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ITALIAN VERDURE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The desire to imitate the cultivation and elegance ofItaly 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 ofSt. 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 entitledHistory of Urban VIII.
Although Italy is growing daily in power and riches under her new policy of political unity, there were dreary years of heavy expense and light income for many of her famous families, and it was during such an era that the Barberini family consented to let their tapestries pass out from the doors of the palace they were woven to decorate. In 1889, the late Charles M. Ffoulke, Esq., became the possessor of all the Barberini hangings, and added them to his famous collection. Thus through the enterprise and the fine artistic appreciation of Mr.Ffoulke, is America able to enjoy the best expression of Italian tapestry of the Seventeenth Century.
The part that Venice ever played in the history of tapestry is the splendid one of consumer. In her Oriental magnificence she exhibited in palace and pageant the superb products of labour which others had executed. Without tapestries her big stone palaces would have lacked the note of soft luxury, without coloured hangings her balconies would have been but dull settings for languid ladies, and her water-parades would have missed the wondrous colour that the Venetian loves. Yet to her rich market flowed the product of Europe in such exhaustless stream that she became connoisseur-consumer only, nor felt the need of serious producing. Workshops there were, from time to time, but they were as easily abandoned as they were initiated, and they have left little either to history or to museums. Venice was, in the Sixteenth Century, not only a buyer of tapestries for her own use, but one of the largest markets for the sale of hangings to all Europe. Men and monarchs from all Christendom went there to purchase. The same may be said of Genoa, so that although these two cities had occasional unimportant looms, their position was that of middleman—vendors of the works of others. In addition to this they were repairers and had ateliers for restoring, even in those days.
FOOTNOTE:[13]E. Müntz, “La Tapisserie.”
[13]E. Müntz, “La Tapisserie.”
[13]E. Müntz, “La Tapisserie.”
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 châteaux lurk the suggestion of the fortress, and his common people are sunk in a dark and hopeless oppression. Yet he himself darts about Europe with a springing gait and an elegant manner, the type of the strong aristocrat dispensing alike arts of war and arts of the Renaissance.
Was it his visits, bellicose though they were, to Italy and Spain, that turned his observant eye to the luxury of woven story and made him desire that France should produce the same? The Sforza Castle at Milan had walls enough of tapestry, the pageants of Leonardo da Vinci,organised at royal command of the lovely Beatrice d’Este, displayed the wealth of woven beauty over which Francis had time to deliberate in those bad hours after the battle at Milan’s noted neighbour, Pavia.
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THE FINDING OF MOSES
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin. The Louvre Museum
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TRIUMPH OF JUNO
Gobelins under Louis XIV.
The attention of Francis was also turned much to Spain through envy of that extraordinary man of luck and ability, the Emperor Charles V, and from whom he made abortive and sullen efforts to wrest Germany, Italy, anything he could get. In his imprisonment in Madrid, Francis had time in plenty on which to think of many things, and why not on the wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to remember in regard to the class of designs of his own and succeeding periods in France.
How he got his ideas we can reasonably trace, and the result of them was that he established a royal tapestry factory in beautiful Fontainebleau, which lies hid in grateful shade, stretching to flowered fields but a reasonable distance from the distractions of Paris.
It pleased Francis—and perhaps the beautiful Diane de Poitiers and Duchesse d’Étampes—to critique plays in that tiny gem of a theatre at the palace, or to feed the carp in the pool; but also it gave him pleasure to wanderinto 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 theHistory of Dianawas produced is but natural, considering the puissance at court of the famous Diane de Poitiers.
When Francis’ son, Henri II, enfeebled in constitution by the Spanish confinement, inherited the throne, it was but natural that he should neglect the indulgences of his father and prefer those of his own. The Fontainebleau factory strung its looms and copied its cartoons and produced, too, certain hangings for Henri’s wife, the terrible Catherine de Medici, on which her vicious eyes rested in forming her horrid plots; but Henri had ambitions of his own, small ambitions beside those which had to do with jealousy of Charles Quint. He let the factory of Francis I languish, but carried on the art under his own name and fame.
To give his infant industry a home he looked about Paris and decided upon the Hôpital de la Trinité, aninstitution where asylum was found for the orphans of the city who seem, in the light of the general brutality of the time, to have been even in more need of a home than the parentless child of modern civilisation. A part of the scheme was to employ in the works such children as were sufficiently mature and clever to work and to learn at least the auxiliary details of a craft that is also an art.
In this way the sixty or so of the orphans of La Trinité were given a means of earning a livelihood. Among them was one whose name became renowned. This was Maurice du Bourg, whose tapestries surpassed all others of his time in this factory—an important factory, as being one of the group that later was merged into the Gobelins.
It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinité that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an underscoring. This set was composed of fifteen pieces illustrating in sweeping design and gorgeous colouring theHistory 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, Catherinede Medici, who adored posing as the most famous of widows and adding ancient glory to her living importance. To thisHistoryFrench writers accord the important place of inspirer of a distinctively French Renaissance.
The weaver being Maurice du Bourg, the chief of the factory of La Trinité, the artists were Henri Lerambert and Antoine Carron, but the set has been many times copied in various factories, and Artemisia has symbolised in turn two other widowed queens of France.
Into the throne of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his place, and the habit being strong upon him, he was in eternal conflict. Some there be who are developed by sympathy, but Henri IV was developed by opposition, and thus it was that although opposed in the matter by his Prime Minister, Sully, he established factories for the weaving of tapestries in both high and low warps.
With the desire to see the arts of peace instead of evidences of war throughout his kingdom just rescued from conflict, he took all means to set his people in the ways of pleasing industry. The indefatigable Sully was plucking the royal sleeve to follow the path of the plough, to see man’s salvation, material and moral, in the ways of agriculture. But Henri favoured townspeople aswell as country people, and with the Edict of Nantes, releasing from the bondage of terror a large number of workers, he showed much industry in encouraging tapestry factories in and near Paris, and as these all lead to Gobelins we will consider them.
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TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century
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TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins Tapestry
Henri IV, notwithstanding his Prime Minister Sully’s opposition to what he considered a favouring of vicious luxury, began to occupy himself in tapestry factories as early in his reign as his people could rise from the wounds of war. Taking his movements chronologically we will begin with his establishment in 1597 (eight years after this first Bourbon took the throne) of a high-warp industry in the house of the Jesuits in the Faubourg St. Antoine, associating here Du Bourg of La Trinité and Laurent, equally renowned, and the composer of the St. Merri tapestries.[14]
Flemish workers in Paris were at this same time, about 1601, encouraged by the king and under protection of his steward. These Flemings were the nucleus of a great industry, for it was over them that two famous masters governed, namely, François de la Planche and Marc Comans or Coomans. In 1607 Henri IV established the looms which these men were called upon to direct.
These two Flemings, great in their art, were men of family and of some means, for their first venture in the manufacture of tapestry was a private enterprise like any of to-day. They looked to themselves to produce the money for the support of the industry. Combiningqualities 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 withMarie Stuart, the subsequent razing of this ancient home of kings by Catherine de Medici, and its reconstruction in its present form by Henri IV. It is here that Richelieu honoured the brief reign of Louis XIII by a statue, and it is here that Madame de Sevigné was born. But more to our purpose, it was here that, in 1607, Henri IV cast his kingly eye when establishing a certain tapestry factory. It was here he placed as directors the celebrated Comans and De la Planche. It happened in time, that the looms of Les Tournelles were moved to the Faubourg St. Marceau and these two men came in time to direct these and all other looms under royal patronage.
Examples are not wanting in museums of French work of this time, showing the development of the art and the progress that France was making under Henri IV, whose energy without limit, and whose interests without number, would to-day have given him the epithet of strenuous.
Under his reign we see the activity that so easily led France up to the point where all that was needed was the assembling of the factories under the direction of one great master. The factories flourishing under Henri IV were La Trinité, the Louvre, the Savonnerie, the Faubourg St. Marceau and one in the Tuileries. But it needed the power of Louis XIV to tie all together in the strength of unity.
The assassin Ravaillac, fanatically muttering through the streets of Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal coach, not onlygave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these industries that the king had cherished for his people against the opposition of his prime minister. The tale of tapestry is like a vine hanging on a frame of history, and frequent allusion therefore must be made to the tales of kings and their ministers.
As it is not always a monarch, but often the power behind the throne that rules, we see the force of Richelieu surging behind the reign of the suppressed Louis XIII, whose rule followed that of the regretted Henri IV. The master of the then new Palais-Royal had minor interests of his own, apart from his generous plots of ruin for the Protestants, for all the French nobility, and for the House of Austria to which the queen belonged. Luxurious surroundings were a necessity to this man, refined in the arts of cruelty and of living. It was no wonder that under him tapestry weaving was not allowed to die, but was fostered until that day when the Grand Monarch would organise and perfect.
In 1643, Louis XIV came to the throne under the guidance of Anne of Austria, but it was many years before he was able to make his influence appreciable. Meanwhile, however, others were fostering the elegant industry. It was as early as 1647 that two celebrated tapestry weavers came to Paris from Italy. They were Pierre Lefèvre or Lefebvre and his son Jean. The first of these was the chief of a factory in Florence, whither he presently returned. Jean Lefebvre stayed in Paris, won his way all the better for being released from parental rule, and in time received the great honour of being appointedone of the directors of the Gobelins, when that factory was finally organised as an institution of the state.
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GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
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CHILDREN GARDENING
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Château Henri Quatre, Pau
During the regency of Louis XIV there were also factories outside of Paris. The high-warp looms of Tours were of such notable importance that the great Richelieu placed here an order for tapestries of great splendour with which to soften his hours of ease. Rheims Cathedral still harbours the fine hangings which were woven for the place they now adorn, an unusual circumstance in the world of tapestry. These hangings (The Story of Christ) were woven at Rheims, where the factory existed well known throughout the first half of the Seventeenth Century. The church had previously ordered tapestries from another town executed by one Daniel Pepersack, and so highly approved was his work that he was made director of the Rheims factory.[15]
A factory which lasted but a few years, yet has for us a special interest, is that of Maincy, founded in 1658. It is here that we hear of the great Colbert and of Lebrun, whose names are synonymous with prosperity of the Gobelins. For the factory at Maincy, Lebrun made cartoons of great beauty, notably that ofThe 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 toMazarin, who had used it with every cruelty possible to the day. He had coveted riches and elegance and had possessed himself of them; had collected in his palace the most beautiful works of art of his day or those of a previous time. After Mazarin came Foucquet, the great, the iconoclastic, the unfortunate.
It was at Foucquet’s estate of Vaux near Maincy that this tapestry factory of short duration was established and soon destroyed. The powerful Superintendent of Finance, with his eye for the beautiful and desire for the luxury of kings, built for himself such a château as only the magnificence of that time produced. It was situated far enough from Paris to escape any sort of ennui, and was surrounded by gardens most marvellous, within a beauteous park. It lay, when finished, like a jewel on the fair bosom of France. The great superintendent conceived the idea of pleasing the young king, Louis XIV, by inviting the court for a wondrous fête in its lovely enclosure.
Foucquet was a man of the world, and of the court, knew how to please man’s lighter side, and how to use social position for his own ends. France calls him a “dilapidateur,” but when his power and incidentally the revenues of state, were laid out to produce a day of pleasure for king and court, his taste and ability showed such a fête as could scarce be surpassed even in those days of artistic fêtes champêtres.
The great gardens were brought into use in all the beauty of flower and vine, of lawn and bosquet, of terrace and fountain. When the guests arrived, weary of townlife, they were turned loose in the enchanting place like birds uncaged, and to the beauty of Nature was added that of folk as gaily dressed as the flowers. The king was invited to inspect it all for his pleasure, asked to feast in the gardens, and to repose in the splendid château.
He was young then, in the early twenties, and luxury was younger then than now, so he was pleased to spend the time in almost childish enjoyments. A playal frescowas almost a necessity to a royal garden party, which was no affair of an hour like ours in the busy to-day, but extended the livelong day and evening. Molière was ready with his sparkling satires at the king’s caprice, and into the garden danced the players before an audience to whom vaudeville andcafé chantantwere exclusively a royal novelty arranged for their delectation.
It is easy to see the elegant young king and his court in the setting of a sophisticated out-of-doors, wandering on grassy paths, lingering under arches of roses, plucking a flower to nest beside a smiling face, stopping where servants—obsequious adepts, they were then—supplied dainty things to eat and drink. Madame de Sevigné was there, she of the observant eye, an eye much occupied at this time with the figure of Superintendent Foucquet, the host of this glorious occasion. This gracious lady lacked none of the appearance of frivolity, coiffed in curls, draped in lace and soft silks, but her mind was deeply occupied with the signs of the times. All the elegance of the château, all the seductive beauty of terrace, garden, and bosquet, all the piquant surprises of play and pyrotechnics, what were they? Simply the disinterestedeffort of a subject to give pleasure to His Majesty, the King.
There were those present who had long envied Foucquet, with his ever-increasing power and wealth, his ability to patronise the arts, to collect, and even to establish his tapestry looms like a king, for his own palace and for gifts. This grand fête in the lovely month of June did more than shower pleasure, more than gratify the lust of the eye. In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin.
Among the observant guests at this wondrous fête champêtre was Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in Foucquet’s fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king. Foucquet’s downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches their own. Foucquet’s unequalled entertainment of the king was made to count as naught. Louis, even before leaving for Paris, had begun to ask whence came the money that purchased this wide fertile estate stretching to the vision’s limit, the money that built the château of regal splendour, the money that paid for the prodigal pleasures of that day of delights? Foucquet thought to have gained the confidence and admiration of the king. But, on leaving, Louis said coldly, “We shall scarce dare ask you to our poor palace, seeing the superior luxury to which you are accustomed.” A fearful cut, but only a straw to the fatewhich followed, the investigations into the affairs of Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with the superintendent’s life. Madame de Sevigné saw him in the beginning, wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from his weary years.
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CHILDREN GARDENING
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Château Henri Quatre, Pau
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GOBELINS GROTESQUE
Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Château of Vaux near Maincy, and so, too, came an end to the factory where so fine results had been obtained in tapestry weaving. Yet the effort was not in vain, for some of the tapestries remain and the factory was the school where certain celebrated men were trained.
It may easily have been that Louis XIV discovered on that day at Vaux the excellence of Lebrun whom he made director at the Gobelins in Paris when they were but newly formed. Foucquet, wasting in prison, had many hours in which to think on this and on the advancement of the very man who had been keenest in running him to cover, the great Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and daring, qualities of which the world has ever need.
Foucquet’s factory lasted three years. It was directed by Louis Blamard or Blammaert of Oudenarde, and employed a weaver named Jean Zègre, who came from the works at Enghien, works sufficiently known to beremarked. 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 Museswas a set by Lebrun, also composed for the Château of Vaux. The charm of this set is a matter for admiration even now when, alas, all is destroyed but a few fragments.
The disgrace of Foucquet was the last determining cause of the establishment of the Gobelins factory under Louis XIV, an act which after this brief review of Paris factories (and an allusion to sporadic cases outside of Paris) we are in position at last to consider. Pursuit of knowledge in regard to the Gobelins factory leads us through ways the most flowery and ways the most stormy, through sunshine and through the dark, right up to our own times.
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GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York
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THE VILLAGE FÊTE
Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers
FOOTNOTES:[14]For the facts here cited see E. Müntz, “Histoire de la Tapisserie,” and Jules Guiffrey, “Les Gobelins.”[15]See Loriquet, “Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims.”
[14]For the facts here cited see E. Müntz, “Histoire de la Tapisserie,” and Jules Guiffrey, “Les Gobelins.”
[14]For the facts here cited see E. Müntz, “Histoire de la Tapisserie,” and Jules Guiffrey, “Les Gobelins.”
[15]See Loriquet, “Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims.”
[15]See Loriquet, “Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims.”
COLBERT saw the wisdom of taking direction for the king, Louis XIV, of the looms of Foucquet’s château. Travel being difficult enough to make desirable the concentration of points of interest, Colbert transferred the looms of Vaux to Paris. To do this he had first to find a habitat, and what so suitable as the Hotel des Gobelins, a collection of buildings on the edge of Paris by which ran a little brook called the Bièvre. The Sieur Leleu was then the owner, and the sale of the buildings was made on June 6, 1662.
This was the beginning only of the purchase, for Louis XIV added adjoining houses for the various uses of the large industries he had in mind, for the development of arts and crafts of all sorts, and for the lodging of the workers.
The story of the original occupants of the premises is almost too well known to recount. The simple tale of the conscientious “dyers in scarlet” is told on the marble plaque at the present entry into the collection of buildings still standing, still open to visitors. It is a tale with a moral, an obvious simple moral with no need of Alice’s Duchess to point it out, and it smacks strong of the honesty of a labour to which we owe so much.
Late in the Fifteenth Century the brothers Gobelincame to the city of Paris to follow their trade, which was dyeing, and their ambition, which was to produce a scarlet dye like that they had seen flaunting in the glowing city of Venice. The trick of the trade in those days was to find a water of such quality that dyes took to it kindly. The tiny river, or rather brook, called the Bièvre, which ran softly down towards the Seine had the required qualities, and by its murmuring descent, Jean and Philibert pitched the tents of their fortune.
They succeeded, too, so well that we hear of their descendants in later centuries as having become gentlemen, not of property only, but of cultivation, and far removed from trades or bartering. Their name is ever famous, for it tells not only the story of the two original dyers, but of their subsequent efforts in weaving, and finally it has come to mean the finest modern product of the hand loom. Just as Arras gave the name to tapestry in the Fourteenth Century, so the Gobelins has given it to the time of Louis XIV, even down to our own day—more especially in Europe, where the word tapestry is far less used than here.
The tablet now at the Gobelins—let us re-read it, for in some hasty visit to the Latin Quarter we may have overlooked it. Translated freely it reads, “Jean and Philibert Gobelin, merchant dyers in scarlet, who have left their name to this quarter of Paris and to the manufacture of tapestries, had here their atelier, on the banks of the Bièvre, at the end of the Fifteenth Century.”
Another inscription takes a great leap in time, skips over the centuries when France was not in the lead in thisart, and recommences with the awakening strength under the wise care of Henri IV. It reads:
“April 1601. Marc Comans and François de la Planche, Flemish tapestry weavers, installed their ateliers on the banks of the Bièvre.”
“September 1667, Colbert established in the buildings of the Gobelins the manufacture of the furniture (meubles) of the Crown, under the direction of Charles Lebrun.”
The tablet omits the date that is fixed in our mind as that of the beginning of the modern tapestry industry in France, the year 1662, but that is only because it deals with a date of more general importance, the time when the Gobelins was made a manufactory of all sorts of gracious products for the luxury of palaces and châteaux, not tapestries alone, but superb furniture, and metal work, inlay, mounting of porcelains and all that goes to furnish the home of fortunate men.
In that year of 1667 was instituted the ateliers supported by the state, not dependent upon the commercialism of the workers. This made possible the development of such men as Boulle with his superb furniture, of Riesner with his marquetry, of Caffieri with his marvels in metal to decorate allmeubles, 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 especialart. 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 hisacuteness had helped in deposing the splendid brigand Foucquet, and his power was serving France well, so well that he brought about his head the inevitable jealousy which finally threw him, too, into unmerited disgrace.
Colbert, then, although a Minister of State, head of the Army of France, and a few other things, had the fate of the Gobelins in his hand. As the ablest is he who chooses best his aids, Colbert looked among his countrymen for the proper director of the newly-organised institution. He selected Charles Lebrun.
The very name seems enough, in itself. It is the concrete expression of ability, not only as an artist, but as a leader of artists, a director, an assembler, a blender. He called to the Gobelins, as addition to those already there, the apprentices from La Trinité, the weavers from the Faubourg St. Germain, and from the Louvre. He established three ateliers of high-warp under Jean Jans, Jean Lefebvre and Henri Laurent; also two ateliers of low-warp under Jean Delacroix and Jean-Baptiste Mozin. When charged with the decoration of Versailles he had under his direction fifty artists of differing scopes, which alone would show his power of assembling and leading, of blending and ordering. Workers at the Gobelins numbered as many as two hundred fifty, and apprentices were legion.
Ten or twelve important artists composed the designs for tapestries, yet the mind of Lebrun is seen to dominate all; his genius was their inspiration. It was he whose influence pervaded the decorative art of the day. More than any others in that grand age he influenced the toneof 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 theAntony and Cleopatraseries and of the plates given in this volume will establish and verify this.
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DESIGN BY RUBENS
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DESIGN BY RUBENS
Lebrun’s century was the same as that of Rubens, but the former had the fine feeling for art of the Latin, who knows that its first province is to please. A comparison between the two men must not be carried too far, for Rubens was essentially a painter, attacking the field of decoration only with the overflow of imagination, while Lebrun’s life and talent were wholly directed in the way of beautifying palaces and châteaux. Yet Rubens’ work gave a fresh impulse to tapestry weaving in Brussels while Lebrun was inspiring it in France.
Lebrun had, then, to direct the talent and the labour of an army of artists and artisans, and to keep them working in harmony. It was no mean task, for one artist alone was not left to compose an entire picture, but each was taken for his specialty. One artist drew the figures, another the animals, another the trees, and another the architecture; but it was the director, Lebrun, who composed and harmonised the whole. Thus, although the number of tapestries actually composed by him is few, it was his great mind that ordered the work of others. He was the leader of the orchestra, the others were the instruments he controlled.
It was while at Vaux that Lebrun had more time for his own composition. He there produced a series calledLes Renommés, masterpieces of pure decorative composition. These were designed as portières for the Château of Maincy. They came to be models for the Gobelins, and were woven to hang at royal doors, the doors of Foucquet being at this time dressed with iron bars.
The Gobelins wove seventy-two sets after this beautifulmodel which had made Lebrun’s début as an artist. Foucquet had given him a more pretentious work; it was to complete a suite, theHistory of Constantine, after Raphael. Rubens had given a fresh flush of popularity to this subject, which again became the mode. TheHistory of Meleagerwas 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 calledThe MonthsorThe Royal Residences, of which there were twelve hangings.
In these last the scheme is the perfection of decoration, with the subject well subdued, yet so subtly placed that notwithstanding its modesty, the eye promptly seeks it. The castle in the distance, the motive holding aloft the sign of the Zodiac, are seen even before the splendid columns and the foliage of the middle-ground.
Such a hanging has power to play pretty tricks with the imagination of him who gazes upon it. The columns, smooth and solid, declare him at once to be in a place of luxury. Beyond the foreground’s columns, but near enough for touching, are trees to make a pleasant shade, and beyond, in the far distance, is the château set in fair gardens, even the château where the lovely Louise de la Vallière held her court until conscience drove her to the convent.
The set of most renown, woven under Lebrun’s generalship, was that splendid advertisement of the king’s magnificence known as theHistory of the King. Louis demanded above all else that he should appear splendidly before men. He was jealous of the magnificence of allkings 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.