THE MIDDLE AGES.
We cannot easily determine on a date at which we can assign a
beginning to mediæval art. It differs from the art that succeeded it
in the sixteenth century in many respects, and from the late classic
art that preceded it still more widely. That peculiar character which
we call romantic enters into the art of mediæval times, as it does
into the literature and manners of the same ages. It took a living
form in the half religious institution of chivalry. The northern
nations grew up under the leadership of monks quite as much as under
that of kings. They lived in territories only partially cleared from
forests, pushed their way forward to power pioneered by the great
religious orders, and their world was one surrounded by opportunities
of endless adventures. But this romantic standard, though it took its
rise from the times in which the Christians carried their lives in
their hands, under the persecuting emperors, did not pervade Europe
for many centuries. Classic art, in its decay, still furnished both
forms and symbols, such, _e.g._, as that of Orpheus, to the new
societies, and the names of Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn, have
survived as the titles of days of the week. The two art traditions
overlapped each other for a while. Mediævalism grew very gradually.
We have just said that Charlemagne welcomed Byzantine artists to the
Rhine. It must be remembered, however, that the Roman empire had been
firmly planted beyond the Alps, and that Gaul produced good Roman art
in the second and third centuries. Architecture, sculpture, bronze
casting, and the numberless appliances of daily life were completely
Roman in many parts of France and Britain. The theatres and
amphitheatres of Arles and Orange and the collections in various
museums are enough to show how extended this character was. It was
not till the old traditions had been much developed or modified by
oriental influences that a thorough mediæval character of art was
established in Italy, France, Germany, and England. To the last it
remained semi-classic in Rome itself.
We can give reference to few specimens of household furniture or
to woodwork of any kind before the eleventh century, with a great
exception to be noticed presently. Ivories, in any form, belonging
to these ages are rare. The best objects are Byzantine. Anglo-saxon
ivories, though not unknown, are all but unique examples. Ivory was
probably rarely employed for any objects of secular use, unless on
mirror cases, combs, or the thrones of kings; on horns, caskets, sword
hilts, and the like.
Metallurgy in the precious metals and in bronze, including the gilding
of bronze, was probably the one art that survived the departure, if
it had not even preceded the invasion, of the Romans in Britain. It is
scarcely probable that tin and copper ores would have been sought for
from Britain if manufactured ornaments of metal had not found their
way in the first instance from this country to the south. Be that,
however, as it may, the art of metallurgy survived the downfall of
such architectural and sculpturesque skill as had been attained in
England under Roman traditions; and that metal thrones, chairs, and
other utensils were made here as in Gaul can hardly be doubted.
There is an interesting collection, lately bequeathed by Mr. Gibbs,
of Saxon ornaments in gold, bronze, and bronze ornamented with gilding
and enamel, in the South Kensington museum. These objects were dug up
chiefly at Faversham, a village in Kent. Most of these antiquities
are _fibulæ_, brooches, and buckles, or portions of horse trappings,
bosses, &c., and not recognisable as parts of bronze furniture,
such as the chair of Dagobert. But it is difficult to examine these
personal ornaments and not believe that during the Saxon occupation
bronze thrones, tripods, mirrors, and other objects of household use
were also made.
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, n^{o.} 68: and we here give a woodcut of it. This work (it
is said) was executed by a monk.
[Illustration]
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 contained generally
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 or platform, 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.
[Illustration]
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 of martin 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
pieces of 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.
[Illustration]
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, the Florentine, 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.
[Illustration]
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 most
European 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 a _settle_ is 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, and was 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 called
_dressoirs_ or 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.
[Illustration]
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 and could 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, linen and 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 the _droit 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. The _droit
de prisage_ was 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.
[Illustration]
We must not pass without a very brief notice the large constructions
of 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 the
junction 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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, n^{o.} 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.
[Illustration: A royal dinner table, from a manuscript of the
fourteenth century.]