FIFTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS
Whether Arras began as early as Paris is a question better left
unsettled if only for the sake of furnishing a subject of happy
controversy between the champions of the two opinions. But certain it
is that with fewer distractions to disturb her craftsmen, and under
the stimulus of certain ducal and royal patrons, Arras succeeded in
advancing the art more than did her celebrated neighbour. It was
Arras, too, that gave the name to the fabric, a name which appears in
England as arras and in Italy as arazzo, as though there was no other
parent-region for the much-needed and much-prized stuffs than the busy
Flemish town.
Among the early records is found proof that in 1311, a countess of the
province of Artois, of which Arras was the capital, bought a figured
cloth in that city, and two years later ordered various works in high
warp.[7] It is she who became ruler of the province. To patronise the
busy town of her own domains, Arras, she ordered from there the
hangings that were its specialty. Paris also shared her patronage. She
took as husband Otho, Count of Burgundy, and set his great family the
fashion in the way of patronising the tapestry looms.
It was in the time of Charles V of France, that the Burgundian duke
Philip, called the Hardy, began to patronise conspicuously the Arras
factories. In 1393, as de Barante delightfully chronicles, the
gorgeous equipments of this duke were more than amazing when he went
to arrange peace with the English at Lelingien.[8]
The town chosen for the pourparlers, wherein assembled the English
dukes, Lancaster and Gloucester and their attendants, as well as the
cortege attending the Duke of Burgundy, was a poor little village
ruined by wars. The conferences were held by these superb old fighters
and statesmen in an ancient thatched chapel. To make it presentable
and worthy of the nobles, it was covered with tapestries which
entirely hid the ruined walls. The subject of the superb pieces was a
series of battles, which made the Duke of Lancaster whimsically
critical of a subject ill-chosen for a peace conference, he suggesting
that it were better to have represented "_la Passion de notre
Seigneur_."
Not satisfied with having the meeting place a gorgeous and luxurious
temple, this Philip, Duke of Burgundy, demonstrated his magnificence
in his own tent, which was made of wooden planks entirely covered with
"toiles peintes" (authorities state that tapestries with personages
were thus described), and was in form of a chateau flanked with
towers. As a means of pleasing the English dukes and the principal
envoys, Philip gave to them superb gifts of tapestries, the beautiful
tapestries of Flanders such as were made only in the territory of the
duke. It is interesting to note this authentic account of the
importation of certain Arras tapestries into England.
Subjects at this time introduced, besides Bible people, figures of
Clovis and of Charlemagne. Two hangings represented, the one _The
Seven Cardinal Vices_, with their conspicuous royal exponents in the
shape of seven vicious kings and emperors; the other, _The Seven
Cardinal Virtues_, with the royalties who had been their notable
exponents. Here is a frank criticism on the lives of kings which
smacks of latter-day democracy. All these tapestries were enriched
with gold of Cyprus, as gold threads were called.
This same magnificent Philip the Hardy, had other treaties to make
later on, and seeing how much his tapestries were appreciated,
continued to make presents of them. One time it was the Duke of
Brittany who had to be propitiated, all in the interests of peace,
peace being a quality much sought and but little experienced at this
time in France. Perhaps this especial Burgundian duke had a bit of
self-interest in his desire for amity with the English, for he was
lord of the Comite of Artois (including Arras) and this was a district
which, because of its heavy commerce with England, might favour that
country. A large part of that commerce was wool for tapestry weaving,
wool which came from the _pres sales_ of Kent, where to-day are seen
the same meadows, salt with ocean spray and breezes, whereon flocks
are grazing now as of old--but this time more for mutton chops than
for tapestry wools.
[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
The history of the Dukes of Burgundy, because their patronage was
so stimulating to the factories of Flanders, leads us to recall the
horrors of the war with Bajazet, the terrible Sultan of Turkey, and
the way in which this cool monster bartered human lives for human
luxuries. It was when the flower of France (1396) invaded his country
and was in the power of his hand, that he had the brave company of
nobles pass in review before his royal couch that he might see them
mutilated to the death. Three or four only he retained alive, then
sent one of these, the Sire de Helly, back to his France with _parole
d'honneur_ to return--to amass, first, as big a ransom as could be
raised; this, if in the Turk's demanding eyes it appeared sufficient,
he would accept in exchange for the remaining unhappy nobles.
Added to the money which de Helly was able to collect, were superb
tapestries of Arras contributed by the Burgundian duke, Philip the
Hardy. It was argued that of these luxurious hangings, Bajazet had
none, for the looms of his country had not the craft to make
tapestries of personages. Cloth of gold and of silver, considered an
extreme elegance in France, they argued was no rarity to the terrible
Turk, for it was from Damascus in his part of the world that this
precious fabric came most plentifully. So de Helly took Arras
tapestries into Turkey, a suite representing the history of Alexander
the Great, and the avaricious monarch was persuaded by reason of this
and other ransom to let his prisoners free.[9]
After the death of Philip the Hardy in 1404, his accumulated luxuries
had to be sold to help pay his fabulous debts. To this end his son
sold, among other things, his superb tapestries, and thus they became
distributed in Paris. And yet John without Fear, who succeeded Philip,
continued to stimulate the Arras weavers. In 1409 he ordered five big
hangings representing his victories of Liege, all battle subjects.[10]
Philip the Good was the next head of the Burgundian house, and he it
was who assisted in the sumptuous preparations for the entry of the
king, Louis XI, into Paris. The king himself could scarcely equal in
magnificence this much-jewelled duke, whose splendour was a matter of
excitement to the populace. People ran to see him in the streets or to
the church, to feast their eyes on his cortege, his mounted escort of
a hundred knights who were themselves dukes, princes and other nobles.
His house, in the old quarter of Paris, where we are wont to wander
with a Baedeker veiled, was the wonder of all who were permitted to
view its interior. Here he had brought his magnificent Arras
tapestries and among them the set of the _History of Gideon_, which he
had had made in honour of the order of the Golden Fleece founded by
him at Bruges, in 1429, for, he said, the tale of Gideon was more
appropriate to the Fleece than the tale of Jason, who had not kept his
trust--a bit of unconventionalism appreciable even at this distance of
time.
Charles le Temeraire--the Bold or rather the foolhardy--how he used
and lost his tapestries is of interest to us, because his possessions
fell into a place where we can see them by taking a little trouble.
Some of them are among the treasures in the museum at Nancy and at
Berne in Switzerland. How they got there is in itself a matter of
history, the history of a war between Burgundy and Switzerland.
Like all the line of these half-barbaric, picturesque dukes, Charles
could not disassociate himself from magnificence, which in those days
took the place of comfort. When making war, he endeavoured to have his
camp lodgment as near as possible reproduce the elegance of his home.
In his campaign against Switzerland, his tent was entirely hung with
the most magnificent of tapestries. After foolhardy onslaughts on a
people whose strength he miscalculated, he lost his battles, his
life--and his tapestries. And this is how certain Burgundian
tapestries hang in the cathedral at Berne, and in the museums at
Nancy.[11]
The simple Swiss mountaineers, accustomed more to expediency than to
luxury, are said to have been entirely ignorant of the value of their
spoils of war. Tapestries they had never seen, nor had they the
experienced eye to discern their beauties; but cloth, thick woollen
cloth, that would protect shivering man from the cold, was a commodity
most useful; so, many of the fine products of the high-warp looms that
had augmented the pride of their noble possessor, found their way into
shops and were sold to the Swiss populace in any desired length,
according to bourgeois household needs, a length for a warm bed-cover,
or a square for a table; and thus disappeared so many that we are
thankful for the few whole hangings of that time which are ours to
inspect, and which represent the best work of the day both from Arras
and from Brussels, which was then (about 1476) beginning to produce.
There is a special and local reason why we should be interested in the
products of the high-warp tapestries in the time of the greatest power
of the Dukes of Burgundy. It is that we can have the happy experience
of studying, in our own country, a set of these hangings, and this
without going farther than to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York, where repose the set called _The Sacraments_. (Plates facing
pages 34, 38 and 39.) There are in all seven pieces, although the
grounds are well taken that the set originally included one more. They
represent the four Sacraments of Baptism, Marriage, Confirmation and
Extreme Unction, first by a series of ideal representations, then by
the everyday ceremonies of the time--the time of Joan of Arc. Thus we
have the early Fifteenth Century folk unveiled to us in their ideals
and in their practicality. The one shows them to be religionists of a
high order, the other reveals a sumptuous and elegant scale of living
belonging to the nobility who made resplendent those early times.
[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430]
[Illustration: THE SACRAMENTS
Arras Tapestry, about 1430]
The drawing is full of simplicity and honesty, the composition limited
to a few individuals, each one having its place of importance. In
this, the early work differed from the later, which multiplied figures
until whole groups counted no more than individuals. The background is
a field of conventionalised fleur-de-lis of so large a pattern as not
to interfere with the details thrown against it. Scenes are divided
by slender Gothic columns, and other architectural features are
tessellated floors and a sketchy sort of brick-work that appears
wherever a limit-line is needed. It is the charming naivete of its
drawing that delights. Border there is none, but its lack is never
felt, for the pictures are of such interest that the eye needs no
barrier to keep it from wandering. Whatever border is found is a
varying structure of architecture and of lettering and of the happy
flowers of Gothic times which thrust their charm into all possible and
impossible places.
The dress, in the suite of ideals, is created by the imagining of the
artist, admixed with the fashion of the day; but in scenes portraying
life of the moment, we are given an interesting idea of how a bride a
la mode was arrayed, in what manner a gay young lord dressed himself
on his wedding morning, and how a young mother draped her proud
brocade. The colouring is that of ancient stained glass, simple, rich,
the gamut of colours limited, but the manner of their combining is
infinite in its power to please. The conscientiousness of the ancient
dyer lives after him through the centuries, and the fresh ruby-colour,
the golden yellow of the large-figured brocades, glow almost as richly
now as they did when the Burgundian dukes were marching up and down
the land from the Mediterranean, east of France, to the coast of
Flanders, carrying with them the woven pictures of their ideals, their
religion and their conquests. The weave is smooth and even, speaking
for the work of the tapissier or weaver, although time has distorted
the faces beyond the lines of absolute beauty; and hatching
accomplishes the shading.
The repairer has been at work on this valuable set, not the
intelligent restorer, but the frank bungler who has not hesitated to
turn certain pieces wrong side out, nor to set in large sections
obviously cut from another tapestry. It is surmised that the set
contained one more piece--it would be regrettable, indeed, if that
missing square had been cut up for repairs.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns these tapestries
through the altruistic generosity of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. They are
the most interesting primitive work which are on public view in our
country, and awake to enthusiasm even the most insensate dullard, who
has a half hour to stand before them and realise all they mean in art,
in morals and in history.
To the lives of the Prophets and Saints we can always turn; from the
romance of men and women we can never turn away. And so when a Gothic
tapestry is found that frankly omits Biblical folk and gives us a true
picture of men and women of the almost impenetrable time back of the
fifteen hundreds, tells us what they wore, in what manner they
comported themselves, that tapestry has a sure and peculiar value. The
surviving art of the Middle Ages smacks strong of saints, paints at
full length the people of Moses' time, but unhappily gives only a bust
of their contemporaries.
[Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
[Illustration: THE LIFE OF CHRIST
Flemish Tapestry, second half of Fifteenth Century. Boston Museum
of Fine Arts]
Hangings portraying secular subjects were less often woven than those
of religion and morals, but also the former have less lustily outlived
the centuries, owing to the habit of tearing them from the
suspending hooks and packing them about from chateau to chateau, to
soften surroundings for the wandering visitor. Thus it comes that we
have little tapestried record of a time when knights and ladies and
ill-assorted attributes walked hand in hand, a time of chivalry and
cruelty, of roses and war, of sumptuousness and crudity, of privation
and indulgence, of simplicity and deceit.
If prowling among old books has tempted the hand to take from the
shelves one of those quaint luxuries known as a "Book of Hours," there
before the eye lies the spirit of that age in decoration and design.
There, too, lies much of the old spirit of morality--that, whether
genuine or affected, was bound to be expressed. Morality had a vogue
in those days, was a _sine qua non_ of fashion. That famous amateur
Jean, duc de Berry, uncle of Charles VI of France, had such a book,
"Les Tres Riches Heures"; one was possessed by that gifted Milanese
lady whom Ludovico Sforza put out of the line of Lombardy's throne.
The wonderful Gothic ingenuousness lies in their careful paintings,
the ingenuousness where virtue is expressed by beauty, and vice by
ugliness, and where, with delightful seriousness, standing figures
overtop the houses they occupy--the same people, the same battlements,
we have seen on the early tapestries. Weavers must surely have
consulted the lovely books of Gothic miniature, so like is the spirit
of the designs to that in the Gothic fabrics.
"The beauties of Agnes Sorel were represented on the wool," says
Jubinal, "and she herself gave a superb and magnificent tapestry to
the church at Loches," but this quaint student is doubtful if the
lovely _amante du roi_ actually gave the tapestries that set forth her
own beauties, which beauty all can see in the quiet marble as she lies
sleeping with her spaniel curled up at her lovely feet in the big
chateau on the Loire.
By means of a rare set bought by the Rogers Fund for the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, we can see, if not the actual tapestries of
fair Agnes Sorel, at least those of the same epoch and manner. This
set is called _The Baillee des Roses_ and comprises three pieces,
fragments one is inclined to call them, seeing the mutilations of the
ages. (Plate facing page 42.) They were woven probably before 1450,
probably in France, undoubtedly from French drawings, for the hand and
eye of the artist were evidently under the influence of the celebrated
miniaturist, Jean Fouquet of Tours. Childlike is the charm of this
careful artist of olden times, childlike is his simplicity, his
honesty, his care to retain the fundamental virtues of a good little
boy who lives to the tune of Eternal Verities.
These three tapestries of the Roses illustrate so well so many things
characteristic of their day, that it is not time lost to study them
with an eye to all their points. There is the weave, the wool, the
introduction of metal threads, the colour scale; all these besides the
design and the story it tells.
The tapestries represent a custom of France in the time when Charles
VII, the Indolent (and likewise through Jeanne d'Arc, the victorious)
had as his favourite the fascinating Agnes Sorel. During the late
spring, when the roses of France are in fullest flower, various
peers of France had as political duty to present to each member of the
Parliament a rose when the members answered in response to roll call.
[Illustration: LA BAILLEE DES ROSES
French Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
[Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY MILLEFLEUR WITH ARMS
Cathedral of Troyes]
The great chamber where the body met was for the occasion transformed
into a bower; vines and sprays of roses covered all the grim walls, as
the straying vines in the tapestry reveal. The host of the day, who
might be a foreign prince or cardinal, or one of the "children of
France," began the day with giving a great breakfast which took place
in the several chambers. During the feast the noble host paid a
courtly visit to each chamber, accompanied by a servitor who bore a
huge salver on which were the flowers and souvenirs to be presented.
The air was sweet with blossoms and pungent herbs, music penetrated
from the halls outside as the man of conspicuous elegance played mock
humility and served all with the dainty tribute of a fragrant tender
rose. This part of the ceremony over, the company moved on to the
great audience chamber, where mass was said.
Our tapestries show the figures of ladies and gentlemen present at
this pretty ceremony--too pretty to associate with desperate Jeanne
d'Arc, who at that very time was rousing France to war to throw off
the foreign yoke. The ladies fair and masters bold are intensely human
little people, for the most part paired off in couples as men and
women have been wont to pair in gardens since Eden's time. They are
dressed in their best, that is evident, and by their distant,
courteous manners show good society. The faces of the ladies are
childlike, dutiful; those of the men more determined, after the
manner of men.
But the interest of the set centres in the tableau wherein are but
three figures, those of two men and a woman. Here lies a piquant
romance. Who is she, the grand and gracious lady, bending like a lily
stalk among the roses, with a man on either side? A token is being
exchanged between her and the supplicant at her right. He, wholly
elegant, half afraid, bends the knee and fixes her with a regard into
which his whole soul is thrown. She, fair lady, is inclining, yet
withdrawing, eyes of fear and modesty cast down. Yet whatever of
temerity the faces tell, the hands are carrying out a comedy. Hid in
the shadow of a copious hat, which the gentleman extends, lurks a
rose; proffered by the lady's hand is a token--fair exchange, indeed,
of lover's symbols--provided the strong, hard man to the left of the
lady has himself no right of command over her and her favours. Thus
might one dream on forever over history's sweets and romance's
gallantries.
It is across the sea, in the sympathetic Museum of Cluny that the
beauty of early French work is exquisitely demonstrated. The set of
_The Lady and the Unicorn_ is one of infinite charm. (Plates facing
pages 44 and 45.) In its enchanted wood lives a noble lady tall and
fair, lithe, young and elegant, with attendant maid and two faithful,
fabulous beasts that uphold the standards of maidenhood. A simple
circle denotes the boundary of the enchanted land wherein she dwells,
a park with noble trees and lovely flowers, among which disport the
little animals that associate themselves with mankind. For four
centuries these hangings have delighted the eye of man, and are
perhaps more than ever appreciated now. Certain it is that the art
student's easel is often set before them for copying the quaint design
and soft colour.
[Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris]
[Illustration: THE LADY AND THE UNICORN
French Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Musee de Cluny, Paris]
As the early worker in wools could not forget the beauties of earth,
the foreground of many Gothic tapestries is sprinkled with the loved
common flowers of every day, of the field and wood. This is one of the
charming touches in early tapestry, these little flowers that thrust
themselves with captivating inappropriateness into every sort of
scene. The grave and awesome figures in the _Apocalypse_ find them at
their feet, and in scenes of battle they adorn the sanguinary sod and
twinkle between fierce combatants.
Occasionally a weaver goes mad about them and refuses to produce
anything else but lily-bells newly sprung in June, cowslips and
daisies pied, rosemary and rue, and all these in decorous courtesy on
a deep, dark background like twilight on a bank or moonlight in a
dell--and lo, we have the marvellous bit of nature-painting called
_millefleurs_.
A Burgundian tapestry that has come to this country to add to our
increasing riches, is the large hanging known as _The Sack of
Jerusalem_. (Plate facing page 46.) Almost more than any other it
revivifies the ancient times of Philip the Hardy, John without Fear,
and Charles the Bold, when these dukes, who were monarchs in all but
name, were leading lives that make our own Twentieth Century fretting
seem but the unrest of aspens. Such hangings as this, _The Sack of
Jerusalem_, were those that the great Burgundian dukes had hung about
their tents in battle, their castles in peace, their facades and
bridges in fetes.
The subject chosen hints religion, but shouts bloodshed and battle.
Those who like to feel the texture of old tapestries would find this
soft and pliable, and in wondrous state of preservation. Its colours
are warm and fresh, adhering to red-browns and brown-reds and a
general mellow tone differing from the sharp stained-glass contrasts
noticed in _The Sacraments_. Costumes show a naive compromise between
those the artist knew in his own time and those he guessed to
appertain to the year of our Lord 70, when the scene depicted was
actually occurring. The tapestry resembles in many ways the famous
tapestries of the Duke of Devonshire which are known as the Hardwick
Hall tapestries. In drawing it is similar, in massing, in the placing
of spots of interest. This large hanging is a part of the collection
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibits a primitive hanging which is
probably woven in France, Northern France, at the end of the Fifteenth
Century. (Plate facing page 40.) It represents, in two panels, the
power of the church to drive out demons and to confound the heathen.
Fault can be found with its crudity of drawing and weave, but
tapestries of this epoch can hold a position of interest in spite of
faults.
[Illustration: THE SACK OF JERUSALEM (DETAIL)
Burgundian Tapestry, about 1450. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York]
A fine piece at the same museum is the long, narrow hanging
representing scenes from the life of Christ, with a scene from
Paradise to start the drama. (Plate facing page 41.) This tapestry,
which is of great beauty, is subdivided into four panels by slender
columns suggesting a springing arch which the cloth was too low to
carry. All the pretty Gothic signs are here. The simple flowers
upspringing, the Gothic lettering, the panelling, and a narrow border
of such design as suggests rose-windows or other lace-like carving.
Here is noticeable, too, the sumptuous brocades in figures far too
large for the human form to wear, figures which diminished greatly a
very few decades later.
The Institute of Art, Chicago, possesses an interesting piece of the
period showing another treatment of a similar subject. (Plate facing
page 48.) In this the columns are omitted, the planes are increased,
and there is an entire absence of the triptych or altar-piece style of
drawing which we associate with the primitive artists in painting.
We have seen in this slight review that Paris was in a fair way to
cover the castle walls and floors of noble lords with her high loom
and _sarrazinois_ products, when the English occupation ruined the
prosperity of the weaver's guild. Arras supplied the enormous demand
for tapestries through Europe, and made a lasting fame. But this
little city, too, had to go down before the hard conditions of the
Conqueror. Louis XI, in 1477, possessed himself of the town after the
death of the last-famed Burgundian duke, Charles the Bold, and under
his eccentric persecutions the guild of weavers scattered. He saw too
late his mistake. But other towns benefited by it, towns whither the
tapissiers fled with their art.
There had also been much trouble between the last Duke of Burgundy and
his Flemish cities. His extravagances and expeditions led him to make
extraordinary demands upon one town and another for funds, and even to
make war upon them, as at Liege, the battles of which conflict were
perpetuated in tapestries. Let us trust that no Liegois weaver was
forced to the humiliation of weaving this set.
This disposition to work to his own ultimate undoing was encouraged in
the duke, wherever possible, by the crafty Louis XI, who had his own
reasons for wishing the downfall of so powerful a neighbour. And thus
it came that Arras, the great tapestry centre, was at first weakened,
then destroyed by the capture of the town by Louis XI immediately
after the tragic death of the duke in 1477.
Thus everything was favourable to the Brussels factories, which began
to produce those marvels of workmanship that force from the world the
sincerest admiration. It is frankly asserted that toward the end of
the century, or more accurately, during the reigns of Charles VIII and
Louis XII (1483-1515), tapestry attained a degree of perfection which
has never been surpassed.
[Illustration: SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITH ARMORIAL SHIELDS
Flemish Tapestry, Fifteenth Century. Institute of Art, Chicago]
[Illustration: HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN
Angers Cathedral]
We have a very clear idea of what use to make of tapestries in these
days--to hang them in a part of the house where they will be much seen
and much protected, on an important wall-space where their figures
become the friend of daily life, or the bosky shades of their
verdure invite to revery. They are extended flat against the wall, or
even framed, that not one stroke of the artist's pencil or one flash
of the weaver's shuttle be hid. But, many were their uses and grand
were their purposes in the days when high-warp and low-warp weaving
was the important industry of whole provinces. Palaces and castles
were hung with them, but apart from this was the sumptuous use of a
reserve of hangings for outdoor fetes and celebrations of all sorts.
These were the great opportunities for all to exhibit their
possessions and to make a street look almost as elegant and habitable
as the grandest chamber of the king.
On the occasion of the entry of a certain queen into Paris, all the
way from Porte St. Denis to the Cathedral of Notre Dame was hung with
such specimens of the weaver's art as would make the heart of the
modern amateur throb wildly. They were hung from windows, draped
across the fronts of the houses, and fluttered their bright colours in
the face of an illuminating sun that yet had no power to fade the
conscientious work of the craftsman. The high lights of silk in the
weave, and the enrichment of gold and silver in the pattern caught and
held the sunbeams. In all the cavalcade of mounted knights and ladies,
there was the flashing of arms, the gleam of jewelled bridles, the
flaunting of rich stuffs, all with a background of unsurpassed
blending of colour and texture. The bridge over the Seine leading to
Notre Dame, its ramparts were entirely concealed, its asperities
softened, by the tapestries which hung over its sides, making the
passage over the river like the approach to a throne, the luxury of
kings combined with the beauty of the flowing river, the blue sky, the
tender green of the trees.
Indeed, it was so lovely a sight that the king himself was not content
to see it from his honoured but restricted post, but needs must doff
his crown--monarchs wore them in those fairy days--and fling a leg
over a gentleman's charger, behind its owner, and thus ride double to
see the sights. So great was his eagerness to enjoy all the display
that he got a smart reproof from an officer of ceremonies for
trespassing.[12]
When Louis XI was the young king, and had not yet developed the taste
for bloodshed and torture that as a crafty fox he used later to the
horror of his nation, he, too, had similar festivals with similar
decorations. On one occasion the Pont des Changes was made the chief
point in the royal progress through the streets of Paris. The bridge
was hung with superb tapestries of great size, from end to end, and
the king rode to it on a white charger, his trappings set with
turquoise, with a gorgeous canopy supported over his head. Just as he
reached the bridge the air became full of the music of singing birds,
twenty-five hundred of them at that moment released, and all
fluttering, darting, singing amid the gorgeous scene to tickle the
fancy of a king.
[Illustration: DAVID AND BATHSHEBA
German Tapestry, about 1450]
[Illustration: FLEMISH TAPESTRY. ABOUT 1500
Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Canon de Haisnes, "La Tapisserie."
[8] M. de Barante, "Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne."
[9] Froissart, manuscript of the library of Dijon.
[10] De Barante, "Histoire."
[11] See M. Pinchart, "Roger van der Weyden et les Tapisseries de
Berne."
[12] Enguerrand de Monstrelet, "Chronicles."