This set bears the date 1518, when Brussels was no longer under a Burgundian Duke, but Charles V was ruler of the Netherlands. The designer of the set followed the Gothic custom of representing the story under the forms of his own day, so, instead of the Duke of Brabant, Philip the Fair, father of Charles V, is pictured receiving the Madonna from the hands of Beatrix at the wharf, Charles V and his brother Ferdinand are bearing it in a litter to the church, and Margaret of Austria, aunt of Charles, kneels in prayer before the niche where the sacred image has been placed.
When in New York it always gives us pleasure to go to the Metropolitan Museum to see the finest Belgian set in the United States, the Burgundian Sacraments, woven in the early fifteenth century. This splendid example of Gothic workmanship was made in the days when Philip the Good had brought the power of Burgundy to its zenith. When the great Duke wanted to have magnificent hangings for the chamber of his son (who was afterward Charles the Bold), he ordered a set of tapestries from the weavers of Bruges. All that remains of this splendid work of art is now in the New York Museum—five pieces, which form half of the original set. The complete series consisted of two rows of scenes, the upper seven representing the Origin of the Seven Sacraments, the lower, the Seven Sacraments as Celebrated in the Fifteenth Century. This set shows wonderful weaving, “with long hatchings that interpret marvelously the elaborately figured costumes and damask ground.”
There are other exquisite tapestries in America, too, for the Committee of Safety in 1793 imported some American wheat into France, and when the time came to pay it proffered assignats. Naturally enough, the Americans objected, but there was no money. “Then they offered, and the United States was obliged to accept in payment, some Beauvais tapestries and some copies of the Moniteur.”
Tapestries required muscular strength, for the material was heavy, and so men were given this work in town workshops. The ladies did the needle, bobbin and pillow work in the castles and convents. True tapestry is always woven on a loom, and is a combination of artistic design with skill in weaving.
This tapestry industry was introduced into Western Europe in the Middle Ages by the Moors, but we can trace the art of making woven pictures to much earlier times. The ancient Romans had them. Ovid describes the contest in weaving between Arachne and Pallas, in which the maiden wrought more beautifully than the goddess. Pallas in anger struck the maid, who hanged herself in her rage because she dared not return the blow. The goddess, relenting, changed Arachne into a spider, and she continues her weaving to this day.
But a much earlier poet has described the making of tapestry. We read in the Odyssey that, when the return of Ulysses to his native land was long delayed, his faithful wife Penelope postponed a decision among the suitors who importuned her by promising to make a choice when she had finished weaving the funeral robe for Laertes, her husband’s father. The robe was never completed, for each night she took out the work of the day before.
It is a very interesting fact that a Grecian vase has come down to us on which is a painting of Penelope and her son Telemachus. Penelope is seated at what the experts say is certainly a tapestry loom, though somewhat different from those used at a later day.
We have no large pieces done by the Greeks and the Romans, but many small bands for use as trimmings of robes. Some of these were woven by the Greeks as early as the fourth century B.C., others were made in Egypt under Roman rule some centuries later, and are called Coptic. From these one can trace the series through the silken Byzantine, Saracenic and Moorish dress tapestries to the Gothic fabrics of the fourteenth century.
The Flemish and Burgundian looms were those of Arras, Brussels, Tournai, Bruges, Enghien, Oudenarde, Middlebourg, Lille, Antwerp, and Delft in Holland. The value of the tapestry industry to Flanders may be judged from the fact that Arras, a city of no importance whatever, from which not a single great artist had come, led all Europe for about two centuries in tapestry weaving.
Although some fine pieces were woven in the fourteenth century, as far as known, only two sets of Arras tapestries of this period are left. One set is at the cathedral of Angers in rather bad condition, for they were not appreciated at one time, and were used in a greenhouse and cut up as rugs. Fortunately, they have been restored and returned to the cathedral. The other set of early Arras hangings is to be found at the cathedral of Tournai, in Belgium. A piece of this set bore an inscription—which has fortunately been preserved for us—stating, “These cloths were made and completed in Arras by Pierrot Féré in the year one thousand four hundred two, in December, gracious month. Will all the saints kindly pray to God for the soul of Toussaint Prier?” Toussaint Prier, a canon of the cathedral in 1402, was the donor of the tapestries.