirteenth century Eleanor of Provence was escorted on her journey to England by an army of ladies, knights, nobles and troubadours, from Provence to the shores of the channel. Kings were continually making progress in this manner through their dominions, like the Indian governors of our own days, and carried their furniture and property in chests, called standards, on the backs of mules or sumpter horses. Portable furniture and hangings were the principal objects of household use on such occasions. A precept in the twentieth year of the reign of Henry the third directed that "the king's great chamber at Westminster be painted a green colour like a curtain, that in the great gable frontispiece of the said chamber a French inscription should be painted, and that the king's little wardrobe should be painted of a green colour to imitate a curtain." The queen's chamber was decorated with historical paintings. Remains of similar wall decoration are in tolerable preservation still in one of the vaulted rooms of Dover castle.
Till the fourteenth century candles were generally placed on a beam in the hall, whether in the castle of a king or baron. Frames of wood with prickets were also suspended for the lighting of rooms, or were fixed to the sides of the fire-place when that was made in the wall and had a chimney constructed for it. More generally, as regards halls, the hearth was in the middle of the room and a lantern just above it in the roof acted as a chimney. Iron chandeliers, or branches, were ordered to be fixed to the piers of the king's halls at Oxford, Winchester, and other places. Though the royal table might be lighted with valuable candlesticks of metal, they were not in general use till a century later. Besides the numerous rows of tallow candles piecesof pine wood were lighted and stuck into iron hasps in the wall, or round the woodwork at the back of the dais to give more abundant light.
The wardrobe was a special room fitted with hanging closets, and in these clothes, hangings, linen, as well as spices and stores, were preserved. This arrangement was common in all large castles during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Great preparations were made in the bedrooms of queens of England to which they retired before the birth of children. Henry the third directed that his queen's bedroom should be freshly wainscoted and lined, and that a list or border should be made, well painted with images of our Lord and angels, with incense pots scattered over it; that the four evangelists should be painted in the chamber, and a crystal vase be made to keep his collection of relics.
Room panelling was introduced into England during the same reign. Henry ordered a chamber at Windsor castle to be panelled with Norway pines specially imported; the men worked day and night. The boards were radiated and coloured, and two clear days only were allowed for the fixing and completion.
The Coronation chair
Edward the first married a Spanish queen, and household furniture was further developed under his reign in many particulars. Pottery for the table was imported from Spain, and oriental carpets were introduced; a luxury naturally borrowed from the extensive use of them by the Moors in that country. Italian artists had already been invited to England. Master William, theFlorentine, was master of the works at Guildford castle. John of St. Omer was another foreign artist employed by Henry the third. To the former of these we probably owe the introduction into this country of the method of gilding and tooled gold work, with which wood was decorated. Specimens of the work are still discernible on the famous coronation chair (of which we give a woodcut, p. 49) in Westminster abbey; made about the year 1300.
The decoration and comfort of furnished houses during Henry's reign was further promoted by the general use of tapestry. Queen Eleanor is traditionally and incorrectly said to have first brought this kind of furniture into houses; it was certainly adopted for churches at earlier periods, and hangings of various materials, stained or embroidered, were employed as far back as the Anglo-saxon times. Tapestries and cypress chests to carry them probably became more general in Eleanor's reign.
Amongst the particulars collected in the history of the city companies and by the record commission are lists of the royal plate, showing that objects of personal use besides table plate were made in silver and gold. We find mention of pitchers of gold and silver, plates and dishes of silver, gold salts, alms bowls, silver hannapers or baskets, a pair of knives with enamelled silver sheaths, a fork of crystal, and a silver fork with handle of ebony and ivory, combs and looking-glasses of silver. Edward had six silver forks and one of gold. Ozier mats were laid over the benches on which he and his queen sat at meals. These were also put under the feet, especially in churches where the pavement was of stone or tiles.
In the furniture of bedrooms linen chests and settles, cupboards and the beds themselves were of panelled wood. The next woodcut shows the interior of a well-furnished bedroom, from a manuscript life of St. Edmund written about the year 1400.
Interior of English mediæval bedroom
Chests served as tables, and are often represented with chess-boards on them in old illuminations, and husband and wife sitting on the chest and using it for the game, which had become familiar to mostEuropean nations. Chests of later date than the time of Edward, of Italian make, still show the same use of the lids of coffers. As the tops of the coffers served for tables, and for seats they began in the thirteenth century to be furnished with a panelled back and arm-pieces at either end. This development of the chest was equally common in France. It does not seem to have been placed on legs or to have grown into a cabinet till a later period. The raised dorsal or back of the seats in large rooms was a protection from the cold, and in the rude form of asettleis still the comfort of old farm and inn kitchens in this country; it became the general type of seats of state in the great halls, andwas there further enlarged by a canopy projecting forwards to protect the heads of the sitters, panelled also in oak. In the fifteenth century in many instances this hood or canopy was attached to the panelling of the upper end of the hall, and covered the whole of that side of the dais. The backing and canopy were sometimes replaced by temporary arrangements of hangings, as in modern royal throne rooms, the cloth being called cloth of estate and generally embroidered with heraldic devices. Panelled closets calleddressoirsor cupboards, to lock up food, were general in properly furnished rooms; a cloth was laid on the top at meals, with lights, and narrow shelves rose in steps at the back for the display of plate, the steps varying in number according to the rank of the persons served.
Tables used at meals were generally frames of boards, either in one piece or folding in the middle. These were laid on trestles, as in the woodcut from an early manuscript in the Bodleian library, and could be removed as soon as the dinner was over, so that the company might dance and divert themselves. Somewhat later, about the year 1450, the tables although still on trestles were made more solidly, even for the use of people of the middle class.
Anglo-saxon dinner-table
All houses, however, even of kings could not be completely or even comfortably furnished in such a manner, far less those of feudal lords, not princes or sovereigns. The kings moved incessantly to their various strongholds and manors in time of peace to collect dues and revenues, much of which was paid in kind andcould only be profitably turned to account by carrying the Court to different estates and living on their produce as long as it lasted. Orders were continually sent to sheriffs to provide food, linenand other requisites, while hangings and furniture were carried by the train in its progress. Much of the household belongings of persons of wealth was, therefore, of a movable kind. We engrave (p. 53) a very curious table standing on a pedestal shaped like a chalice, from a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth century. The ladies are playing at cards.
Dinner-table of middle-class, fifteenth century
Table of fifteenth century
A most oppressive privilege was exercised in France, which went beyond the legal right of the lord or owner to the rents of his estates whether paid in money, agricultural produce, or manufactures carried on in his towns or villages. This was thedroit de prisage, a privilege of seizing furniture of all kinds by the hands of stewards and others for the use of the king. Chairs, tables, and beds particularly were included in these requisitions. Thedroit de prisagewas modified at various times in consequence of the remonstrance of the commons at so oppressive an exaction; but as late as the year 1365 Charles the fifth seized beds. In 1313 Philippe le Bel entertained the English king and his queen at Pontoise with no other furniture than such as had been seized in this manner. A fire broke out in the night during their stay, the furniture was consumed, and the royal personages escaped in their shirts. It was not till 1407 that this privilege was finally abandoned.
Though the usual conveyance during the thirteenth century was a horse litter for women of rank, and men rode on horseback, yet covered and open carriages or waggons were not unknown in that and in the following century. A charette containing a number of maids of honour in attendance on Anne of Bohemia at her public reception in London in 1392, was upset on London bridge from the rush of the crowd to get a sight of the queen, and her ladies were not without difficulty replaced. These charettes, cars, or waggons were covered carts on four wheels, like country waggons of our days, panelled at the sides, and the tilt covered with leather, sometimes with lead, and painted.
Travelling carriage of fifteenth century;
We must not pass without a very brief notice the large constructionsof roofs of wood begun as early as the twelfth, and continued and improved through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period during which the finest efforts of mediæval Gothic art were embodied all over the north and over parts of the south of Europe. The older part of Westminster hall dates from the reign of Rufus, and the walls of the present building belong to that period, though faced at a later time. How the roof of the enormous space, sixty-five feet diameter, was at first constructed there is no evidence to show. It had, perhaps, a row of arches down the middle, like the great hall of the palace of Blois, said to be of the thirteenth century, or huge kingposts supporting the ties between rafters, which in that case may have been as long as those of the later roof. The present roof, work of the fourteenth century, marks the beginning of a change in the style of architecture that accompanied and caused great changes in furniture and household woodwork. The ties are supported by curved braces that descend like arches on the stone corbels made in the wall to receive them. These braces take two flights, being tied back where they meet by hammer beams into a lower part of the rafter. The lower brace upholds another upright or collar post which supports thejunction of these beams with the rafter, at its weakest part. A rich subdivision of upright mullions with cusped arch heads fills up the spandrels between these braces and the beams they support, and adds stiffness as well as decoration to the whole.
Such constructions were not only more scientific than those of older date, but they are more pompous and complicated, and have a greater apparent affinity with the architecture of the day. This architectural character, from the date of the change to the third period of pointed architecture, began to show itself in furniture and wood structure of every kind. Until then a certain originality and inventiveness were preserved in the decoration both of architective woodwork and furniture, notwithstanding the strictest observance of the rules and unities of architectural law in buildings, ecclesiastical and civil. Small sculpture, such as that on ivories and utensils made of metal, or that which decorated woodwork as well as stone, and the general forms of furniture, were designed without immediate imitation of architectonic detail. Figure sculpture of great dignity remains in ivories of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, illustrative of the general character given to things of daily use which were not, probably, nearly so numerous as in a later age, and were each carefully elaborated for the person for whom they were made. We need go no further than some of the objects in the Kensington museum, such as the statuettes and caskets of ivory, English and French work of that time.
We can point to few large pieces of furniture, except the coronation chair, illustrating the fashions of this early period. Examples of wooden movable furniture are extremely rare in this country. There are large semicircular cope chests in the cathedrals of Wells, York, and other cities. These are merely chests or boxes in which the copes are spread out full size, one over the other, and the only decoration consists in the floriated ironwork attached to the hinges.
Oriental panel
Oriental panel
We must not omit to remark that some examples of very beautiful oriental panelling of this period are to be seen in various collections. The woodcuts represent the fittings of a series of such panels from a mosque at Cairo, now at South Kensington, no.1,051; and a single piece to show the detail.The delicacy of the carving and the apparent intricacy of the geometrical arrangement are very remarkable.
A royal dinner table, from a manuscript of the fourteenth century.
A royal dinner table, from a manuscript of the fourteenth century.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
In discussing the great wood structures such as screens, house fronts, roofs, and other large pieces of mechanism, which developed in boldness and variety in the fifteenth century, we must not forget that the abundance of oak timber in the north of Europe both suggested much of this timber art and admitted of bold features of construction from the size of the logs and the tenacity of the material. A large portion of England and perhaps an equal proportion of Ireland were covered with dense forests of oak. The eastern frontier of France, great portions of Burgundy, and many other districts in France, Germany, Flanders, and other northern countries, were still forests, and timber was to be had at low prices and in any quantity. Spanish chestnut had been introduced probably by the Romans into England.
Though churches, castles, and manors were built of stone or brick, or both, yet whole cities seem to have been mainly constructed out of timber. The London of the fifteenth century, like a hundred other cities, though abounding in noble churches and in great fortified palaces, yet presented the aspect of a timber city. The houses were framed together, as a few still are in some English towns and villages, of vast posts sixteen to twenty-four inches square in section, arching outwards and meeting the projecting floor timbers, and so with upper stories, till the streets were darkened by the projections. The surfaces of these postswere covered with delicate tracery, niches and images. In the streets at Chester an open gallery or passage is left on the first floorwithinthe timbers of the house fronts. In the court of St. Mary's guild in Coventry, whole chambers and galleries are supported on vast arches of timber like bridges. Oriels jutted out under these overhanging stories, and the spaces between the framing posts were filled in, sometimes with bricks, sometimes with laths and mortar, or parts (as the century wore on) more frequently with glass.
French panel; fifteenth century
In London and Rouen, in Blois and in Coventry, these angle posts were filled with niches and statuettes or fifteenth century window tracery sunk into the surfaces. The dark wooden houses were externally a mass of imagery. In the great roofs of these centuries, such as the one spoken of at Westminster, the hammer beams were generally carved into figures of angels gracefully sustaining the timber behind them with outstretched wings; and these figures were painted and gilt. A magnificent example remains intact in the church of Knapton in Norfolk.
The number of excellent workmen and the size and architectural character of so much of the woodwork of the day contributed to give all panelled work, no matter of what description, an architectural type; and furniture shared in this change. Coffers and chests, as well as standards or stall-ends in churches, and bench-ends in large rooms and halls, were designed after the pattern of window tracery. The panel in the above woodcut from a French chest of this date, is a very delicate and beautiful example. Little buttresses and pinnacles were often placed on the angles or the divisions between the panels. At South Kensington,the buffet, no.8,439 and the chest, no.2,789, with other pieces are of this kind; also a grand cabinet of German make in the same collection. This last, no.497, is of the rudest construction, but a few roughly cut lines of moulding and some effective ironwork give it richness and dignity that are wanting in many pieces more scientifically made and more decoratively treated.
The quantity of tapestry employed in these centuries in fitting up houses and the tents used either during a campaign or in progresses from one estate to another was prodigious, and kept increasing. Lancaster entertained the king of Portugal in his tent between Mouçal and Malgaço, fitted up with hangings of arras "as if he had been at Hertford, Leicester, or any of his manors." As early as 1313, when Isabel of Bavaria made her entry into Paris, the whole street of St. Denis, Froissart tells us, "was covered with a canopy of rich camlet and silk cloths, as if they had the cloths for nothing, or were at Alexandria or Damascus. I (the writer of this account) was present, and was astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments could have come, for all the houses on each side of the street of St. Denis, as far as the Châtelet, or indeed to the great bridge, were hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histories, to the delight of all beholders." The expense incurred in timber work on these occasions may be estimated from the long lists of pageants, and the scale on which each was prepared on this and like occasions.
Of the early Italian furniture of the mediæval period there is at South Kensington one fine specimen, a coffer of cypress, covered with flat surface imagery filled in with coloured wax composition. It dates from the fourteenth century. The better known Italian furniture of the quattrocento or "fourteen hundred period,"i.e.the fifteenth century, is gilt and painted. The richness of this old work is owing to the careful preparation of the ground or bed on which the gold is laid and the way in which the preparationwas modelled with the tool. The old gold is, besides, both thicker and purer, more malleable, and less liable to suffer from the action of the atmosphere than the gold we now use for this purpose. The paintings executed on such pieces of furniture as offered suitable surfaces to the artist, boxes and coffers (and, for church uses, reliquaries), are equal to the finest works of that kind and of the same period.
Many artists worked in this way. Dello Delli was the best known in regard to such productions. His work became so entirely the fashion that, according to Vasari, no house was complete without a specimen of it. Andrea di Cosimo was another. It need not be said that such men and their contemporaries had a number of pupils similarly employed. Every piece of painted furniture attributed to Dello Delli cannot be warranted. There are, however, specimens which we believe to be from his hand in the Kensington collection, and numbers of fronts and panels and fragments of great merit which illustrate his style.
Besides this kind of decoration, the Venetians had derived from Persia and India another beautiful system of surface ornament; marquetry, a fine inlay of ivory, metal, and woods, stained to vary the colour. The work is in geometric patterns only. It is found on the ivory boxes and other objects sculptured in that material, and attributed to Italian as well as to Byzantine sources. In the fifteenth century Florence also came prominently to the front in the manufacture of these and other rich materials; as well as of ivory inlaid into solid cypress wood and walnut, known as Certosina work. The style is Indian in character, and consists in geometric arrangements of stars made of diamond-shaped pieces: varied with conventional flowers in pots, &c. The name Certosina is derived from the great Certosa, charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery between Milan and Pavia: where this kind of decoration is employed in the choir fittings of the splendid church of that monastery.
We are inclined to the belief (as already said) that the manufactureof geometrical work of this kind was originally imported from Persia by the Venetians. There are in the Kensington museum some very interesting old chairs made for the castle of Urbino, and part of the furniture of Guidobaldo II., whose court, like that of Réné, king of Provence, was the resort of troubadours, poets, and philosophers. These chairs are covered with geometric marquetry of white and stained ivory, &c., the very counterpart of the Bombay work now brought to this country. That manufacture, in the opinion of Dr. Birdwood, was also of Persian origin and thence found its way to Bombay. The Persians continued long into the last century the inlaying of ivory in walnut wood, and their geometric marquetry is still made.
The forms of chairs in use in Italy early in the fifteenth century were revivals of the old Roman folding chair. The pairs of crosspieces are sometimes on the sides, sometimes set back and front, and in that case arm and back pieces are added. Generally we may say that the fine Italian furniture of that day owed its beauty to inlaying, surface gilding, tooling and painting. Gilt chests and marriage trays, inlaid tables, and chairs are also to be seen at South Kensington.
As in Italy, so in England, France, Germany, and later in Spain, the splendour hitherto devoted to the glory of ecclesiastical furniture, utensils, or architectural decoration was gradually adopted in the royal and other castles and houses. State rooms, halls of justice, sets of rooms for the use of the king or his barons were furnished and maintained. The large religious establishments also demanded the skill of artists and workmen, and to a greater extent north than south of the Alps. Many monastic houses in the north of Europe were seats of feudal jurisdiction. These communities executed great works in wood, stall-work, presses, coffers, &c., as large and continuous societies alone are able to carry through tasks that want much time for completion. All this helped to encourage the manufacture of woodwork of the finest kind. Hence the mediæval semi-ecclesiastical charactermaintained sway in every art connected with architecture and furniture longer in northern countries than in Italy, where both old traditions and monumental remains recalled rather the glories of antique art, and where the revival of classic learning had begun.
As regards English art it is certain that, partly from the influence of foreign queens, partly from foreign wars, and partly from the incessant intercourse with the rest of Europe kept up by religious houses, many of the accomplishments of other countries were known and practised here by foreign or native artists.
It is true that the wars of the Roses, more bloody and ruinous than any experienced in this country, delayed that growth of domestic luxury which might have been expected from the then wealth of England. But when Henry the seventh established a settled government, and from his time downwards, the decorations and the accumulation of furniture in houses, libraries, and collections of works of art rapidly increased. Many of the books in the "King's library," and many pictures and movables still in possession of the crown, may be traced to that day.
It is difficult, indeed, to imagine the England which Leland saw in his travels. It must have been full of splendid objects, and during the reign of Henry the feudal mansions, as well as the numerous royal palaces of Windsor, Richmond, Havering, and others, were filled with magnificent furniture. Mabuse and Torrigiano were employed by the king, and this example found many imitations; artists, both foreign and English, made secular furniture, as rich and beautiful as that of the churches and religious houses which covered the country.
Taste in furniture, as in architecture, both in continental Europe and in these islands had nevertheless passed the fine period of mediæval design. The "Gothic" or pointed forms and details had become uninventive and commonplace. The whole system awaited a change. The figure sculpture, however, of the latter years of this century, though life-sized statues had lostmuch of the dignity and simplicity of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was approaching the realization of natural form, which it attained in such excellence in the succeeding century. The ingenuity and raciness of the smaller figure carving both in stall-work of churches and on the tops and fronts of boxes and caskets, in panel-work of cabinets or doors, &c., during the last half of the fifteenth century are scarcely surpassed by the more academic and classical figure design of the sixteenth. Carvers on all kinds of wood furniture and decoration of houses delighted in doubling their figures up into quaint and ingenious attitudes, and if the architecture was latterly tame, though showy and costly, imagery continued to be full of individuality and inventiveness.
THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
There are few matters regarding art more worthy of consideration than the narrowness of the limits that bound human invention: or, to speak more exactly, we should say the simplicity of the laws and principles in obedience to which the imaginations of men are exercised. The return of the painters, sculptors, and architects to the old types of classical art after the reign of the Gothic seems at first sight as if in the arts there could be nothing new under the sun: as if the imagination, so fertile in creation during many centuries since the establishment of Christianity, had been utterly worked out and come to an end, and that there was nothing left but to repeat and copy what had been done ages before.
There is, however, in reality more connection between classic and mediæval art than appears on the surface, and although all the great masters of the revival studied eagerly such remains of antique art as were discovered in Italy during the early years of the renaissance, they only came into direct contact with or absolute imitation of those models occasionally; and the works of that age have a grace that is peculiarly their own, and an inventiveness in painting and sculpture, if not in architecture, that seems, when we look at such cities as Venice and Florence, inexhaustible. The renaissance began in Italy many years before the year 1500. Most changes, indeed, of manners or arts which are designated by any century are perhaps more correctly datedtwenty years before or after its beginning, and in the notices which we are here putting together we are compelled to make divisions of time occasionally overlap each other.
The revival of learning in Italy was accompanied by other circumstances which had a powerful influence on the arts, and particularly on the sumptuary arts of the century. It has been already remarked that while the nations of Europe were more or less convulsed with war it was not easy or possible for the inhabitants, even the wealthy, to do much in furnishing dwelling-houses with any kind of comfort. Rich furniture consisted in a few costly objects and in hangings such as could be carried about on sumpter horses or in waggons, and, with the addition of rough benches, tables, and bedsteads, could make bare walls look gay and comfortable, and offer sufficient accommodation in the empty halls of granges and manors seldom lived in, for the occasions of a visit or a temporary occupation. Churches indeed were in those ages respected by both sides in the furious contests that raged throughout Europe. The violation of holy places was a crime held in abhorrence by all combatants, and the treasuries and sacristies, therefore, of churches were full of examples of every kind of accomplishment possessed by the artists of the day. They contained objects collected there during many generations, as was the case of shrines like that of the Virgin del Pillar in Spain, of which the offerings so long preserved have been very lately sold and dispersed, and represented the art of many successive ages. But in private houses it was scarcely possible to have any corresponding richness, though in the instance of kings and potentates there was often much splendour.
As in England the fifteenth century saw the close of a series of great wars and the establishment of one powerful government, so during its conclusion and the beginning of the next century a similar disorder gradually gave place to tranquillity in Italy.
The practices of painting gilt furniture of all kinds, and of modelling terra-cotta work on the wood, were not altogether newaccomplishments or confined to the artists of one city. When, therefore, the French having been driven out of Italy, the popes were in security in Rome and the accomplished Medici family reigned in Florence, those states as well as Urbino, Ferrara, and other independent cities were free from the perpetual attitude of defence against foreign invasion; they could indulge their enthusiasm for classic art, and the impulse given to the study of it found a ready response, as great noblemen while building palaces and digging gardens came upon statues, frescoes, vases, bronzes, and many glorious remnants of antiquity. In the various Italian states were artists well skilled and carefully trained, and there was no difficulty in finding distinguished names with whole schools of enthusiastic admirers behind them who, with these precious objects in their view, formed their style on the old classic models. We are to consider such acquirements here only so far as they came to be applied to secular woodwork (of which this cornice from Venice is an example) and the objects of daily use; to coffers, chests, caskets, mirrors, or cabinets, sideboards of various kinds, seats, tables, carriages and furniture of every description.
Venetian cornice
The best artists of the day did not hesitate to give their minds to the making of woodwork and furniture in various materials and employed every kind of accomplishment in beautifying them. Of this fine renaissance period there are so many examples in the South Kensington collection, and some of them of such excellence, that the student need scarcely have occasion to travelbeyond the limits of that museum to illustrate the quattrocento and cinquecento furniture and woodwork.
Many materials were employed by the renaissance artists. Wood first and principally in making furniture, but decorated with gilding and paintings; inlaid with agate, carnelian, lapis lazuli and marbles of various tints; with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl; and with other woods. They also made many smaller objects, such as mirror cases in iron, damascened or inlaid with gold and silver. For many years, however, mirrors continued to be of polished metal, the enrichment being devoted to the outer case. Glass mirrors were not common till a somewhat later period.
As the general material of furniture in the sixteenth century continued to be wood, its chief decoration was sculpture. The number of remarkable pieces of carved wood furniture belonging to this period in the museum is considerable. The most striking are the chests, cassoni, large coffers for containing clothes or ornamental hangings and stuffs that were kept in them when not in use. Rooms, however large, of which the walls, floors, and ceilings are decorated, do not require many substantial objects in addition; and these chests, with a table and chairs placed against the wall, nearly complete the requirements of great Italian halls and corridors.
Portion of carved Italian chest
The general form of the carved chests is that of a sarcophagus. They are supported on claw feet, and have masks, brackets, or caryatid figures worked into the construction as in the accompanying woodcut, leaving panels, borders, or other spaces for historic sculpture. The subjects are sometimes from Scripture,often from the poems of Ovid. They are carved in walnut wood, which is free in grain and very tenacious: and the work, like most of the old furniture carving, is helped out with gilding. Sometimes the ground, at others the relieved carvings are touched or completely covered with gilding. Most of these fine chests are in pairs, and probably formed parts of still larger sets, fours or sixes, according as they were intended for the wall spaces of larger or smaller rooms or portions of wall between two doors.
Carved chests commonly in use, and given to brides as part of their dowry or as presents to married couples, or simply provided as the most convenient objects both for receptacles and occasionally for seats, were often made at less cost in cypress wood. They are generally decorated with surface designs etched with a pen on the absorbent grain of that wood, the ground being slightly cut out and worked over with punches shaped like nail heads, stars, &c. Cypress chests were especially used for keeping dresses or tapestries; the aromatic properties of that timber being considered as a specific against moth. This kind of chest, when intended to hold a bridal trousseau, was occasionally made with small drawers and receptacles inside for fans, lace, combs, or other feminine ornaments. Allusions to cypress chests in England are numerous in the wardrobe and privy purse accounts of Edward the fourth and his successors.
The tables of this period are sometimes solid (as no.162, which is covered with spirited designs of mythological subjects). Dinner tables were "boards" fastened on trestles, according to the old usage already alluded to, and could be removed when the meal was over; or several could be laid together, as in our modern dining-room tables, to meet the demands of the noble hospitality exercised in those days.
The Italian chairs of the quattrocento period have been spoken of above. We have, however, another very rich and effective form of chairs usual in the sixteenth century, and which were in general use in Venice. In these the seat is fastened into twoplanks, one before and one behind, as in the woodcut. The planks are richly carved, and a third plank is let in to form a back. The several portions, particularly the back, were sometimes sufficiently thick to admit of carving in massive relief. The flanks of the back piece are usually grotesque monsters, and the arms of the owner carved on a scutcheon in the centre. They seem to have been generally richly gilt. They also formed the decoration of a great corridor or hall, and were used without cushions.