In 1133, another Abbot of the same monastery had two dossers made to hang in the choir during festivals. On one of these the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse with citharas and viols were depicted. The hangings he got for the nave, represented centaurs, lions and other animals.
On all festal occasions, the cathedrals were beautifully decorated with superb tapestries. Some of them served as hangings and door-curtains, others draped the altars, while the seats and backs of the benches were covered with pieces called bancalia, spaleriae, and dossalia. Tapestries also covered the baldachins, or canopies; and foot-carpets, called substratoria, tapetes, tapeta, or tapecii were lavishly spread upon the ground.
During the thirteenth century tapestries came into general use for hangings in private mansions. It is not unlikely that Baldwin, Count of Flanders, who came into power in 1204, stimulated the work of the Netherland looms; for, from the very opening years of the thirteenth century, the Flemish weavers adopted brighter colours in their tapestries; and Damme, the poet of Bruges, received all kinds of goods from the East, including “seeds for producing the scarlet dye.”
This was the period when the Roman was in full flower, and the tapestries naturally turned from Biblical to heroic stories. The artists and weavers now begin to devote their energies to the production of secular subjects. The stories of Paris and Helen, Æneas, and others from Grecian mythology, become as popular as those inspired by the Bible.
High-warp workers were established in Paris, Arras, Brussels and Tournay in the first half of the fourteenth century; but it is not until the reign of Charles V (1364–1380) that they are explicitly described in the inventories. The King was a collector of French and Flemish tapestries: he had more than 130 armorial tapestries and 33 “tapis à images” that decorated the walls.
The Dukes of Anjou, Orleans, Berry and Burgundy, had very valuable sets. Charles VI also had fine pieces. He bought from Nicholas Bataille, a Flemish worker, who calls himself a citizen of Paris in 1363, about 250 hangings. Bataille produced many superb pieces for the wealthy houses of the day, and many sets for Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. A fellow-worker, Jacques Dourdain, who died in 1407, made tapestries for the Duke of Burgundy, to whom he sent in 1389 The Conquest of the King of Friesland by Aubri the Burgundian, The Story of Marionet, Ladies setting out for the Chase, The Wishes of Love, The Nine Amazons, The History of Bertrand Duguesclin, and A History of the Romance of the Rose. The latter must have been very choice, as it was woven “in gold of Cyprus and Arras thread.” He also furnished this rich patron with other hangings, the greater number of which were cloth of gold.
The marriage of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to the daughter and heir of the Count of Flanders, in 1369, greatly helped the Flemish tapestry-workers, who soon equalled those of Paris. For instance, the Duke gave an order to Michel Bernard of Arras for a fine piece, called The Battle of Rosbeck, of colossal dimensions. It measured 285 square yards, and cost 2,600 francs d’or. Other sets purchased from the Arras looms were: The Coronation of Our Lady, The Seven Ages, Story of Doon de la Roche, History of King Pharaoh and the People of Moses, Life of St. Margaret, The Virtues and Vices, History of Froimont de Bordeaux, Story of St. George, Story of Shepherds and Shepherdesses, Life of St. Anne, Story of Percival the Gaul, Hunt of Guy of Romany, History of Amis and Amile, History of Octavius of Rome, History of King Clovis, History of King Alexander, and of Robert the Fusileer, History of William of Orange, and a Pastoral.
The Flemish looms thus early acquired a great reputation, rivalling those of the midland and northern provinces of France. Paris, Arras, Brussels and Tournay were the chief centres for the most beautiful high-warp tapestry. Arras was celebrated as early as 1311, when Marchaut, Countess of Artois, paid a large sum for “a woollen cloth worked with various figures bought at Arras”; and in 1313 she ordered from the same town “five cloths worked in high warp.” The name became generic: the Italians called all woven tapestries Arazzi; the Spaniards, Panos de raz; and the English, “Arras,” a name that was used for many centuries. Polonius hides “behind the arras,” in Hamlet, and Spenser, in The Faerie Queen, says:
Thence to the hall, which was on every side
With rich array and costly arras dight.