During this time France was dictating the fashions of all the Western World, so other countries were eager not only to have her tapestries, but to have her workmen weave for them in their own capitals. Accordingly, the royal family of Russia, always foreign in its tastes, sent for a group of weavers to set up a royal Russian tapestry works. Similarly, Spain sent for a Frenchman to direct her principal looms, those at Santa Barbara and Madrid, which for a decade or so had been running under a Fleming.
And meanwhile tapestry was steadily becoming more and more another form of painting. Until the middle of the XVIIIth century it remains primarily illustrative. The Renaissance designers continued to tell historical and biblical stories and to fashion the designs in the service of the tale they had to tell. With the influence of Rubens and his school (cf. No. 44), the story becomes chiefly the excuse for the composition; but the story is nevertheless still there and adequately presented. The artists of Louis XIV, when called upon to celebrate their king in tapestry, respected this quality of the art by depicting his history and his military exploits (cf. No. 52). But illustration already begins to run thin in the series of the royal residences done by the Gobelins during his reign, and with the style of his successor it runs out almost altogether. If Boucher paints the series of the Loves of the Gods it is not for the sake of the mythology, but for the rosy flesh and floating drapes, and Fragonard does not even bother to think of an excuse, but makes his languid nudes simply bathers (cf. No. 69). So when Louis XV is to be celebrated by his weavers the designers make one effort to invent a story by depicting his hunts, and then abandon episode and substitute portraiture (cf. No. 64).
Throughout most of the Renaissance, tapestry remained decorative as a mural painting is decorative, but in the XVIIth century, with the degeneration of all architectual feeling, tapestry lost entirely its architectual character. It was still decorative—it was decorative as the painting of the time was. The tapestries of the XVIIth century are giant easel paintings, and of the XVIIIth century woven panel paintings.
As to the textile quality, during the XVIIth century the very scale of the pieces kept them somewhat true to it. The large figures, heavy foliage, and big floral ornaments can fall successfully into wide, soft folds. But most of the tapestry of the XVIIIth century must be stretched and set in panels or frames. That they are woven is incidental, a fact to call forth wonder for the skill of the workmen, both of the dyers who perfected the numberless slight gradations of delicate tones and kept them constant, and of the almost unbelievably deft weavers who could ply the shuttle so finely and exactly and grade these delicate tones to reproduce soft modeled flesh, fluttering draperies, billowing clouds, spraying fountains, and the sheen and folds of different materials. But that they are woven is scarcely a fact to be considered in the artistic estimate. The only advantage of the woven decorations over the painted panel is that they present a softer surface to relieve the cold glitter of rooms. Otherwise as paintings they stand or fall. Even the border has usually been reduced to a simulated wood or stucco frame.
During this gradual change through five hundred years in the artistic qualities of tapestry the technical tricks of the weavers underwent corresponding modification. In the Gothic period the drawing depended primarily upon a strong dark outline, black or brown, that was unbroken, and that was especially important whether the design was affiliated rather with panel painting (cf. No. 1) or with the more graphic miniature illustration (cf. No. 5). Even the lesser accessories were all drawn in clear outline. Within a given color area, transitions from tone to tone were made by hatchings, little bars of irregular length of one of the shades that fitted into alternate bars of the other shade, like the teeth of two combs interlocked. And for shadows and emphasis of certain outlines, some of the Gothic weavers had a very clever trick of dropping stitches (cf. No. 1), so that a series of small holes in the fabric takes the place of a dark line. During the Renaissance the outline becomes much narrower, and is used only for the major figures, a device that sometimes makes the figures look as if they had been cut out and applied to the design. Hatching, if used at all, is much finer than in the earlier usage, consisting now of only single lines of one color shading into the next. In the work of Fontainbleau (cf. Nos. 36, 37), the dotted series of holes between colors is still used to give a subordinate outline. During the XVIIth century hatching is scarcely used at all, and the outline has practically disappeared. During the XVIIIth century the French weavers perfected a trick which obviated any break in the weave where the color changes, thus enabling tapestry to approximate even closer to painting effects.
To the weavers who adjusted these tricks to the varying demands of the cartoons, and so translated painted patterns in a woven fabric, is due quite as much credit for the finished work of art as to the painters who first made the design. Famous painters did prepare tapestry designs. Aside from the masters of the Middle Ages to whom tapestries are attributed, we have positive evidence that, among others, Jacques Daret, Roger Van der Weyden, Raphael, Giulio Romano (cf. Nos. 23-25), Le Brun, Rubens, Coypel (cf. Nos. 62, 63), Boucher (cf. Nos. 67, 68), Watteau, Fragonard (cf. No. 69), and Vernet (cf. No. 70), all worked on tapestry designs. The master weavers who could transpose their designs deserve to rank with them in honor.
Yet we know relatively little of these master weavers. Many names of tapicers appear in tax-lists and other documents, but not until the XVIIIth century do the names often represent to us definite personalities, and until then we can only occasionally credit a man with his surviving work. From the long lists of names and the great numbers of remaining tapestries a few only can be connected. Among the greatest of these is Nicolas Bataille, of Paris, who wove the famous set of the Apocalypse now in the Cathedral of Angers; Pasquier Grenier, of Tournai, to whom the Wars of Troy and related sets can be accredited (cf. No. 7), but who apparently was an entrepreneur rather than a weaver; Pieter Van Aelst, who was so renowned that the cartoons of Raphael were first entrusted to him; William Pannemaker, another Brussels man, who had supreme taste and skill, and his relative Pierre, almost as skilful; Marc Comans and François de la Planche, the Flemings who set up the looms in Paris that developed into the Gobelins (cf. No. 38); Jean Lefébvre, who worked first in the gallery of the Louvre and then had his studio in the Gobelins (cf. Nos. 39, 40); the Van der Beurchts, of Brussels (cf. Nos. 42, 56), and Leyniers (cf. Nos. 26, 27), and Cozette, most famous weaver of the Gobelins. Such men as these, and many more whose names are lost or are neglected because we do not know their work, were in their medium as important artists as the painters whose designs they followed.
With the passing of such master craftsmen the art of tapestry died. When men must compete with machines their work is no more respected, and so tapestry is no longer the natural medium of expression for the culture of the times. Tapestries are still being made, but there is no genuine vitality in the art and little merit in its product. It exists today only as an exhausted and irrelevant persistence from the past, and, as a fine art, doomed to failure and ultimate extinction.
P.A.
