Scenes from the Roman de la Rose No. 4
This tapestry belongs to a small and very interesting group, all evidently the work of one designer. The three famous Conversations Galantes (long erroneously called the Baillée des Roses) in the Metropolitan Museum are by the same man, as are the four panels of the History of Lohengrin in Saint Catherine's Church, Cracow, the fifth fragmentary panel of the series being in the Musée Industrielle, Cracow. A fragment from the same designer showing a party of hunters is in the Church of Notre Dame de Saumur de Nantilly, and another fragment depicting a combat is in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Three small fragments—one with a single figure of a young man with a swan, like the Metropolitan pieces, on a striped ground, another showing a king reading in a portico very similar to the portico of the Annunciation, and the third showing a group of people centered about a king—were in the Heilbronner Collection.
Schmitz points out[1] a connection between the three Metropolitan pieces and the series of seven pieces depicting the life of Saint Peter in the Beauvais Cathedral, with an eighth piece in the Cluny Musée, and it is quite evident that the cartoons are the work of the same man. But whereas the other pieces all have the same characteristics in the weaving, this series shows a somewhat different technique in such details as the outline and the hatchings, so that one must assume they were woven on another loom.
Fortunately, there is documentary information on one set of the type that enables us to say definitely where and when the whole group was made. The Lohengrin set was ordered by Philip the Good from the first Grenier of Tournai in 1462. There can be no reasonable doubt that the set in Saint Catherine's Church is the same, for in this set the knight is quite apparently modeled after Duke Philip himself, judging from the portraits of him in both the Romance of Gerard de Rousillon (Vienna Hof-bibliothèque) and in the History of Haynaut (Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels).
Schmitz asserts that it is almost certainly useless to seek the author of these cartoons among contemporary painters, as they are probably the work of a professional cartoon painter, of which the Dukes of Burgundy kept several in their service—and this is probably true. But artists were not as specialized then as they are now, and even a professional tapestry designer might very well on occasion turn his hand to illustrating a manuscript or making a sketch for an enamel, so that it is not impossible that further research in the other contemporary arts may bring to light more information about this marked personality who created so individual a style.
Lent by Duveen Brothers.
This tapestry is exceedingly interesting, not only for its marked style of drawing and its quaint charm, but for the direct sincerity of the presentation and the brilliant and rather unaccustomed range of colors.