FRANCE
WORKING UP TO GOBELINS FACTORY
In following the great sweep of tapestry production we arrive now in
France, there to stay until the Revolution. The early beginnings were
there, briefly rivalling Arras, but Arras, as we have seen, caught up
the industry with greater zeal and became the ever-famous leader of
the Fifteenth Century, ceding to Brussels in the Sixteenth Century,
whence the high point of perfection was carried to Paris and caused
the establishment of the Gobelins. The English development under James
I, we defer for a later considering.
Francis I stands, an over-dressed, ever ambitious figure, at the
beginning of things modern in French art. He still smacks of the
Middle Ages in many a custom, many a habit of thought; his men clank
in armour, in his chateaux lurk the suggestion of the fortress, and
his common people are sunk in a dark and hopeless oppression. Yet he
himself darts about Europe with a springing gait and an elegant
manner, the type of the strong aristocrat dispensing alike arts of war
and arts of the Renaissance.
Was it his visits, bellicose though they were, to Italy and Spain,
that turned his observant eye to the luxury of woven story and made
him desire that France should produce the same? The Sforza Castle at
Milan had walls enough of tapestry, the pageants of Leonardo da
Vinci, organised at royal command of the lovely Beatrice d'Este,
displayed the wealth of woven beauty over which Francis had time to
deliberate in those bad hours after the battle at Milan's noted
neighbour, Pavia.
[Illustration: THE FINDING OF MOSES
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin. The Louvre
Museum]
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF JUNO
Gobelins under Louis XIV.]
The attention of Francis was also turned much to Spain through envy of
that extraordinary man of luck and ability, the Emperor Charles V, and
from whom he made abortive and sullen efforts to wrest Germany, Italy,
anything he could get. In his imprisonment in Madrid, Francis had time
in plenty on which to think of many things, and why not on the
wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to
make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little
boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not
whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one
which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer
of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the
same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to
remember in regard to the class of designs of his own and succeeding
periods in France.
How he got his ideas we can reasonably trace, and the result of them
was that he established a royal tapestry factory in beautiful
Fontainebleau, which lies hid in grateful shade, stretching to
flowered fields but a reasonable distance from the distractions of
Paris.
It pleased Francis--and perhaps the beautiful Diane de Poitiers and
Duchesse d'Etampes--to critique plays in that tiny gem of a theatre at
the palace, or to feed the carp in the pool; but also it gave him
pleasure to wander into the rooms where the high-warp looms lifted
their utilitarian lengths and artists played at magic with the wools.
Alas, one cannot dress this patronage of art with too much of
disinterestedness, for these marvellous weavings were for the
adornment of the apartments of the very persons who caused their
productions.
The grand idea of state ateliers had not yet come to bless the
industry. For this reason the factory at Fontainebleau outlasted the
reign of its founder, Francis I, but a short time.
Nevertheless, examples of its works are still to be seen and are of
great beauty, notably those at the Museum of the Gobelins in Paris.
That a series called the _History of Diana_ was produced is but
natural, considering the puissance at court of the famous Diane de
Poitiers.
When Francis' son, Henri II, enfeebled in constitution by the Spanish
confinement, inherited the throne, it was but natural that he should
neglect the indulgences of his father and prefer those of his own. The
Fontainebleau factory strung its looms and copied its cartoons and
produced, too, certain hangings for Henri's wife, the terrible
Catherine de Medici, on which her vicious eyes rested in forming her
horrid plots; but Henri had ambitions of his own, small ambitions
beside those which had to do with jealousy of Charles Quint. He let
the factory of Francis I languish, but carried on the art under his
own name and fame.
To give his infant industry a home he looked about Paris and decided
upon the Hopital de la Trinite, an institution where asylum was found
for the orphans of the city who seem, in the light of the general
brutality of the time, to have been even in more need of a home than
the parentless child of modern civilisation. A part of the scheme was
to employ in the works such children as were sufficiently mature and
clever to work and to learn at least the auxiliary details of a craft
that is also an art.
In this way the sixty or so of the orphans of La Trinite were given a
means of earning a livelihood. Among them was one whose name became
renowned. This was Maurice du Bourg, whose tapestries surpassed all
others of his time in this factory--an important factory, as being one
of the group that later was merged into the Gobelins.
It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind
that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things
Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his
school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but
in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world
found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinite
that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an
underscoring. This set was composed of fifteen pieces illustrating in
sweeping design and gorgeous colouring the _History of Mausolus and
Artemisia_. Intense local and personal interest was given to the set
by making an open secret of the fact that by Artemisia, the Queen of
Halicarnassus, was meant the widowed Queen of France, Catherine de
Medici, who adored posing as the most famous of widows and adding
ancient glory to her living importance. To this _History_ French
writers accord the important place of inspirer of a distinctively
French Renaissance.
The weaver being Maurice du Bourg, the chief of the factory of La
Trinite, the artists were Henri Lerambert and Antoine Carron, but the
set has been many times copied in various factories, and Artemisia has
symbolised in turn two other widowed queens of France.
Into the throne of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under
the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was
filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at
last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that
grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his
place, and the habit being strong upon him, he was in eternal
conflict. Some there be who are developed by sympathy, but Henri IV
was developed by opposition, and thus it was that although opposed in
the matter by his Prime Minister, Sully, he established factories for
the weaving of tapestries in both high and low warps.
With the desire to see the arts of peace instead of evidences of war
throughout his kingdom just rescued from conflict, he took all means
to set his people in the ways of pleasing industry. The indefatigable
Sully was plucking the royal sleeve to follow the path of the plough,
to see man's salvation, material and moral, in the ways of
agriculture. But Henri favoured townspeople as well as country
people, and with the Edict of Nantes, releasing from the bondage of
terror a large number of workers, he showed much industry in
encouraging tapestry factories in and near Paris, and as these all
lead to Gobelins we will consider them.
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins, Seventeenth Century]
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)
Gobelins Tapestry]
Henri IV, notwithstanding his Prime Minister Sully's opposition to
what he considered a favouring of vicious luxury, began to occupy
himself in tapestry factories as early in his reign as his people
could rise from the wounds of war. Taking his movements
chronologically we will begin with his establishment in 1597 (eight
years after this first Bourbon took the throne) of a high-warp
industry in the house of the Jesuits in the Faubourg St. Antoine,
associating here Du Bourg of La Trinite and Laurent, equally renowned,
and the composer of the St. Merri tapestries.[14]
Flemish workers in Paris were at this same time, about 1601,
encouraged by the king and under protection of his steward. These
Flemings were the nucleus of a great industry, for it was over them
that two famous masters governed, namely, Francois de la Planche and
Marc Comans or Coomans. In 1607 Henri IV established the looms which
these men were called upon to direct.
These two Flemings, great in their art, were men of family and of some
means, for their first venture in the manufacture of tapestry was a
private enterprise like any of to-day. They looked to themselves to
produce the money for the support of the industry. Combining
qualities of both the artist and the business man, they took on
apprentices and also established looms in the provinces (notably Tours
and Amiens) where commercialism was as prominent as in modern methods;
that is to say, that by turning off a lot of cheaper work for smaller
purses, a quick and ready market was found which supplied the money
necessary for the production of those finer works of art which are
left to delight us to-day.
This manner of procedure of De la Planche and Comans has an interest
far deeper than the mere financial venture of the men of the early
Seventeenth Century, because it forces upon us the fact that at that
time, and earlier, no state ateliers existed. It was Henri IV who
first saw the wisdom of using the public purse in advancing this
industry. He established Du Bourg in the Louvre. With Henri Laurent he
was placed in the Tuileries, in 1607, and that atelier lasted until
the ministry of Colbert in the reign of Louis XIV.
In about 1627 the great De la Planche died and his son, Raphael,
established ateliers of his own in the Faubourg St. Germain, turning
out from his looms productions which were of sufficient excellence to
be confused with those of his father's most profitable factory.
Chronologically this fact belongs later, so we return to the influence
of Henri IV and the master gentleman tapissiers, De la Planche and
Comans.
The very name of the old palace, Les Tournelles, calls up a crowd of
pictures: the death of Henri II at the tournament in honour of the
marriage of his son with Marie Stuart, the subsequent razing of this
ancient home of kings by Catherine de Medici, and its reconstruction
in its present form by Henri IV. It is here that Richelieu honoured
the brief reign of Louis XIII by a statue, and it is here that Madame
de Sevigne was born. But more to our purpose, it was here that, in
1607, Henri IV cast his kingly eye when establishing a certain
tapestry factory. It was here he placed as directors the celebrated
Comans and De la Planche. It happened in time, that the looms of Les
Tournelles were moved to the Faubourg St. Marceau and these two men
came in time to direct these and all other looms under royal
patronage.
Examples are not wanting in museums of French work of this time,
showing the development of the art and the progress that France was
making under Henri IV, whose energy without limit, and whose interests
without number, would to-day have given him the epithet of strenuous.
Under his reign we see the activity that so easily led France up to
the point where all that was needed was the assembling of the
factories under the direction of one great master. The factories
flourishing under Henri IV were La Trinite, the Louvre, the
Savonnerie, the Faubourg St. Marceau and one in the Tuileries. But it
needed the power of Louis XIV to tie all together in the strength of
unity.
The assassin Ravaillac, fanatically muttering through the streets of
Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest
month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal
coach, not only gave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these
industries that the king had cherished for his people against the
opposition of his prime minister. The tale of tapestry is like a vine
hanging on a frame of history, and frequent allusion therefore must be
made to the tales of kings and their ministers.
As it is not always a monarch, but often the power behind the throne
that rules, we see the force of Richelieu surging behind the reign of
the suppressed Louis XIII, whose rule followed that of the regretted
Henri IV. The master of the then new Palais-Royal had minor interests
of his own, apart from his generous plots of ruin for the Protestants,
for all the French nobility, and for the House of Austria to which the
queen belonged. Luxurious surroundings were a necessity to this man,
refined in the arts of cruelty and of living. It was no wonder that
under him tapestry weaving was not allowed to die, but was fostered
until that day when the Grand Monarch would organise and perfect.
In 1643, Louis XIV came to the throne under the guidance of Anne of
Austria, but it was many years before he was able to make his
influence appreciable. Meanwhile, however, others were fostering the
elegant industry. It was as early as 1647 that two celebrated tapestry
weavers came to Paris from Italy. They were Pierre Lefevre or Lefebvre
and his son Jean. The first of these was the chief of a factory in
Florence, whither he presently returned. Jean Lefebvre stayed in
Paris, won his way all the better for being released from parental
rule, and in time received the great honour of being appointed one
of the directors of the Gobelins, when that factory was finally
organised as an institution of the state.
[Illustration: GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
[Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
Quatre, Pau]
During the regency of Louis XIV there were also factories outside of
Paris. The high-warp looms of Tours were of such notable importance
that the great Richelieu placed here an order for tapestries of great
splendour with which to soften his hours of ease. Rheims Cathedral
still harbours the fine hangings which were woven for the place they
now adorn, an unusual circumstance in the world of tapestry. These
hangings (_The Story of Christ_) were woven at Rheims, where the
factory existed well known throughout the first half of the
Seventeenth Century. The church had previously ordered tapestries from
another town executed by one Daniel Pepersack, and so highly approved
was his work that he was made director of the Rheims factory.[15]
A factory which lasted but a few years, yet has for us a special
interest, is that of Maincy, founded in 1658. It is here that we hear
of the great Colbert and of Lebrun, whose names are synonymous with
prosperity of the Gobelins. For the factory at Maincy, Lebrun made
cartoons of great beauty, notably that of _The Hunt of Meleager_,
which now hangs in the Gobelins Museum in Paris. Louis Blamard was the
director of the workmen, who were Flemish, and who were afterwards
called to Paris to operate the looms of the newly-formed Gobelins, and
the reason of the transference forms a part of the history of the
great people of that day.
Richelieu in dying had passed over his power to Mazarin, who had used
it with every cruelty possible to the day. He had coveted riches and
elegance and had possessed himself of them; had collected in his
palace the most beautiful works of art of his day or those of a
previous time. After Mazarin came Foucquet, the great, the
iconoclastic, the unfortunate.
It was at Foucquet's estate of Vaux near Maincy that this tapestry
factory of short duration was established and soon destroyed. The
powerful Superintendent of Finance, with his eye for the beautiful and
desire for the luxury of kings, built for himself such a chateau as
only the magnificence of that time produced. It was situated far
enough from Paris to escape any sort of ennui, and was surrounded by
gardens most marvellous, within a beauteous park. It lay, when
finished, like a jewel on the fair bosom of France. The great
superintendent conceived the idea of pleasing the young king, Louis
XIV, by inviting the court for a wondrous fete in its lovely
enclosure.
Foucquet was a man of the world, and of the court, knew how to please
man's lighter side, and how to use social position for his own ends.
France calls him a "dilapidateur," but when his power and incidentally
the revenues of state, were laid out to produce a day of pleasure for
king and court, his taste and ability showed such a fete as could
scarce be surpassed even in those days of artistic fetes champetres.
The great gardens were brought into use in all the beauty of flower
and vine, of lawn and bosquet, of terrace and fountain. When the
guests arrived, weary of town life, they were turned loose in the
enchanting place like birds uncaged, and to the beauty of Nature was
added that of folk as gaily dressed as the flowers. The king was
invited to inspect it all for his pleasure, asked to feast in the
gardens, and to repose in the splendid chateau.
He was young then, in the early twenties, and luxury was younger then
than now, so he was pleased to spend the time in almost childish
enjoyments. A play _al fresco_ was almost a necessity to a royal
garden party, which was no affair of an hour like ours in the busy
to-day, but extended the livelong day and evening. Moliere was ready
with his sparkling satires at the king's caprice, and into the garden
danced the players before an audience to whom vaudeville and _cafe
chantant_ were exclusively a royal novelty arranged for their
delectation.
It is easy to see the elegant young king and his court in the setting
of a sophisticated out-of-doors, wandering on grassy paths, lingering
under arches of roses, plucking a flower to nest beside a smiling
face, stopping where servants--obsequious adepts, they were
then--supplied dainty things to eat and drink. Madame de Sevigne was
there, she of the observant eye, an eye much occupied at this time
with the figure of Superintendent Foucquet, the host of this glorious
occasion. This gracious lady lacked none of the appearance of
frivolity, coiffed in curls, draped in lace and soft silks, but her
mind was deeply occupied with the signs of the times. All the elegance
of the chateau, all the seductive beauty of terrace, garden, and
bosquet, all the piquant surprises of play and pyrotechnics, what were
they? Simply the disinterested effort of a subject to give pleasure
to His Majesty, the King.
There were those present who had long envied Foucquet, with his
ever-increasing power and wealth, his ability to patronise the arts,
to collect, and even to establish his tapestry looms like a king, for
his own palace and for gifts. This grand fete in the lovely month of
June did more than shower pleasure, more than gratify the lust of the
eye. In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming
men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an
incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin.
Among the observant guests at this wondrous fete champetre was
Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in
Foucquet's fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king.
Foucquet's downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by
ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches
their own. Foucquet's unequalled entertainment of the king was made to
count as naught. Louis, even before leaving for Paris, had begun to
ask whence came the money that purchased this wide fertile estate
stretching to the vision's limit, the money that built the chateau of
regal splendour, the money that paid for the prodigal pleasures of
that day of delights? Foucquet thought to have gained the confidence
and admiration of the king. But, on leaving, Louis said coldly, "We
shall scarce dare ask you to our poor palace, seeing the superior
luxury to which you are accustomed." A fearful cut, but only a straw
to the fate which followed, the investigations into the affairs of
Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and
then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with
the superintendent's life. Madame de Sevigne saw him in the beginning,
wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from his
weary years.
[Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING
After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Chateau Henri
Quatre, Pau]
[Illustration: GOBELINS GROTESQUE
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris]
With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Chateau of Vaux
near Maincy, and so, too, came an end to the factory where so fine
results had been obtained in tapestry weaving. Yet the effort was not
in vain, for some of the tapestries remain and the factory was the
school where certain celebrated men were trained.
It may easily have been that Louis XIV discovered on that day at Vaux
the excellence of Lebrun whom he made director at the Gobelins in
Paris when they were but newly formed. Foucquet, wasting in prison,
had many hours in which to think on this and on the advancement of the
very man who had been keenest in running him to cover, the great
Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry
whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but
we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy
caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and
daring, qualities of which the world has ever need.
Foucquet's factory lasted three years. It was directed by Louis
Blamard or Blammaert of Oudenarde, and employed a weaver named Jean
Zegre, who came from the works at Enghien, works sufficiently known to
be remarked. Lebrun composed here and fell under the influence of
Rubens, an influence that pervaded the grandiose art of the day. The
earliest works of Lebrun, three pieces, were later used to complete a
set of Rubens' _History of Constantine_. _The Muses_ was a set by
Lebrun, also composed for the Chateau of Vaux. The charm of this set
is a matter for admiration even now when, alas, all is destroyed but a
few fragments.
The disgrace of Foucquet was the last determining cause of the
establishment of the Gobelins factory under Louis XIV, an act which
after this brief review of Paris factories (and an allusion to
sporadic cases outside of Paris) we are in position at last to
consider. Pursuit of knowledge in regard to the Gobelins factory leads
us through ways the most flowery and ways the most stormy, through
sunshine and through the dark, right up to our own times.
[Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV
Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE FETE
Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers]
FOOTNOTES:
[14] For the facts here cited see E. Muentz, "Histoire de la
Tapisserie," and Jules Guiffrey, "Les Gobelins."
[15] See Loriquet, "Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims."