The Spanish Royal Tapestries

by Albert Frederick Calvert

The Golden Age of mediæval tapestry opened, however, in the thirteenth century when Raphael began his cartoons. This introduction of realism, the widening of the whole artistic range, was rendered more feasible by the discovery of new dyes which added richer and more glowing tints to the fabrics. The borders, which had previously been simple, grew wider and more elaborate in design. From this ever-increasing elaboration of the borders, indeed, it is often possible to fix the date of an otherwise dubious specimen.

In the following century Arras became the centre of the industry. So closely was the tapestry associated with its place of manufacture that in England the name of the town became synonymous for the name of the fabric, and the arras became a recognized decoration of luxurious rooms. From early times there are references in Spanish inventories to pan de raz. This supremacy remained unchallenged until the fifteenth century when Brussels and Bruges achieved fame as tapestry centres. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the industry took root at Middleburg, Delft, and Paris, and Mortlake in England became a famous centre in the seventeenth century.

It was not until the late seventeenth century that tapestry weaving really became established in Spain. Before that the Spanish kings and nobles had been content to acquire masterpieces of foreign workmanship, chiefly from the Low Countries. There are, however, traces of a feeble industry to be found as far back as the late fourteenth century when one man seems to have followed the craft of tapissier in Catalonia. It is possible—but not certain—that two tapissiers of Navarre, who flourished about 1411—Llucia Barthomew and Juan Noyan—may have been Spaniards. Another Barthomew is spoken of a few years later in connexion with two tapestries, namely, those of the Resurrection and St. Anthony.

A panel of Spanish tapestry, obviously intended for altar decoration, has recently been discovered that dates from the early fifteenth century. The centre is occupied by the figure of John the Baptist bearing the Paschal Lamb, flanked by St. Martin of Tours in the dress of a bishop, and by St. Hugh of Grenoble. Gold and silver threads are employed, and the arms are shown of Martin of Aragon and of his wife, Maria de Luna, who died in 1407. This king appears to have interested himself in tapestries, and we read that the walls of the royal palace at Saragossa were adorned with these costly fabrics at his coronation in 1398. King John of Aragon before him had introduced, we read in a document dated 1388, a company of “brobadors de Brabant.”

From the fifteenth century onward the costliest tapestries were much sought after in Spain, and magnificent displays were made on the occasions of State banquets or royal weddings. Towards the end of the fifteenth century a special official was appointed by the king to take charge of the royal collection, which was already considerable. This official, Pedro Entierrez by name, was himself a weaver. He made strenuous efforts to develop the industry in the Spanish capital, but apparently without much success. At any rate, a letter of his is preserved among the records of the Spanish Academy of History, in which he complains bitterly of the treatment meted out to himself and his fellow-workers. He was accused by his enemies of being ambitious, unskilled, and slow. These aspersions he proceeds very fully to refute. He complains that his supplies of raw material were limited, and that he was not allowed to set up his heavier instruments in Madrid.

It was not, however, until 1624 that the attempt to graft the weaving of tapestry on to Spanish art really succeeded. In this year a small colony of Flemish weavers settled in the little town of Pastran in New Castile, being directly subsidized by the king. Five thousand ducats were paid to them in the first year, and in the following year they received a further seven thousand ducats.

Meantime the unfortunate Pedro Entierrez had found a rival in a certain Antonio Ceron who had set up looms at Santa Isabel. Here he established four workshops, and instructed eight apprentices in the art of weaving tapestry. It is probably one of these ateliers that has been immortalized by Velazquez in Las Hilanderas. This painting shows in the background a tapestry of mythological inspiration, while in the foreground women are seen unwinding skeins of wool.

For some time the poverty of the Spanish Crown held the industry in check. But by 1720 a family of Spanish weavers from Antwerp, consisting of one Jacques Van der Goten and his four sons, came over on the invitation of Philip V and established an atelier in Madrid, where tapestry was produced on low-warp frames. A few years later high-warp looms were introduced from France, and the industry spread to Seville. Some famous pieces were wrought in Spain at this time. Jacques Van der Goten produced the Virgin with the Pearl from a cartoon by Raphael, while the famous series representing the Conquest of Tunis, and the History of Telemachus, were reproduced by a well-known weaver called Andrea Procaccini. Cartoons were also designed by Procaccini for a “History of Don Quixote,” which have been constantly reproduced in tapestry.

The fashion changed, and for a time the demand was all for Dutch tapestries. Van der Goten set his workmen to copy the cartoons of Solimena Teniers and the other Dutch cartoonists. But at the same time original designs were not neglected, and by the end of the eighteenth century the industry had become quite considerable, employing permanently no less than fifteen workmen. The last of the Van der Goten brothers died in 1786, and the direction of the Santa Barbara atelier passed to a nephew.

The culmination of the prosperity of the Spanish tapissiers was marked by the execution of the celebrated Goya tapestries. These cartoons, to the number of forty-five, were designed for the decoration of the apartments of the Prince of Asturias in the Prado. Some of them, however, are to be found on the walls of the Escorial, and many, unhappily, have been lost. Goya brought to his task his own peculiar talents. Hitherto the designers of cartoons had been content to find their inspiration in ancient Bible stories or in the myths of Greece or Rome. They had depicted incidents from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary; they had painted moralities, virtues, and vices. Goya did none of these things. When he was summoned from Rome to Madrid by Raphael Mengs, then the director of the workrooms of the Spanish capital, he decided to portray in tapestry the actual life of the people around him. In place of the stilted, conventional figures of his predecessors he produced cartoons instinct with life and vivid movement. The enthralling realism of the bull-fight, village fairs and festivals, the romantic loves of Andalusian peasants, the popular excitement of kite-flying—these were the subjects treated by this most realistic of artists.