THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
In discussing the great wood structures such as screens, house
fronts, roofs, and other large pieces of mechanism, which developed in
boldness and variety in the fifteenth century, we must not forget that
the abundance of oak timber in the north of Europe both suggested much
of this timber art and admitted of bold features of construction from
the size of the logs and the tenacity of the material. A large portion
of England and perhaps an equal proportion of Ireland were covered
with dense forests of oak. The eastern frontier of France, great
portions of Burgundy, and many other districts in France, Germany,
Flanders, and other northern countries, were still forests, and timber
was to be had at low prices and in any quantity. Spanish chestnut had
been introduced probably by the Romans into England.
Though churches, castles, and manors were built of stone or brick,
or both, yet whole cities seem to have been mainly constructed out
of timber. The London of the fifteenth century, like a hundred other
cities, though abounding in noble churches and in great fortified
palaces, yet presented the aspect of a timber city. The houses
were framed together, as a few still are in some English towns and
villages, of vast posts sixteen to twenty-four inches square in
section, arching outwards and meeting the projecting floor timbers,
and so with upper stories, till the streets were darkened by the
projections. The surfaces of these posts were covered with delicate
tracery, niches and images. In the streets at Chester an open gallery
or passage is left on the first floor _within_ the timbers of the
house fronts. In the court of St. Mary's guild in Coventry, whole
chambers and galleries are supported on vast arches of timber like
bridges. Oriels jutted out under these overhanging stories, and
the spaces between the framing posts were filled in, sometimes with
bricks, sometimes with laths and mortar, or parts (as the century wore
on) more frequently with glass.
In London and Rouen, in Blois and in Coventry, these angle posts were
filled with niches and statuettes or fifteenth century window tracery
sunk into the surfaces. The dark wooden houses were externally a mass
of imagery. In the great roofs of these centuries, such as the one
spoken of at Westminster, the hammer beams were generally carved into
figures of angels gracefully sustaining the timber behind them
with outstretched wings; and these figures were painted and gilt.
A magnificent example remains intact in the church of Knapton in
Norfolk.
[Illustration]
The number of excellent workmen and the size and architectural
character of so much of the woodwork of the day contributed to give
all panelled work, no matter of what description, an architectural
type; and furniture shared in this change. Coffers and chests, as well
as standards or stall-ends in churches, and bench-ends in large rooms
and halls, were designed after the pattern of window tracery. The
panel in the above woodcut from a French chest of this date, is a very
delicate and beautiful example. Little buttresses and pinnacles were
often placed on the angles or the divisions between the panels. At
South Kensington, the buffet, n^{o.} 8,439 and the chest, n^{o.}
2,789, with other pieces are of this kind; also a grand cabinet of
German make in the same collection. This last, n^{o.} 497, is of the
rudest construction, but a few roughly cut lines of moulding and some
effective ironwork give it richness and dignity that are wanting in
many pieces more scientifically made and more decoratively treated.
The quantity of tapestry employed in these centuries in fitting up
houses and the tents used either during a campaign or in progresses
from one estate to another was prodigious, and kept increasing.
Lancaster entertained the king of Portugal in his tent between Mouçal
and Malgaço, fitted up with hangings of arras "as if he had been at
Hertford, Leicester, or any of his manors." As early as 1313, when
Isabel of Bavaria made her entry into Paris, the whole street of St.
Denis, Froissart tells us, "was covered with a canopy of rich camlet
and silk cloths, as if they had the cloths for nothing, or were at
Alexandria or Damascus. I (the writer of this account) was present,
and was astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments
could have come, for all the houses on each side of the street of St.
Denis, as far as the Châtelet, or indeed to the great bridge, were
hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histories, to
the delight of all beholders." The expense incurred in timber work on
these occasions may be estimated from the long lists of pageants, and
the scale on which each was prepared on this and like occasions.
Of the early Italian furniture of the mediæval period there is at
South Kensington one fine specimen, a coffer of cypress, covered with
flat surface imagery filled in with coloured wax composition. It dates
from the fourteenth century. The better known Italian furniture of
the quattrocento or "fourteen hundred period," _i.e._ the fifteenth
century, is gilt and painted. The richness of this old work is owing
to the careful preparation of the ground or bed on which the gold is
laid and the way in which the preparation was modelled with the tool.
The old gold is, besides, both thicker and purer, more malleable, and
less liable to suffer from the action of the atmosphere than the gold
we now use for this purpose. The paintings executed on such pieces
of furniture as offered suitable surfaces to the artist, boxes and
coffers (and, for church uses, reliquaries), are equal to the finest
works of that kind and of the same period.
Many artists worked in this way. Dello Delli was the best known in
regard to such productions. His work became so entirely the fashion
that, according to Vasari, no house was complete without a specimen
of it. Andrea di Cosimo was another. It need not be said that such men
and their contemporaries had a number of pupils similarly employed.
Every piece of painted furniture attributed to Dello Delli cannot be
warranted. There are, however, specimens which we believe to be from
his hand in the Kensington collection, and numbers of fronts and
panels and fragments of great merit which illustrate his style.
Besides this kind of decoration, the Venetians had derived from Persia
and India another beautiful system of surface ornament; marquetry, a
fine inlay of ivory, metal, and woods, stained to vary the colour. The
work is in geometric patterns only. It is found on the ivory boxes and
other objects sculptured in that material, and attributed to Italian
as well as to Byzantine sources. In the fifteenth century Florence
also came prominently to the front in the manufacture of these and
other rich materials; as well as of ivory inlaid into solid cypress
wood and walnut, known as Certosina work. The style is Indian in
character, and consists in geometric arrangements of stars made of
diamond-shaped pieces: varied with conventional flowers in pots, &c.
The name Certosina is derived from the great Certosa, charterhouse,
or Carthusian monastery between Milan and Pavia: where this kind of
decoration is employed in the choir fittings of the splendid church of
that monastery.
We are inclined to the belief (as already said) that the manufacture
of geometrical work of this kind was originally imported from Persia
by the Venetians. There are in the Kensington museum some very
interesting old chairs made for the castle of Urbino, and part of the
furniture of Guidobaldo II., whose court, like that of Réné, king
of Provence, was the resort of troubadours, poets, and philosophers.
These chairs are covered with geometric marquetry of white and stained
ivory, &c., the very counterpart of the Bombay work now brought to
this country. That manufacture, in the opinion of Dr. Birdwood,
was also of Persian origin and thence found its way to Bombay. The
Persians continued long into the last century the inlaying of ivory in
walnut wood, and their geometric marquetry is still made.
The forms of chairs in use in Italy early in the fifteenth century
were revivals of the old Roman folding chair. The pairs of crosspieces
are sometimes on the sides, sometimes set back and front, and in that
case arm and back pieces are added. Generally we may say that the fine
Italian furniture of that day owed its beauty to inlaying, surface
gilding, tooling and painting. Gilt chests and marriage trays, inlaid
tables, and chairs are also to be seen at South Kensington.
As in Italy, so in England, France, Germany, and later in Spain, the
splendour hitherto devoted to the glory of ecclesiastical furniture,
utensils, or architectural decoration was gradually adopted in the
royal and other castles and houses. State rooms, halls of justice,
sets of rooms for the use of the king or his barons were furnished and
maintained. The large religious establishments also demanded the skill
of artists and workmen, and to a greater extent north than south of
the Alps. Many monastic houses in the north of Europe were seats of
feudal jurisdiction. These communities executed great works in wood,
stall-work, presses, coffers, &c., as large and continuous societies
alone are able to carry through tasks that want much time for
completion. All this helped to encourage the manufacture of woodwork
of the finest kind. Hence the mediæval semi-ecclesiastical character
maintained sway in every art connected with architecture and furniture
longer in northern countries than in Italy, where both old traditions
and monumental remains recalled rather the glories of antique art, and
where the revival of classic learning had begun.
As regards English art it is certain that, partly from the influence
of foreign queens, partly from foreign wars, and partly from the
incessant intercourse with the rest of Europe kept up by religious
houses, many of the accomplishments of other countries were known and
practised here by foreign or native artists.
It is true that the wars of the Roses, more bloody and ruinous than
any experienced in this country, delayed that growth of domestic
luxury which might have been expected from the then wealth of England.
But when Henry the seventh established a settled government, and from
his time downwards, the decorations and the accumulation of furniture
in houses, libraries, and collections of works of art rapidly
increased. Many of the books in the "King's library," and many
pictures and movables still in possession of the crown, may be traced
to that day.
It is difficult, indeed, to imagine the England which Leland saw in
his travels. It must have been full of splendid objects, and during
the reign of Henry the feudal mansions, as well as the numerous royal
palaces of Windsor, Richmond, Havering, and others, were filled with
magnificent furniture. Mabuse and Torrigiano were employed by the
king, and this example found many imitations; artists, both foreign
and English, made secular furniture, as rich and beautiful as that of
the churches and religious houses which covered the country.
Taste in furniture, as in architecture, both in continental Europe and
in these islands had nevertheless passed the fine period of mediæval
design. The "Gothic" or pointed forms and details had become
uninventive and commonplace. The whole system awaited a change. The
figure sculpture, however, of the latter years of this century, though
life-sized statues had lost much of the dignity and simplicity of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was approaching the realization
of natural form, which it attained in such excellence in the
succeeding century. The ingenuity and raciness of the smaller figure
carving both in stall-work of churches and on the tops and fronts of
boxes and caskets, in panel-work of cabinets or doors, &c., during the
last half of the fifteenth century are scarcely surpassed by the more
academic and classical figure design of the sixteenth. Carvers on all
kinds of wood furniture and decoration of houses delighted in doubling
their figures up into quaint and ingenious attitudes, and if the
architecture was latterly tame, though showy and costly, imagery
continued to be full of individuality and inventiveness.