RENAISSANCE INFLUENCE
Brussels in 1515, with her workmen at the zenith of their perfection,
was given the order to weave the set of the _Acts of the Apostles_ for
the Pope to hang in the Sistine Chapel. (Plate facing page 64.) The
cartoons were by the great Raphael. Not only did he draw the splendid
scenes, but with his exquisite invention elaborated the borders. Thus
was set in the midst of the Brussels ateliers a pattern for the new
art that was to retire the nice perfection of the previous school of
restraint. From that time, all was regulated by new standards.
Before considering the change that came to designs in tapestry, it is
necessary that both mind and eye should be literally savants in the
Gothic. Without this the greatest point in classifying and
distinguishing is missed. The dainty grace of the verdure and flowers,
the exquisite models of the architectural details, the honest, simple
scheme of colour, all these are distinguishing marks, but to them is
added the still greater one of the figures and their grouping. In the
very early work, these are few in number, all equally accented in size
and finish, but later the laws of perspective are better understood,
and subordinates to the subject are drawn smaller. This gives
opportunity for increase in the number of personages, and for the
introduction of the horses and dogs and little wild animals that cause
a childish thrill of delight wherever they are encountered, so like
are they to the species that haunt childhood's fairyland.
[Illustration: DEATH OF ANANIAS.--FROM ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY
RAPHAEL
From the Palace of Madrid]
[Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
Carey, Esq., Boston]
Indeed, the Gothic tapestries more than any other existing pictures
take us back to that epoch of our lives when we lived in romance, when
the Sleeping Beauty hid in just such towers, when the prince rode such
a horse and appeared an elegant young knight. The inscrutable mystery
of those folk of other days is like the inscrutable mystery of that
childhood time, the Mediaeval time of the imagination, and those of us
who remember its joys gaze silent and happy in the tapestry room of
the Ducal Palace at Nancy, or in Mary's Chamber at Holyrood, or in any
place whatever where hang the magic pictured cloths.
When the highest development of a style is reached a change is sure to
come. It may be a degeneration, or it may be the introduction of a new
style through some great artistic impulse either native or introduced
by contact with an outside influence. Fortunately, the Gothic passed
through no pallid process of deterioration. The examples that nest
comfortably in the museums of the world or in the homes of certain
fortunate owners, do not contain marks of decadence--only of
transition. It is a style that was replaced, but not one that died the
death of decadence.
It is with reluctance that one who loves the Gothic will leave it for
the more recent art of the Renaissance. Its charm is one that embodies
chasteness, grace, and simplicity, one that is so exquisitely
finished, and so individual that the mind and eye rest lovingly upon
its decorative expressions. It is averred that the introduction of the
revived styles of Greece and Rome into France destroyed an art
superior. One is inclined to this opinion in studying a tapestry of
the highest Gothic expression, a finished product of the artist and
the craftsman, both having given to its execution their honest labour
and highest skill. Unhappily it is often, with the tapestry lover, a
case similar to that of the penniless boy before the bakeshop
window--you may look, but you may not have,--for not often are
tapestries such as these for sale. Only among the experienced
dealer-collectors is one fortunate enough to find these rare remnants
of the past which for colour, design and texture are unsurpassed.
But the Gothic was bound to give way as a fashion in design. Politics
of Europe were at work, and men were more easily moving about from one
country to another. The cities of the various provinces over which the
Burgundian dukes had ruled were prevented by natural causes, from
being united. Arras, Ghent, Liege instead of forming a solidarity,
were separate units of interest. This made the subjugation of one or
the other an easy matter to the tyrant who oppressed. As Arras
declined under the misrule of Charles le Temeraire (whose possessions
at one time outlined the whole northern and eastern border of France)
Brussels came into the highest prominence as a source of the finest
tapestries.
[Illustration: THE CREATION
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century]
[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL SIN
Flemish Tapestry. Italian Cartoon, Sixteenth Century]
The great change in tapestries that now occurs is the same that
altered all European art and decoration and architecture. Indeed it
cannot be limited to these evidences alone, for it affected
literature, politics, religion, every intellectual evidence. Man was
breaking his bonds and becoming freed for centuries to come. The time
was well-named for the new birth. Like another Birth of long ago, it
occurred in the South, and its influence gradually spread over the
entire civilised world. The Renaissance, starting in Italy, gradually
flushed the whole of Europe with its glory. Artists could not be
restrained. Throbbing with poetry to be expressed, they threw off
design after design of inspired beauty and flooded the world with
them. The legitimate field of painting was not large enough for their
teeming originality which pre-empted also the field of decorative
design as well. Many painters apprenticed themselves to goldsmiths and
silversmiths to become yet more cunning in the art of minute design,
and the guilds of Florence held the names best known in the fine arts.
Tapestry weaving seems a natural expression in the North, the
impulsive supplying of a local need. Possibly Italy felt no such need
throughout the Middle Ages. However that may be, when her artists
composed designs for woven pictures there were no permanent artisans
at home of sufficient skill to weave them.
But up in the North, craftsmen were able to produce work of such
brilliant and perfect execution that the great artists of Italy were
inspired to draw cartoons. And so it came, that to make sure of having
their drawings translated into wool and silk with proper artistic
feeling, the cartoons of Raphael were bundled off by trusty carriers
to the ateliers of Flanders. Thus Italy got her tapestries of the
Renaissance, and thus Flanders acquired by inoculation the rich art of
the Renaissance.
The direct cause of the change in Flemish style of tapestries was in
this way brought about by the Renaissance of Italy. New rules of
drawing were dominating. Changes were slower when travelling was
difficult, and the average of literacy was low; but gradually there
came creeping up to Brussels cartoon after cartoon in the new method,
for her skilled workmen to transpose into wool and silk and metal,
"thread of Arras," and "gold and silver of Cyprus." Italy had the
artists, Brussels had the craftsmen--what happier combination could be
made than the union of these two? Thus was the great change brought
about in tapestries, and this union is the great fact to be borne in
mind about the difference between the Gothic tapestries and those
which so quickly succeeded them.
From now on the old method is abandoned, not only in Brussels, but
everywhere that the high-warp looms are set up. The "art nouveau" of
that day influenced every brush and pencil. The great crowding of
serried hosts on a single field disappeared, and fewer but perfect
figures played their parts on the woven surface. Wherever
architectural details, such as porticoes or columns, were introduced,
these dropped the old designs of "pointed" style or battlements, and
took on the classic or the high Renaissance that ornaments the facade
of Pavia's Certosa. One by one the wildwood flowers receded before the
advance of civilisation, very much as those in the veritable land
are wont to do, and their place was taken by a verdure as rich as the
South could produce, with heavy foliage and massive blossoms.
[Illustration: MELEAGER AND ATALANTA
Flemish design, second half of Seventeenth Century. Woven in Paris
workshops by Charles de Comans]
[Illustration: PUNIC WAR SERIES
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
Carey, Esq., Boston]
It is impossible to overestimate the importance to Brussels of the
animating experience and distinguished commission of executing the set
of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel after cartoons by Raffaelo
Sanzio. The date is one to tie to (1515) and the influence of the work
was far-reaching. The Gothic method could no longer continue.
The Renaissance spread its influence, established its standards and
introduced that wave of productiveness which always followed its
introduction. There are many who doubt the superiority of the
voluptuous art of the high Renaissance. There are those who prefer
(perhaps for reasons of sentiment) the early Gothic, and many more who
love far better the sweet purity of the early Renaissance. Before us
Raphael presents his full figures replete with action, rich with
broad, open curves in nudity, and magnificent with lines of flowing
drapery. To him be accorded all due honour; but, if it is the
privilege of the artist's spirit to wander still on earth, he must
find his particular post-mortem punishment in viewing the deplorable
school of exaggeration which his example founded. Who would not prefer
one of the chaste tapestries of perfected Gothic to one of those which
followed Raphael, imitating none of his virtues, exaggerating his
faults? It is these followers, the virilities of whose false art is as
that of weeds, who have come almost to our own day and who have
succeeded in spoiling the historical aspect of the New Testament for
many an imaginative Sunday-school attendant by giving us Bible folk in
swarthy undress, in lunatic beards and in unwearable drapings. These
terrible persons, descendants of Raphael's art, can never stir a human
sympathy.
Just here a word must be said of the workmen, the weavers of Brussels.
For them certain fixed rules were made, but also they were allowed
much liberty in execution. The artist might draw the big cartoons and
thus become the governing influence, but much of the choice of colour
and thread was left to the weaver. This made of him a more important
factor in the composition than a mere artisan; he was, in fact, an
artist, must needs be, to execute a work of such sublimity as the
Raphael set.
And as a weaver, his patience was without limit. Thread by thread, the
warp was set, and thread by thread the woof was woven and coerced into
place by the relentless comb of the weaver. Perhaps a man might make a
square foot, by a week of close application; but "how much" mattered
nothing--it was "how well" that counted. Haste is disassociable from
labour of our day; we might produce--or reproduce--tapestries as good
as the old, but some one is in haste for the hanging, and excellency
goes by the board. The weaver of those days of perfection was content
to be a weaver, felt his ambition gratified if his work was good.
[Illustration: EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CAESAR
Flemish Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the Arazzi,
Florence]
[Illustration: WILD BOAR HUNT
Flemish Cartoon and Weaving, Sixteenth Century. Gallery of the
Arazzi, Florence]
Peter van Aelst was the master chosen to execute the Raphael
tapestries, and the pieces were finished in three or four years. Those
who think present-day prices high, should think on the fact that Pope
Leo X paid $130,000 for the execution of the tapestries, which in
1515 counted for more than now. Raphael received $1,000 each for the
cartoons, almost all of which are now guarded in England. The
tapestries after a varied history are resting safely in the Vatican, a
wonder to the visitor.
When Van Aelst had finished his magnificent work, the tapestries were
sent to Rome. Those who go now to the Sistine Chapel to gaze upon
Michael Angelo's painted ceiling, and the panelled sidewalls of
Botticelli and other cotemporary artists, are more than intoxicated
with the feast. But fancy what the scene must have been when Pope Leo
X summoned his gorgeous guard and cardinals around him in this chapel
enriched also with the splendour of these unparalleled hangings.
And thus it came that Italy held the first place--almost the only
place--in design, and Brussels led in manufacture.
In 1528 appeared a mark on Brussels' tapestries which distinguished
them from that time on. Prior to that their works, except in certain
authenticated instances, are not always distinguishable from those of
other looms--of which many existed in many towns. The mark alluded to
is the famous one of two large B's on either side of a shield or
scutcheon. This was woven into a plain band on the border, and the
penalty for its misuse was the no small one of the loss of the right
hand--the death of the culprit as a weaver. This mark and its laws
were intended to discourage fraud, to promote perfection and to
conserve a high reputation for weavers as well as for dealers.