TEXTILE FABRICS. [Plate 39.]
this is almost the same method as that used in the manufacture of the Indian and Persian carpets. It was during the 14th and 15th centuries, at Arras in Flanders, that storied tapestries were brought to their culmination and the tapestry workers became a most powerful guild. From about 1480, Brussels produced many magnificent hangings from designs by the great masters of the Italian Renascence. Raphael’s famous cartoons which are now in the South Kensington Museum are the original designs for the ten tapestries manufactured at Brussels for Pope Leo X. for the enrichment of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican; the seven cartoons, three being lost, were purchased by Charles I.
Many of the great Flemish painters also designed for the Brussels tapestries, such as Van Orley, Van Leyden and Jan Mabuse.
Francis I. caused tapestry looms to be set up at Fontainbleau in 1339, under the direction of the Italian, Serlio, but it was not until the Gobelin tapestry manufactory was established in 1603 in the Faubourg Saint Marcel by the Fleming, Marc de Comans, and François de la Planche, that French tapestry reached any importance. Under the Minister Colbert in 1667, the Royal Gobelin manufactory produced many fine tapestries designed by the head of the establishment, Charles le Brun.
About 1590, some carpets called Savonnerie were made in the Louvre, the technique being somewhat similar to the Persian carpets but the patterns were more pictorial and naturalistic in treatment; fine tapestries were also produced at Beauvais and Aubusson. Tapestry had been manufactured in England as early as the reign of Edward III., but it was not until the time of James I. that it assumed any importance, when a tapestry manufactory was established at Mortlake by Francis Crane.
Some fine Flemish tapestries are in the South Kensington museum and eight large pieces by Bernard Van Orley are in the Great Hall of Hampton Court. The coloured cartoons by Mantegna in Hampton Court, representing the Triumph of Cæsar, were to be reproduced in tapestry for the Duke of Mantua. There are some fine Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries in Windsor Castle which were gifts from the Court of France, and they all show the most consummate technique, beauty of material and harmony of colour.
The well-known Bayeux tapestry is embroidered in coloured wools upon a white linen ground. It is 214 feet in length and 22 inches in width and divided in 72 compartments with incidents representing the Norman invasion of England by William I.
Though reputed to be the work of Queen Matilda, the probability is that it is the work of English hands some few years after the invasion. This embroidery or tapestry is still preserved in the cathedral of Bayeux.