Needlework As Art Part 34

[404] Charles the Bold has left us records of his taste in tent hangings of Arras at Berne, as well as at Nancy.

These are the plunder from his camp equipage after the battle of Grandson. The whole suite, of many pieces, represents battles and sieges, and sacred subjects also, such as the adoration of the Magi. They are finely drawn and splendidly executed with gold lights, and are of the most perfect style of the fifteenth century. The National Museum at Munich contains most valuable specimens of very early and very fine tapestries; amongst others, a Virgin, which was certainly designed in the school of Durer, and is of the greatest perfection of its art, both as to colour and drawing and the general effect, which has a soft, dreamy beauty, only to be seen in fine woollen tapestries, and differing from pictorial design and intention.

[405] See Rock, cxii: Among the remarkable suites of tapestry of which we find historical mention are the following: In 1334, John de Croisette, a "Tap.i.s.sier Sarazinois, demeurant a Arras vendit au Duc de Touraine un tapis Sarazinois a or: de l'histoire de Charlemagne"

(Voisin, p. 6). Of the many recorded as belonging to Philip, Duke of Burgundy and Brabant, one piece, "Haulte lice sanz or: de l'histoire du Duc de Normandie, comment il conquit Engleterre."--"Les Ducs de Bourgogne," par le Comte de Laborde, ii. p. 270, No. 4277.

[406] M. de Champeaux, the author of the "Handbook of Art Tapestry" belonging to the series of the Kensington Museum, 1878, says that the history of Arras has yet to be written. He, however, gives a great deal of interesting information, especially about the French tapestries, on which subject we fancy there is little more to tell. Their art does not come from such a distant time as that of the Belgian manufactures. After Louis IX. had decimated the inhabitants, and dispersed the remainder, Arras yet made a gallant struggle to revive her industry and compete with the rising prosperity of Brussels; but France had decreed against her.

[407] "Encyclopaedia Britannica" ("Art Tapestry"), pp.

17, 97.

[408] Vasari vividly describes the design for a tapestry for the King of Portugal--the history of Adam--on which Leonardo da Vinci, then aged twenty, was engaged. He lingers tenderly over the picture of the flowery field and the careful study of the bay-trees. Vasari, tom.

vii. p. 15; ed. Firenze, 1851.

[409] See M. Jubinal's "Tap.i.s.series Historiees," p. 26; Viollet-le-Duc, "Mobilier Francais," i. p. 269.

[410] Froissart's "Chronicles," iv., chap. 23; Johnes ed. 1815.

[411] M. de Champeaux, "Handbook of Art Tapestry," p.

24; also Rock, "Textiles," p. 122. M. Lacordaire, "Tap.i.s.serie des Gobelins," p. 15, tells us that under Louis XIII. the statutes of 1625-27 contain many regulations for the perfection of the materials employed in weaving new as well as in restoring old tapestries.

Fines were imposed for not matching the colours carefully.

[412] English wool is still used for the finest tapestries at the Gobelins. The wool from Kent is considered the best.

[413] "Vitae St. Alban. Abbatum," p. 40; Rock, p. cxi.

That the walls were covered with tapestry in the thirteenth century is supposed to be proved by the description of Hrothgar's house in the Romance of Beowulf. We are told that the hangings were rich with gold, and a wondrous sight to behold. "History of Domestic Manners, &c., in England during the Middle Ages," by Thomas Wright, p. 2.

[414] Matthew Paris, in Dugdale Monast., ed. 1819, ii.

p. 185.

[415] Quoted by Michel from MSS. in the Imperial Library, Paris.

[416] This was a writ to the Aldermen and Sheriffs of the City of London, princ.i.p.ally levelled against the dealings of "certain Frenchmen which were against the well-being of the trade of the Tap.i.s.siarii ... by pet.i.tion of Parliament at Westminster." Calend. Rot.

Pat. Edward III., p. 148, "De Mystera Tapiciarorum,"

Lond. M. 41.

[417] Called "verdures" in French inventories.

[418] Rock's Introduction, p. lxxix.

[419] "The art of weaving tapestry was brought to England by William Sheldon, Esq., about the end of the reign of Henry VIII."--See Dugdale's "Warwickshire"

("Stemmata:" Sheldon), 2nd edition, folio, vol. i. p.

584; also Lloyd's "State Worthies," p. 953, quoted by Manning and Bray, "Hist. of Surrey," vol. iii. p. 82.

But we have an earlier notice of a spirited attempt to make fine tapestries at Kilkenny. Piers, Earl of Ormonde, married the daughter of Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, "a person of great wisdom and courage." They brought from Flanders and the neighbouring provinces artificers and manufacturers, whom they employed at Kilkenny in working tapestries, diaper, Turkey carpets, cushions, &c. Piers died 1539. Carte's Introduction to the "Life of James, Duke of Ormonde," vol. i. p. 93 (Oxford, 1851).

[420] William Sheldon at his own expense brought workmen from Flanders, and employed them in weaving maps of the different counties of England. Of these, three large maps, the earliest specimens, were purchased by the Earl of Orford (Horace Walpole), by whom they were given to Earl Harcourt. He had them repaired and cleaned, and made as fresh as when out of the loom, and eventually gave them to Gough, the antiquary, who bequeathed them to the University of Oxford. The Armada tapestry, which is stated to have been designed by Henry Cornelius Vroom, the Dutch marine painter, and woven by Francis Spiering, appears to have been, in 1602, in the possession of Lord Howard, Lord High Admiral and the hero of the Armada. Fuller particulars are given in Walpole's "Anecdotes," i. p. 246, under the name of Vroom, Sandart being the princ.i.p.al authority. Part of them were in the House of Lords till 1834, when they perished in the fire. These had been engraved in 1739 by John Pine, but it appears that at that time there were in the royal wardrobe other pieces, now lost.

[421] Lloyd's "Worthies."

[422] Calendar of State Papers, cx. No. 26, James I., 1619-23.

[423] Calendar of State Papers, vol. clx.x.xi. No. 48.

[424] Rymer, "Fdera," vol. viii. p. 66, ed. 1743.

[425] Brydges, "Northamptonshire," i. p. 323, under the head of "Stoke Bruere," pt. 1, p. 48.

[426] Manning and Bray's "History of Surrey," vol. iii.

p. 302.

[427] Horace Walpole, "Anecdotes of Painting in England," vol. ii. p. 22.

[428] Macpherson, "Annals of Commerce."

[429] There is in Brydges' "Northamptonshire," under the head of "Stoke Bruere" (the estate which King James gave to Sir F. Crane as part payment of the deficit of 16,400 in his tapestry business), mention of the cartoons of "Raphael of Urbin, ... had from Genoa," and their cost, 300, besides the transport. M. Blanc says, with great justness, that Raphael, when he prepared these cartoons for tapestry, made designs for weaving, and _did not paint pictures_. If they had been intended for oil pictures, they would have been very differently treated.

[430] Calendar State Papers, Domestic, Sept. 28th, 1653.

[431] Horace Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting," vol.

iii. p. 64.

[432] See Evelyn's very scarce tract, ent.i.tled "Mundus Muliebris," printed 1690, p. 8.

[433] Lord Tyrconnell, Lord Exeter, and Lord Guildford had married three of the Brownlow heiresses of Belton, who had a winter residence at Stamford.

[434] Designed by Francesco Zuccharelli. Rock, Introduction, p. cxiv.

[435] It has been at different periods the crowning glory of the craft of the weaver to place different patterns or pictures on the two sides of the web. This would almost appear to be impossible, but that it has been done in late years, according to Rock, who tells us that he saw a banner so woven, with the Austrian eagle on one side and the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception on the other. He says that the same manufacturer was then being employed in producing ecclesiastical garments with the colours and patterns so varied.

[436] In old tapestries three tints only were employed for the complexions of men, women, and children--the man's reddish, the woman's yellow, and the child's whiter than either. It is an agreeable economy of colours, simple and effective, and avoids the pictorial imitation that one deprecates. See M. Charles Blanc's "Grammaire des Arts Decoratifs: Tap.i.s.serie," p. 112.

[437] The poet here refers to H.R.H. the Princess Christian.

CHAPTER VII.

HANGINGS.

"... Her bedchamber was hang'd With tapestry of silk and silver...."

"Cymbeline," Act II., Scene IV.

The most important works that have been executed in embroidery, have been hangings or carpets. We may look upon these as belonging to the history of the past. Never again will such works be undertaken. Their _raison d'etre_, as well as the means for their production, have ceased to exist. We have very ancient historical evidence of the use of hangings (or tapestries), either as curtains to exclude prying eyes, or as coverings to what was sacred or else unseemly, or as ornamental backgrounds in public and private buildings.

There is no doubt that in pillared s.p.a.ces the enclosures and subdivisions were completed by hangings from pillar to pillar, from the earliest times of Asiatic civilization. In a.s.syria, and afterwards in Greece and Rome, the open courts and rooms were shaded from the sun and rain by umbrella-like erections with hangings stretched over them.

From the Coliseum's vast area to that of the smallest atrium in the Pompeian house, the covering principle was the same.