MODERN AWAKENING
In the Fourteenth Century, tapestry, the high-warp product, began to
play an important part in the refinements of the day. We have seen the
tendency of the past time to embellish and soften churches and
monastic institutions with hangings. Records mostly in clerical Latin,
speak of these as curtains for doorways, dossers for covering seats,
and the backs of benches, and baldachins, as well as carpets for use
on the floor. Subjects were ecclesiastic, as the favourite Apocalypse;
or classic, like that of the Quedlimburg hanging which fantastically
represents the marriage of Mercury and Philology.
But in the Thirteenth Century the political situation had improved and
men no longer slept in armour and women no longer were prepared to
thrust all household valuables into a coffer on notice that the enemy
was approaching over the plains or up the rocks. Therefore, homes
began to be a little less rude in their comforts. Stone walls were
very much the rule inside as well as out, but it became convenient
then to cover their grim asperities with the woven draperies, the
remains of which so interest us to-day, and which we in our accession
of luxuriousness would add to the already gently finished apartments.
To put ourselves back into one of those castle homes we are to
imagine a room of stone walls, fitted with big iron hooks, on which
hung pictured tapestry which reached all around, even covering the
doors in its completeness. To admit of passing in and out the door a
slit was made, or two tapestries joined at this spot. Set Gothic
furniture scantily about such a room, a coffer or two, some
high-backed chairs, a generous table, and there is a room which the
art of to-day with its multiple ingenuity cannot surpass for beauty
and repose.
But such a room gave opportunity for other matters in the Thirteenth
Century. Customs were less polite and morals more primitive. Important
people desiring important information were given to the spying and
eavesdropping which now has passed out of polite fashion. And those
ancient rooms favoured the intriguer, for the hangings were suspended
a foot or two away from the wall, and a man or a woman, for that
matter, might easily slip behind and witness conversations to which
the listener had not been invited. So it was customary on occasions of
intimate and secret converse lightly to thrust a sharpened blade
behind the curtains. If, as in the case in "Hamlet," the sword pierced
a human quarry, so much the worse for the listener who thus gained
death and lost its dignity.
Before leaving this ancient chamber it is well to impress ourselves
with the interesting fact that tapestries were originally meant to be
suspended loosely, liberally, from the upper edge only, and to fall in
folds or gentle undulations, thus gaining in decorative value and
elegance. This practice had an important effect on the design, and
also gave an appearance of movement to human figures and to foliage,
as each swayed in light folds.
When considering tapestries of the Thirteenth Century we are only
contemplating the stones of history, for the actual products of the
looms of that time are not for us; they are all gathered into museums,
public or ecclesiastic. The same might be said of tapestries of the
Fourteenth Century, and almost of the Fifteenth. But those old times
are so full of romance, that their history is worth our toying with.
It adds infinite joy to the possessing of old tapestries, and converts
museum visits into a keen chase for the elusive but fascinating
figures of the past.
Let us then absorb willingly one or two dry facts. High-warp tapestry
we have traced lightly from Egypt through Greece and Rome and, almost
losing the thread in the Middle Ages, have seen it rising a virile
industry, nursed in monasteries. It was when the stirrings of artistic
life were commencing under the Van Eycks in the North and under Giotto
and the Tuscans in the South that the weaving of tapestries reached a
high standard of production and from that time until the Nineteenth
Century has been an important artistic craft. The Thirteenth Century
saw it started, the Fourteenth saw the beginnings of important
factories, and the Fifteenth bloomed into full productions and beauty
of the style we call Gothic.
In these early times of the close of the Thirteenth Century and the
beginning of the Fourteenth, the best known high-warp factories were
centred in northern and midland provinces of France and Flanders,
Paris and Arras being the towns most famed for their productions. As
these were able to supply the rest of Europe, the skilled technique
was lost otherwheres, so that later, when Italy, Germany and England
wished to catch up again their ancient work, they were obliged to ask
instruction of the Franco-Flemish high-warp workers.[5]
It is not possible in the light of history for either Paris or Arras
to claim the invention of so nearly a prehistoric art as that of
high-warp tapestry, and there is much discussion as to which of these
cities should be given the honour of superiority and priority in the
work of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.
Factories existed at both places and each had its rules of manufacture
which regulated the workman and stimulated its excellence. The
factories at Paris, however, were more given to producing copies of
carpets brought from the East by returning crusaders, and these were
intended for floors. The craftsmen were sometimes alluded to as
_tapissiers Sarrazinois_, named, as is easily seen, after the Saracens
who played so large a part in the adventurous voyages of the day. But
in Paris in 1302, by instigation of the Provost Pierre le Jumeau,
there were associated with these tapissiers or workmen, ten others,
for the purpose of making high-warp tapestry, and these were bound
with all sorts of oaths not to depart from the strict manner of
proceeding in this valued handicraft.
Indeed, the Articles of Faith, nor the Vows of the Rosicrucians,
could not be more inviolable than the promises demanded of the early
tapestry workers. In some cases--notably a factory of Brussels,
Brabant, in the Sixteenth Century--there were frightful penalties
attendant upon the breaking of these vows, like the loss of an ear or
even of a hand.
The records of the undertaking of the Provost Pierre le Jumeau in
introducing the high-warp (_haute lisse_) workers into the factory
where Sarrazinois and other fabrics were produced, means only that the
improvement had begun, but not that Paris had never before practised
an art so ancient.
The name of Nicolas Bataille is one of the earliest which we can
surround with those props of records that please the searcher for
exact detail.[6] He was both manufacturer and merchant and was a man
of Paris in the reign of Charles VI, a king who patronised him so well
that the workshops of Paris benefited largely. The king's brother
becoming envious, tried to equal him in personal magnificence and gave
orders almost as large as those of the king. Philip the Hardy, uncle
of the king, also employed this designer whose importance has not
lessened in the descent of the centuries.
What makes Bataille of special interest to us is that we cannot only
read of him in fascinating chronicles as well as dry histories, but we
can ourselves see his wondrous works. In the cathedral at Angers hangs
a tapestry executed by him; it is a part of the _Apocalypse_
(favourite subject) drawn by Dourdin, who was artist of the cartoons
as well as artist to Charles V.
In those days the weaver occupied much the same place in relation to
the cartoonist as the etcher does now to the painter. That is to say,
that because the drawing was his inspiration, the weaver was none the
less an artist of originality and talent.
These celebrated hangings at Angers, although commenced in 1376 for
Louis of Anjou, were not completed in all the series until 1490,
therefore Bataille's work was on the first ones, finished on
Christmas, 1379. The design includes imposing figures, each seated on
a Gothic throne reading and meditating. The larger scenes are topped
with charming figures of angels in primitive skies of the "twisted
ribbon" style of cloud, angels whose duty and whose joy is to trump
eternally and float in defiance of natural laws of gravitation.
The museum at the Gobelins factory in Paris shows to wondering eyes
the other authentic example of late Fourteenth Century high-warp
tapestry, as woven in the early Paris workshops. It portrays with a
lovely naive simplicity _The Presentation in the Temple_. This with
the pieces of the _Apocalypse_ at Angers are all that are positively
known to have come from the Paris workshops of the late Fourteenth
Century.
History steps in with an event that crushed the industry in Paris.
Just when design and execution were at their highest excellence, and
production was prolific, political events began to annihilate the
trade. The English King, Henry V, crossed the Channel and occupied
Paris in 1422. Thus, under the oppression of the invaders, the art of
tapestry was discouraged and fell by the way, not to rise lustily
again in Paris for two hundred years.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Eugene Muentz, "La Tapisserie."
[6] For extensive reading see Guiffrey, "Nicolas Bataille, tapissier
parisien," and "L'Histoire General de la Tapisserie," the section
called "Les Tapisseries Francaises."