“By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining chambers!”
Falstaff answers—
“Glasses, glasses is the only drinking, and for thy walls a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or a German Hunting in water-work, is worth a thousand of these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pounds if thou canst. If it were not for thy humours, there is not a better wench in England! Go wash thy face and draw thy action.”
In another passage of the play he says that his troops are “as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth.”
There are now at Hampton Court eight large pieces or hangings of this description; being “The Triumphs of Julius Cæsar,” in water-colours, on cloth, and in good preservation. They are by Andrea Mantegna, and were valued at 1000l. at the time, when, by some strange circumstance, the Cartoons of Raphael were estimated only at 300l.
Tapestry was common in the East at a very remote era, when the most grotesque compositions and fantastic combinations were usually displayed on it. Some authors suppose that the Greeks took their ideas of griffins, centaurs, &c., from these Tapestries, which, together with the art of making them, they derived from the East, and at first they closely imitated both the beauties and deformities of their patterns. At length their refined taste improved upon these originals; and the old grotesque combinations were confined to the borders of the hanging, the centre of which displayed a more regular and systematic representation.
It has been supposed by some writers that the invention of Tapestry, passed from the East into Europe; but Guicciardini ascribes it to the Netherlanders; and assuredly the Bayeux Tapestry, the work of the Conqueror’s Queen, shows that this art must have acquired much perfection in Europe before the time of the Crusades, which is the time assigned by many for its introduction there. Probably Guicciardini refers to woven Tapestry, which was not practised until the article itself had become, from custom, a thing of necessity. Unintermitting and arduous had been the stitchery practised in the creation of these coveted luxuries long, very long before the loom was taught to give relief to the busy finger.
The first manufactories of Tapestry of any note were those of Flanders, established there long before they were attempted in France or England. The chief of these were at Brussels, Antwerp, Oudenarde, Lisle, Tournay, Bruges, and Valenciennes. At Brussels and Antwerp they succeeded well both in the design and the execution of human figures and animals, and also in landscapes. At Oudenarde the landscape was more imitated, and they did not succeed so well in the figure. The other manufactories, always excepting those of Arras, were inferior to these.
The grand era of general manufactories in France must be fixed in the reign of Henry the IV. Amongst others he especially devoted his attention to the manufacture of Tapestry, and that of the Gobelins, since so celebrated, was begun, though futilely, in his reign. His celebrated minister, Sully, was entangled in these matters somewhat more than he himself approved.
1605. “I laid, by his order, the foundations of the new edifices for his Tapestry weavers, in the horse-market. His Majesty sent for Comans and La Planche, from other countries, and gave them the care and superintendence of these manufactures: the new directors were not long before they made complaints, and disliked their situation, either because they did not find profits equal to their hopes and expectations, or, that having advanced considerable sums themselves, they saw no great probability of getting them in again. The king got rid of their importunity by referring them to me.”[80]