“Cymbeline,” Act II., Scene IV.
The most important works that have been executed in embroidery, have been hangings or carpets. We may look upon these as belonging to the history of the past. Never again will such works be undertaken. Their raison d’être, as well as the means for their production, have ceased to exist. We have very ancient historical evidence of the use of hangings (or tapestries), either as curtains to exclude prying eyes, or as coverings to what was sacred or else unseemly, or as ornamental backgrounds in public and private buildings.
There is no doubt that in pillared spaces the enclosures and subdivisions were completed by hangings from pillar to pillar, from the earliest times of Asiatic civilization. In Assyria, and afterwards in Greece and Rome, the open courts and rooms were shaded from the sun and rain by umbrella-like erections with hangings stretched over them. From the Coliseum’s vast area to that of the smallest atrium in the Pompeian house, the covering principle was the same.
Palace-halls and temples alike were furnished in this way, and the cold splendour of the polished marbles was enhanced by contrast with the shadowing folds of soft textures richly embroidered in bright colours and gold. The statues, the gold and silver vessels, the shrines heaped with votive offerings, were all brought into higher relief and effect by the screens, the curtains, and the veils which classical perfect taste would plan so as to carry out the decorator’s intention. Babylonians, Persians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, each adorned their sacred places in similar fashions.[438] Clemens Alexandrinus says that behind the hangings of the Egyptian temples were hidden their “foolish images.”[439]
The word “hangings” was applied to all large curtains and tapestries, tent coverings, screens dividing empty spaces, or pendant between pillars; also sails,[440] banners, and decorations for processional purposes covering walls or hanging from windows; all these have been embroidered or woven with pictures and patterns. Carpets, from having originally the same name, “tapete,” are to be added to this list, and, in fact, their uses are often interchanged. Kosroes’ famous hangings were used as a carpet, and Persian and Babylonian carpets have been hung on the walls. A Babylonian hanging must have resembled, in its style (of which we have descriptions), the Persian carpet of to-day.
Semper gives excellent reasons for his theory that, next to dress, hangings (the clothing of architecture) were the earliest phase of art.[441] He looks upon the most ancient paintings on architecture as absolutely representing textile coverings. Some of the earliest Babylonian decorations show men supporting draperies, which he believes to be the tradition of the time when the tallest slaves held up the hangings to their own height; and above them, in tiers, were men, dwarfs, and even children fastened on brackets, carrying the hangings up to the roofs. This was an Assyrian custom, and was adopted by the Romans as a mode of disposing of their prisoners of war. Woltmann and Woermann appear to lean to the suggestion that permanent imitations of hangings were carried out in painted or encaustic tiles covering the masonry of Chaldean buildings at Nimroud and Khorsabad. The pale ones associated with low reliefs, and really resembling them, as they were partly raised, and the reliefs in alabaster and stone, which were partly coloured, were in harmony, and yet in contrast, with the brilliant tiles of Babylon.[442]
We know exactly what were the purple, scarlet, and white hangings of the Sanctuary in the wilderness, designed by Bezaleel, and that the veil of the Temple was blue, purple, crimson or scarlet, and white, i.e. worked on white linen; and we know from Josephus, that “the veil of the Temple, which was rent in twain” sixteen centuries later, was that dedicated by Herod, and was Babylonian work, representing heaven and earth[443] (see p. [23] ante). Its colouring was scarlet, white, and blue. Scarlet and white hangings seem indeed to have been an Oriental fashion; and fashion then was not ephemeral, but lasted hundreds of years. The embroidered curtains of the Tabernacle are repeated in the hangings of Alexander’s wedding tent, after 1500 years; and a thousand years later still they reappear in the seventh century, when Pope Sergius gave curtains to the high altar (baldachino) in the basilica of St. Peter’s at Rome of this same scarlet and white embroidery.
In early Oriental art, the enormous expenditure of work is appalling to think of. Abulfeda describes the palace of the Caliph Moctader, on the banks of the Tigris, as being adorned with 38,000 pieces of tapestry, and of these 12,000 were of silk worked in gold. What a wealth of women had to be wasted in creating such a wealth of embroideries![444]
There is a Bedouin romance which describes the tent of Antar, and shows the taste for large works. Five thousand horsemen could skirmish under its embroidered shade; and Akbar’s largest tent held 10,000 persons.
Nadir Shah’s gorgeous tent, which was of the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, was of scarlet cloth on the outside, lined with violet satin embroidered with gold and precious stones. The peacock throne was placed within it, and was kept there during the remainder of Nadir Shah’s reign.