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CONQUEST OF TUNIS BY CHARLES V (DETAIL)
Cartoon by Jan Vermeyen. Woven by Pannemaker. Royal Collection at Madrid
As for Pannemaker’s imperial patron, John AddingtonSymonds 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.”
BRUSSELS in 1515, with her workmen at the zenith of their perfection, was given the order to weave the set of theActs of the Apostlesfor the Pope to hang in the Sistine Chapel. (Plate facing page64.) 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, andfor the introduction of the horses and dogs and little wild animals that cause a childish thrill of delight wherever they are encountered, so like are they to the species that haunt childhood’s fairyland.
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DEATH OF ANANIAS.—FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY RAPHAEL
From the Palace of Madrid
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THE STORY OF REBECCA
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
Indeed, the Gothic tapestries more than any other existing pictures take us back to that epoch of our lives when we lived in romance, when the Sleeping Beauty hid in just such towers, when the prince rode such a horse and appeared an elegant young knight. The inscrutable mystery of those folk of other days is like the inscrutable mystery of that childhood time, the Mediæval time of the imagination, and those of us who remember its joys gaze silent and happy in the tapestry room of the Ducal Palace at Nancy, or in Mary’s Chamber at Holyrood, or in any place whatever where hang the magic pictured cloths.
When the highest development of a style is reached a change is sure to come. It may be a degeneration, or it may be the introduction of a new style through some great artistic impulse either native or introduced by contact with an outside influence. Fortunately, the Gothic passed through no pallid process of deterioration. The examples that nest comfortably in the museums of the world or in the homes of certain fortunate owners, do not contain marks of decadence—only of transition. It is a style that was replaced, but not one that died the death of decadence.
It is with reluctance that one who loves the Gothic will leave it for the more recent art of the Renaissance. Its charm is one that embodies chasteness, grace, andsimplicity, one that is so exquisitely finished, and so individual that the mind and eye rest lovingly upon its decorative expressions. It is averred that the introduction of the revived styles of Greece and Rome into France destroyed an art superior. One is inclined to this opinion in studying a tapestry of the highest Gothic expression, a finished product of the artist and the craftsman, both having given to its execution their honest labour and highest skill. Unhappily it is often, with the tapestry lover, a case similar to that of the penniless boy before the bakeshop window—you may look, but you may not have,—for not often are tapestries such as these for sale. Only among the experienced dealer-collectors is one fortunate enough to find these rare remnants of the past which for colour, design and texture are unsurpassed.
But the Gothic was bound to give way as a fashion in design. Politics of Europe were at work, and men were more easily moving about from one country to another. The cities of the various provinces over which the Burgundian dukes had ruled were prevented by natural causes, from being united. Arras, Ghent, Liége instead of forming a solidarity, were separate units of interest. This made the subjugation of one or the other an easy matter to the tyrant who oppressed. As Arras declined under the misrule of Charles le Téméraire (whose possessions at one time outlined the whole northern and eastern border of France) Brussels came into the highest prominence as a source of the finest tapestries.
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THE CREATION
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century
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THE ORIGINAL SIN
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century
The great change in tapestries that now occurs is the same that altered all European art and decoration andarchitecture. 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 trustycarriers to the ateliers of Flanders. Thus Italy got her tapestries of the Renaissance, and thus Flanders acquired by inoculation the rich art of the Renaissance.
The direct cause of the change in Flemish style of tapestries was in this way brought about by the Renaissance of Italy. New rules of drawing were dominating. Changes were slower when travelling was difficult, and the average of literacy was low; but gradually there came creeping up to Brussels cartoon after cartoon in the new method, for her skilled workmen to transpose into wool and silk and metal, “thread of Arras,” and “gold and silver of Cyprus.” Italy had the artists, Brussels had the craftsmen—what happier combination could be made than the union of these two? Thus was the great change brought about in tapestries, and this union is the great fact to be borne in mind about the difference between the Gothic tapestries and those which so quickly succeeded them.
From now on the old method is abandoned, not only in Brussels, but everywhere that the high-warp looms are set up. The “art nouveau” of that day influenced every brush and pencil. The great crowding of serried hosts on a single field disappeared, and fewer but perfect figures played their parts on the woven surface. Wherever architectural details, such as porticoes or columns, were introduced, these dropped the old designs of “pointed” style or battlements, and took on the classic or the high Renaissance that ornaments the façade of Pavia’s Certosa. One by one the wildwood flowers receded before the advance of civilisation, very much as those in theveritable land are wont to do, and their place was taken by a verdure as rich as the South could produce, with heavy foliage and massive blossoms.
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MELEAGER AND ATALANTA
Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth Century. Woven in Paris workshops by Charles de Comans
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PUNIC WAR SERIES
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
It is impossible to overestimate the importance to Brussels of the animating experience and distinguished commission of executing the set of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel after cartoons by Raffaelo Sanzio. The date is one to tie to (1515) and the influence of the work was far-reaching. The Gothic method could no longer continue.
The Renaissance spread its influence, established its standards and introduced that wave of productiveness which always followed its introduction. There are many who doubt the superiority of the voluptuous art of the high Renaissance. There are those who prefer (perhaps for reasons of sentiment) the early Gothic, and many more who love far better the sweet purity of the early Renaissance. Before us Raphael presents his full figures replete with action, rich with broad, open curves in nudity, and magnificent with lines of flowing drapery. To him be accorded all due honour; but, if it is the privilege of the artist’s spirit to wander still on earth, he must find his particular post-mortem punishment in viewing the deplorable school of exaggeration which his example founded. Who would not prefer one of the chaste tapestries of perfected Gothic to one of those which followed Raphael, imitating none of his virtues, exaggerating his faults? It is these followers, the virilities of whose false art is as that of weeds, who have come almost to our own day and who have succeeded in spoiling thehistorical aspect of the New Testament for many an imaginative Sunday-school attendant by giving us Bible folk in swarthy undress, in lunatic beards and in unwearable drapings. These terrible persons, descendants of Raphael’s art, can never stir a human sympathy.
Just here a word must be said of the workmen, the weavers of Brussels. For them certain fixed rules were made, but also they were allowed much liberty in execution. The artist might draw the big cartoons and thus become the governing influence, but much of the choice of colour and thread was left to the weaver. This made of him a more important factor in the composition than a mere artisan; he was, in fact, an artist, must needs be, to execute a work of such sublimity as the Raphael set.
And as a weaver, his patience was without limit. Thread by thread, the warp was set, and thread by thread the woof was woven and coerced into place by the relentless comb of the weaver. Perhaps a man might make a square foot, by a week of close application; but “how much” mattered nothing—it was “how well” that counted. Haste is disassociable from labour of our day; we might produce—or reproduce—tapestries as good as the old, but some one is in haste for the hanging, and excellency goes by the board. The weaver of those days of perfection was content to be a weaver, felt his ambition gratified if his work was good.
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EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CÆSAR
Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the Arazzi, Florence
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WILD BOAR HUNT
Flemish Cartoon and Weaving, Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the Arazzi, Florence
Peter van Aelst was the master chosen to execute the Raphael tapestries, and the pieces were finished in three or four years. Those who think present-day prices high, should think on the fact that Pope Leo X paid $130,000for 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.
WHEN the Raphael cartoons first came to Brussels the new method was a little difficult for the tapissier. His hand had been accustomed to another manner. He had, too, been allowed much liberty in his translations—if one may so call the art of reproducing a painted model on the loom. He might change at will the colour of a drapery, even the position of a figure, and, most interesting fact, he had on hand a supply of stock figures that he might use at will, making for himself suitable combination. The figures of Adam and Eve gave a certain cachet to hangings not entirely secular and these were slipped in when a space needed filling. There were also certain lovely ladies who might at one time play the rôle of attendant at a feastal fresco, at another time a character in an allegory. The weaver’s hand was a little conventional when he began to execute the Raphael cartoons, but during the three years required for their execution he lost all restriction and was ready for the freer manner.
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VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid
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VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid
It must not be supposed the Flemish artists were content to let the Italians entirely usurp them in the drawing of cartoons. The lovely refinement of the Bruges school having been thrust aside, the Fleming tried his hand at the freer method, not imitating its classicism butgiving 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 itspenchantby a tripod, a peacock, an apple or a caduceus, as clue to the proper name. Such airy beauty, such dainty conception, makes of the gods rulers of æsthetics, if not of fate. This series of Mantegna wasthe inspiration two centuries later of theTriumphs of the Gods, and similar hangings of the newly-formed Gobelins.
Giulio Romano drew, among other cartoons, a set ofChildren Playing, which were the inspiration later at the Gobelins for Lebrun’sEnfants Jardiniers.
As classic treatment was the mode in the Sixteenth Century, so classic subject most appealed. The loves and adventures of gods and heroes gave stories for an infinite number of sets. As it was the fashion to fill a room with a series, not with miscellaneous and contrasting bits, several tapestries similar in subject and treatment were a necessity. The gods were carried through their adventures in varying composition, but the borders in all the set were uniform in style and measurement.
In those prolific days, when ideas were crowding fast for expression, the border gave just the outlet necessary for the superfluous designs of the artist. He was wont to plot it off into squares with such architectonic fineness as Mina da Fiesole might have used, and to make of each of these a picture or a figure so perfect that in itself it would have sufficient composition for an entire tapestry. All honour to such artists, but let us never once forget that without the skill and talent of the master-weaver these beauties would never have come down to us.
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VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid
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VERTUMNUS AND POMONA
First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid
The collection of George Blumenthal, Esquire, of New York, contains as beautiful examples of Sixteenth Century composition and weaving as could be imagined. Two of these were found in Spain—the country whichhas ever hoarded her stores of marvellous tapestries. They represent the story ofMercury. (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 theConquest of Tunisfor Charles V. (Plate facing page62.)
Mr. Blumenthal’s tapestries must have carried with them some such contract for fine materials as that which attended the execution of theTunisset, 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 placedthem 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 calledThe Loves of Vertumnus and Pomona. (Plates facing pages72,73,74and75.) 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 ofgrotesques. 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 theGrotesque Monthsof 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 pages84and85.) Thesemen at that time (1550) had set their Flemish looms in Italy.
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TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED
Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid
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THE STORY OF REBECCA
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston
And so it came that the Renaissance swept all before it in the world of tapestry. More than that, with the increase of culture and of wealth, with the increased mingling of the peoples of Europe after the raid of Charles V into Italy, the demand for tapestries enormously increased. They were wanted for furnishing of homes, they were wanted as gifts—to brides, to monarchs, to ambassadors. And they were wanted for splendid decoration in public festivals. They had passed beyond the stage of rarity and had become almost as much a matter of course as clothing.
Brussels being in the ascendency as a producer, the world looked to her for their supply, and thereby came trouble. More orders came than it was possible to fill. The temptation was not resisted to accept more work than could be executed, for commercialism has ever a hold. The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the lessening of care in every department.
Gradually it came about that expedition in a tapissier, the ability to weave quickly, was as great a desideratum as fine work. Various other expedients were resorted to beside the Sixteenth Century equivalent of “Step lively.” Large tapestries were not set on a single loom, but were woven in sections, cunningly united when finished. In this manner more men could be impressed into themanufacture 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 page78.) The principal figures are inspired by such as are seen in theMercuryof Mr. Blumenthal’s collection, or theVertumnus and Pomonaseries, but therethe artist stopped and wandered off into his traditional Flemish landscape with proper Flemings in the background dressed in the fashion of the artist’s day.
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BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art, Chicago
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MEETING OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Brussels Tapestry. Woven by Gerard van den Strecken. Cartoon attributed to Rubens
The border was evidently inspired by Raphael’s classic figures and arabesques, but the column of design is naïvely broken by the far perspective of a formal garden. The Italian cartoonist would have built his border, figure and arabesque, one above another like a fantastic column (videMr. Blumenthal’sMercuryborder). 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 couldbe 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 page79) of the superb set ofAntony 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.
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 theHistory of Troywhich cost the generous and enthusiastic duke a hundred thousand dollars.
The great d’Este family was one to follow persistently the art, possibly because it habited the northern part of the peninsula and was therefore nearer Flanders, but more probably because the great Duke of Ferrara was animated by that superb pride of race that chafes at rivalry; this, added to a wish to encourage art, and the lust of possession which characterised the great men of that day.
It was the middle of the Sixteenth Century that Ercole II, the head of the d’Este family, revived at Ferrara the factory of his family which had suffered from the wars. The master-weavers were brought from Flanders, not only to produce tapestries almost unequalled for technical perfection, but to instruct local weavers. These two important weavers were Nicholas and John Karcher or Carcher as it is sometimes spelled, names of great renown—for a weaver might be almost as well known and as highly esteemed as the artist of the cartoons in those days when artisan’s labour had not been despised by even the great Leonardo. The foremost artist of the Ferrara works was chosen from that city, Battista Dosso, but also active as designer was the Fleming, Lucas Cornelisz. In Dosso’s work is seen that exquisite and dainty touch that characterises the artists of Northern Italy in their most perfect period, before voluptuous masses and heavy scroll-like curves prevailed even in the drawing of the human figure.
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THE ANNUNCIATION
Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago
The House of Este had a part to play in the visit of the Emperor Charles V when he elected to be crowned with Lombardy’s Iron Crown, in 1530, at Bologna instead of in the cathedral at Monza where the relic has its home. “Crowns run after me; I do not run after them,” he said,with the arrogance of success. At this reception at Bologna we catch a glimpse of the brilliant Isabella d’Este amid all the magnificence of the occasion. It takes very little imagination to picture the effect of the public square at Bologna—the same buildings that stand to-day—the square of the Palazzo Publico and the Cathedral—to fancy these all hung with the immense woven pictures with high lights of silk and gold glowing in the sun, and through this magnificent scene the procession of mounted guards, of beautiful ladies, of church dignitaries, with Charles V as the central object of pomp, wearing as a clasp to the cope of state the great diamond found on the field of Marat after the defeat of the Duke of Burgundy. The members of the House of Este were there with their courts and their protégés, their artists and their literati, as well as with their display of riches and gaiety.
The manufactory at Ferrara was now allowed to sell to the public, so great was its success, and to it is owed the first impetus given to the weaving in Italy and the production of some of the finest hangings which time has left for us to enjoy to-day. It is a sad commentary on man’s lust of novelty that the factory at Ferrara was ultimately abandoned by reason of the introduction into the country of the brilliant metal-illuminated leathers of Cordova. The factory’s life was comprised within the space of the years 1534 to 1597, the years in which lived Ercole II and Alfonso II, the two dukes of the House of Este who established and continued it.
It was but little wonder that the great family of theMedici 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.
TheArazzeria Mediceawas the direct result of the jealousy of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574. It was established in Florence with a success to be anticipated under such powerful protection, and it endured until that patronage was removed by the extinction of the family in 1737.
It was to be expected that the artists employed were those of note, yet in the general result, outside of delicate grotesques, the drawing is more or less the far-away echo of greater masters whose faults are reproduced, but whose inspiration is not obtainable. After Michael Angelo, came a passion for over-delineation of over-developed muscles; after Raphael—came the debased followers of his favourite pupil, Giulio Romano, who had himself seized all there was of the carnal in Raphael’s genius. But if there is something to be desired in the composition and line of the cartoons of the Florentine factory, there is nothing lacking in the consummate skill of the weavers.
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ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas Karcher
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ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by G. Rost
The same Nicholas Karcher who set the standard in the d’Este works, gave of his wonderful skill to the Florentines, and with him was associated John Rost. Thesewere both from Flanders, and although trade regulations for tapestry workers did not exist in Italy, Duke Cosimo granted each of these men a sufficient salary, a habitat, as well as permission to work for outsiders, and in addition paid them for all work executed for himself.
The subjects for the set of tapestries had entirely left the old method of pious interpretation and of mediæval allegory and revelled in pictured tales of the Scriptures and of the gods and heroes of mystical Parnassus and of bellicose Greece, not forgetting those dainty exquisite impossibilities called grotesques. It was about the time of the death of Cosimo I (1574), the founder of the Medicean factory, that a new and unfortunate influence came into the directorship of the designs. This was the appointment of Stradano or Johan van der Straaten, to give his Flemish name, as dominating artist.
He was a man without fine artistic feeling, one of those whose eye delighted in the exaggerations of decadence rather than in the restraint of perfect art. He was inspired, not by past perfection of the Italians among whom he came to live, but by those of the decline, and on this he grafted a bit of Northern philistinism. His brush was unfortunately prolific, and at this time the fine examples of weaving set by Rost and Karcher had been replaced by quicker methods so that after 1600 the tapestries poured out were lamentably inferior. Florentine tapestry had at this time much pretence, much vulgar display in its drawing, missing the fine virtues of the time when Cosimo I dictated its taste, the fine virtues of “grace, gaiety and reflectiveness.”
Leo X, the great Medicean pope, was elected in 1513, he who ordered the great Raphael set of theActs 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.