Still earlier, Mantegna supplied a series of idealised Pompeian
figures exquisitely composed, set in a lacy fancy of airy
architectural detail, in which he idealised all the gods of Olympus.
Each fair young goddess, each strong and perfect god, stood in its
particular niche and indicated its _penchant_ by a tripod, a peacock,
an apple or a caduceus, as clue to the proper name. Such airy beauty,
such dainty conception, makes of the gods rulers of æsthetics, if not
of fate. This series of Mantegna was the inspiration two centuries
later of the _Triumphs of the Gods_, and similar hangings of the
newly-formed Gobelins.

Giulio Romano drew, among other cartoons, a set of _Children Playing_,
which were the inspiration later at the Gobelins for Lebrun's _Enfants
Jardiniers_.

As classic treatment was the mode in the Sixteenth Century, so classic
subject most appealed. The loves and adventures of gods and heroes
gave stories for an infinite number of sets. As it was the fashion to
fill a room with a series, not with miscellaneous and contrasting
bits, several tapestries similar in subject and treatment were a
necessity. The gods were carried through their adventures in varying
composition, but the borders in all the set were uniform in style and
measurement.

In those prolific days, when ideas were crowding fast for expression,
the border gave just the outlet necessary for the superfluous designs
of the artist. He was wont to plot it off into squares with such
architectonic fineness as Mina da Fiesole might have used, and to make
of each of these a picture or a figure so perfect that in itself it
would have sufficient composition for an entire tapestry. All honour
to such artists, but let us never once forget that without the skill
and talent of the master-weaver these beauties would never have come
down to us.

  [Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA

    First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]

  [Illustration: VERTUMNUS AND POMONA

    First half of Sixteenth Century. Royal Collection of Madrid]

The collection of George Blumenthal, Esquire, of New York, contains as
beautiful examples of Sixteenth Century composition and weaving as
could be imagined. Two of these were found in Spain--the country
which has ever hoarded her stores of marvellous tapestries. They
represent the story of _Mercury_. (Frontispiece.) The cartoon is
Italian, and so perfect is its drawing, so rich in invention is the
exquisite border, that the name of Raphael is half-breathed by the
thrilled observer. But if the artist is not yet certainly identified,
the name of the weaver is certain, for on the galloon he has left his
sign. It is none other than the celebrated Wilhelm de Pannemaker.

In addition to this is the shield and double B of the Brussels
workshop, which after 1528 was a requirement on all tapestries beyond
a certain small size. In 1544 the Emperor Charles V made a law that
the mark or name of the weaver and the mark of his town must be put in
the border. It was this same Pannemaker of the Blumenthal tapestries
who wove in Spain the _Conquest of Tunis_ for Charles V. (Plate facing
page 62.)

Mr. Blumenthal's tapestries must have carried with them some such
contract for fine materials as that which attended the execution of
the _Tunis_ set, so superb are they in quality. Indeed, gold is so
lavishly used that the border seems entirely made of it, except for
the delicate figures resting thereon. It is used, too, in an unusual
manner, four threads being thrown together to make more resplendent
the weave.

The beauty of the cartoon as a picture, the decorative value of the
broad surfaces of figured stuffs, the marvellous execution of the
weaver, all make the value of these tapestries incalculable to the
student and the lover of decorative art. Mr. Blumenthal has graciously
placed them on exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. Fortunate they who can absorb their beauty.

That treasure-house in Madrid which belongs to the royal family
contains a set which bears the same ear-marks as the Blumenthal
tapestries. It is the set called _The Loves of Vertumnus and Pomona_.
(Plates facing pages 72, 73, 74 and 75.) Here is the same manner of
dress, the same virility, the same fulness of decoration. Yet the
Mercury is drawn with finer art.

The delight in perfected detail belonging to the Italian school of
artists resulted in an arrangement of _grotesques_. Who knows that the
goldsmith's trade was not responsible for these tiny fantastics, as so
many artists began as apprentices to workers in gold and silver? This
evidence of talented invention must be observed, for it set the
fashion for many a later tapestry, notably the _Grotesque Months_ of
the Seventeenth Century. Mingled with verdure and fruit, it is seen in
work of the Eighteenth Century. But in its original expression is it
the most talented. There we find that intellectual plan of design,
that building of a perfect whole from a subtle combination of
absolutely irreconcilable and even fabulous objects. Yet all is done
with such beguiling art that both mind and eye are piqued and pleased
with the impossible blending of realism and imagination.

Bacchiacca drew a filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a
ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the
celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing
pages 84 and 85.) These men at that time (1550) had set their
Flemish looms in Italy.

  [Illustration: TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED

    Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid]

  [Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA

    Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
      Carey, Esq., Boston]

And so it came that the Renaissance swept all before it in the world
of tapestry. More than that, with the increase of culture and of
wealth, with the increased mingling of the peoples of Europe after the
raid of Charles V into Italy, the demand for tapestries enormously
increased. They were wanted for furnishing of homes, they were wanted
as gifts--to brides, to monarchs, to ambassadors. And they were wanted
for splendid decoration in public festivals. They had passed beyond
the stage of rarity and had become almost as much a matter of course
as clothing.

Brussels being in the ascendency as a producer, the world looked to
her for their supply, and thereby came trouble. More orders came than
it was possible to fill. The temptation was not resisted to accept
more work than could be executed, for commercialism has ever a hold.
The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced
his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the
lessening of care in every department.

Gradually it came about that expedition in a tapissier, the ability to
weave quickly, was as great a desideratum as fine work. Various other
expedients were resorted to beside the Sixteenth Century equivalent of
"Step lively." Large tapestries were not set on a single loom, but
were woven in sections, cunningly united when finished. In this manner
more men could be impressed into the manufacture of a single piece. A
wicked practice was introduced of painting or dyeing certain woven
parts in which the colours had been ill-selected.

All these things resulted in constantly increasing restrictions by the
guild of tapissiers and by order of royal patrons. But fraud is hard
to suppress when the animus of the perpetrator is wrong. Laws were
made to stop one fault after another, until in the end the weavers
were so hampered by regulations that work was robbed of all enthusiasm
or originality.

It was at this time that Brussels adopted the low-warp loom. In other
words, after a brilliant period of prolific and beautiful production,
Brussels began to show signs of deterioration. Her hour of triumph was
past. It had been more brilliant than any preceding, and later times
were never able to touch the same note of purity coupled with
perfection. The reason for the decline is known, but reasons are of
scant interest in the face of the deplorable fact of decadence.

The Italian method of drawing cartoons was adopted by the Flemish
cartoonists at this time, but as it was an adoption and not a natural
expression of inborn talent, it fell short of the high standard of the
Renaissance. But that is not to say that we of to-day are not ready to
worship the fruit of the Italian graft on Flemish talent. A tapestry
belonging to the Institute of Art in Chicago well represents this
hybrid expression of drawing. (Plate facing page 78.) The principal
figures are inspired by such as are seen in the _Mercury_ of Mr.
Blumenthal's collection, or the _Vertumnus and Pomona_ series, but
there the artist stopped and wandered off into his traditional
Flemish landscape with proper Flemings in the background dressed in
the fashion of the artist's day.

  [Illustration: BRUSSELS TAPESTRY. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

    Weaver, Jacques Geubels. Institute of Art, Chicago]

  [Illustration: MEETING OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

    Brussels Tapestry. Woven by Gerard van den Strecken. Cartoon
      attributed to Rubens]

The border was evidently inspired by Raphael's classic figures and
arabesques, but the column of design is naïvely broken by the far
perspective of a formal garden. The Italian cartoonist would have
built his border, figure and arabesque, one above another like a
fantastic column (_vide_ Mr. Blumenthal's _Mercury_ border). The
Fleming saw the intricacy, the multiplied detail, but missed the
intellectual harmony. But, such trifles apart, the Flemish examples of
this style that have come to us are thrilling in their beauty of
colour, and borders such as this are an infinite joy. This tapestry
was woven about the last quarter of the Sixteenth Century by a weaver
named Jacques Geubels of Brussels, who was employed by Carlier, a
merchant of Antwerp.

As the fruit of the Renaissance graft on Flanders coarsened and
deteriorated, a new influence arose in the Low Countries, one that was
bound to submerge all others. Rubens appeared and spread his great
decorative surfaces before eyes that were tired of hybrid design. This
great scene-painter introduced into all Europe a new method in his
voluptuous, vigorous work, a method especially adapted to tapestry
weaving. It is not for us to quarrel with the art of so great a
master. The critics of painting scarce do that; but in the lesser art
of tapestry the change brought about by his cartoons was not a happy
one.

His great dramatic scenes required to be copied directly from the
canvas, no liberty of line or colour could be allowed the weaver. In
times past, the tapissier--with talent almost as great as that of the
cartoonist--altered at his discretion. Even he to whom the Raphael
cartoons were entrusted changed here and there the work of the master.

But now he was expected to copy without license for change. In other
words, the time was arriving when tapestries were changing from
decorative fabrics into paintings in wool. It takes courage to avow a
distaste for the newer method, seeing what rare and beautiful hangings
it has produced. But after a study of the purely decorative hangings
of Gothic and Renaissance work, how forced and false seem the later
gods. The value of the tapestries is enormous, they are the work of
eminent men--but the heart turns away from them and revels again in
the Primitives and the Italians of the Cinque Cento.

Repining is of little avail. The mode changes and tastes must change
with it. If the gradual decadence after the Renaissance was
deplorable, it was well that a Rubens rose in vigour to set a new and
vital copy. To meet new needs, more tones of colour and yet more, were
required by the weaver, and thus came about the making of woven
pictures.

As one picture is worth many pages of description, it were well to
observe the examples given (plate facing page 79) of the superb set of
_Antony and Cleopatra_, a series of designs attributed to Rubens,
executed in Brussels by Gerard van den Strecken. This set is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CHAPTER VIII

ITALY

FIFTEENTH THROUGH SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The history of tapestry in Italy is the story of the great families,
their romances and achievements. These families were those which
furnished rulers of provinces--kings, almost--which supplied popes as
well, and folk who thought a powerful man's pleasurable duty was to
interest himself seriously in the arts.

With the fine arts all held within her hand, it was but logical that
Italy should herself begin to produce the tapestries she was importing
from the land of the barbarians as those beyond her northern borders
were arrogantly called. First among the records is found the name of
the Gonzaga family which called important Flemish weavers down to
Mantua, and there wove designs of Mantegna, in the highest day of
their factory's production, about 1450.

Duke Frederick of Urbino is one of the early Italian patrons of
tapestry whose name is made unforgettable in this connexion by the
product of the factory he established toward the end of the Fifteenth
Century, at his court in the little duchy which included only the
space reaching from the Apennines to the Adriatic and from Rimini to
Ancona. The chief work of this factory was the _History of Troy_ which
cost the generous and enthusiastic duke a hundred thousand dollars.

The great d'Este family was one to follow persistently the art,
possibly because it habited the northern part of the peninsula and was
therefore nearer Flanders, but more probably because the great Duke of
Ferrara was animated by that superb pride of race that chafes at
rivalry; this, added to a wish to encourage art, and the lust of
possession which characterised the great men of that day.

It was the middle of the Sixteenth Century that Ercole II, the head of
the d'Este family, revived at Ferrara the factory of his family which
had suffered from the wars. The master-weavers were brought from
Flanders, not only to produce tapestries almost unequalled for
technical perfection, but to instruct local weavers. These two
important weavers were Nicholas and John Karcher or Carcher as it is
sometimes spelled, names of great renown--for a weaver might be almost
as well known and as highly esteemed as the artist of the cartoons in
those days when artisan's labour had not been despised by even the
great Leonardo. The foremost artist of the Ferrara works was chosen
from that city, Battista Dosso, but also active as designer was the
Fleming, Lucas Cornelisz. In Dosso's work is seen that exquisite and
dainty touch that characterises the artists of Northern Italy in their
most perfect period, before voluptuous masses and heavy scroll-like
curves prevailed even in the drawing of the human figure.

  [Illustration: THE ANNUNCIATION

    Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin A.
      Ryerson, Esq., Chicago]

The House of Este had a part to play in the visit of the Emperor
Charles V when he elected to be crowned with Lombardy's Iron Crown, in
1530, at Bologna instead of in the cathedral at Monza where the relic
has its home. "Crowns run after me; I do not run after them," he
said, with the arrogance of success. At this reception at Bologna
we catch a glimpse of the brilliant Isabella d'Este amid all the
magnificence of the occasion. It takes very little imagination to
picture the effect of the public square at Bologna--the same buildings
that stand to-day--the square of the Palazzo Publico and the
Cathedral--to fancy these all hung with the immense woven pictures
with high lights of silk and gold glowing in the sun, and through this
magnificent scene the procession of mounted guards, of beautiful
ladies, of church dignitaries, with Charles V as the central object of
pomp, wearing as a clasp to the cope of state the great diamond found
on the field of Marat after the defeat of the Duke of Burgundy. The
members of the House of Este were there with their courts and their
protégés, their artists and their literati, as well as with their
display of riches and gaiety.

The manufactory at Ferrara was now allowed to sell to the public, so
great was its success, and to it is owed the first impetus given to
the weaving in Italy and the production of some of the finest hangings
which time has left for us to enjoy to-day. It is a sad commentary on
man's lust of novelty that the factory at Ferrara was ultimately
abandoned by reason of the introduction into the country of the
brilliant metal-illuminated leathers of Cordova. The factory's life
was comprised within the space of the years 1534 to 1597, the years in
which lived Ercole II and Alfonso II, the two dukes of the House of
Este who established and continued it.

It was but little wonder that the great family of the Medici looked
with envious eyes on any innovation or success which distinguished a
family which so nearly approached in importance its own. When Ercole
d'Este had fully proved the perfection of his new industry, the
weaving of tapestry, one of the Medici established for himself a
factory whereby he, too, might produce this form of art, not only for
the furtherance of the art, but to supply his own insatiable desires
for possession.

The _Arazzeria Medicea_ was the direct result of the jealousy of
Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574. It was established in
Florence with a success to be anticipated under such powerful
protection, and it endured until that patronage was removed by the
extinction of the family in 1737.

It was to be expected that the artists employed were those of note,
yet in the general result, outside of delicate grotesques, the drawing
is more or less the far-away echo of greater masters whose faults are
reproduced, but whose inspiration is not obtainable. After Michael
Angelo, came a passion for over-delineation of over-developed muscles;
after Raphael--came the debased followers of his favourite pupil,
Giulio Romano, who had himself seized all there was of the carnal in
Raphael's genius. But if there is something to be desired in the
composition and line of the cartoons of the Florentine factory, there
is nothing lacking in the consummate skill of the weavers.

  [Illustration: ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY

    Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by Nicholas Karcher]

  [Illustration: ITALIAN TAPESTRY. MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY

    Cartoon by Bacchiacca. Woven by G. Rost]

The same Nicholas Karcher who set the standard in the d'Este works,
gave of his wonderful skill to the Florentines, and with him was
associated John Rost. These were both from Flanders, and although
trade regulations for tapestry workers did not exist in Italy, Duke
Cosimo granted each of these men a sufficient salary, a habitat, as
well as permission to work for outsiders, and in addition paid them
for all work executed for himself.

The subjects for the set of tapestries had entirely left the old
method of pious interpretation and of mediæval allegory and revelled
in pictured tales of the Scriptures and of the gods and heroes of
mystical Parnassus and of bellicose Greece, not forgetting those
dainty exquisite impossibilities called grotesques. It was about the
time of the death of Cosimo I (1574), the founder of the Medicean
factory, that a new and unfortunate influence came into the
directorship of the designs. This was the appointment of Stradano or
Johan van der Straaten, to give his Flemish name, as dominating
artist.

He was a man without fine artistic feeling, one of those whose eye
delighted in the exaggerations of decadence rather than in the
restraint of perfect art. He was inspired, not by past perfection of
the Italians among whom he came to live, but by those of the decline,
and on this he grafted a bit of Northern philistinism. His brush was
unfortunately prolific, and at this time the fine examples of weaving
set by Rost and Karcher had been replaced by quicker methods so that
after 1600 the tapestries poured out were lamentably inferior.
Florentine tapestry had at this time much pretence, much vulgar
display in its drawing, missing the fine virtues of the time when
Cosimo I dictated its taste, the fine virtues of "grace, gaiety and
reflectiveness."

Leo X, the great Medicean pope, was elected in 1513, he who ordered
the great Raphael set of the _Acts of the Apostles_, but it was before
the establishment of important looms in Italy, so to Flanders and Van
Aelst are due the glory of first producing this series which afterward
was repeated many times, in the great looms of Europe. Leo X emulated
in the patronage of the arts his father Lorenzo, well-named
Magnificent. What Lorenzo did in Florence, Leo X endeavoured to do in
Rome; make of his time and of his city the highest expression of
culture. His record, however, is so mixed with the corruption of the
time that its golden glory is half-dimmed. It was from the
licentiousness of cardinals and the wanton revels of the Vatican in
Leo's time that young Luther the "barbarian" fled with horror to nail
up his theses on the doors of the churches in Wittenberg.

The history of tapestry in Italy at the Seventeenth Century was all in
the hands of the great families. Italy was not united under a single
royal head, but was a heterogeneous mass of dukedoms, of foreign
invaders, with the popes as the head of all. But Italy had experienced
a time of papal corruption, which had, as its effect, wars of
disintegration, the retarding of that unity of state which has only
recently been accomplished. State patronage for the factories was not
known, that steady beneficent influence, changeless through changing
reigns. Popes and great families regulated art in all its
manifestations, and who shall say that envy and rivalry did not act
for its advancement.

  [Illustration: ITALIAN VERDURE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]

The desire to imitate the cultivation and elegance of Italy was
what made returning invaders carry the Renaissance into the rest of
Europe; and in a lesser degree the process was reversed when, in the
Seventeenth Century, a cardinal of the House of Barberini visited
France and, on viewing in the royal residences a superb display of
tapestries, his envy and ambition were aroused to the extent of
emulation. He could not, with all his power, possess himself of the
hangings that he saw, but he could, and did, arrange to supply himself
generously from another source. He was the powerful Francesco
Barberini, the son of the pope's brother (Pope Urban VIII, 1623-1644),
and it was he who established the Barberini Library and built from the
ruins of Rome's amphitheatres and baths the great palace which to-day
still dominates the street winding up to its aristocratic elegance. It
was to adorn this palace that Cardinal Francesco established ateliers
and looms and set artists and weavers to work. This tapestry factory
is of especial interest to America, for some of its chief hangings
have come to rest with us. _The Mysteries of the Life and Death of
Jesus Christ_, one set is called, and is the property of the Cathedral
of St. John, the Divine, in New York, donated by Mrs. Clarke.

Cardinal Francesco Barberini chose as his artists those of the school
of Pietro di Cortona with Giovanni Francesco Romanelli as the head
master. The director of the factory was Giacomo della Riviera allied
with M. Wauters, the Fleming.[13] The former was especially concerned
with the pieces now owned by the Cathedral of St. John, the Divine,
in New York, and which are signed with his name. Romanelli was the
artist of the cartoons, and his fame is almost too well known to dwell
upon. His portrait, in tapestry, hangs in the Louvre, for in Paris he
gained much fame at the Court of Louis XIV, where he painted portraits
of the Grand Monarch, who never wearied of seeing his own magnificence
fixed on canvas.

It was the hard fate of the Barberini family to lose power and wealth
after the death of their powerful member, Pope Urban VIII, in 1644.
Their wealth and influence were the shining mark for the arrows of
envy, so it was to be expected that when the next pope, Innocent X,
was elected, they were robbed of riches and driven out of the country
into France. This ended for a time the work of the tapestry factory,
but later the family returned and work was resumed to the extent of
weaving a superb series picturing scenes especially connected with the
glory of the family, and entitled _History of Urban VIII_.

Although Italy is growing daily in power and riches under her new
policy of political unity, there were dreary years of heavy expense
and light income for many of her famous families, and it was during
such an era that the Barberini family consented to let their
tapestries pass out from the doors of the palace they were woven to
decorate. In 1889, the late Charles M. Ffoulke, Esq., became the
possessor of all the Barberini hangings, and added them to his famous
collection. Thus through the enterprise and the fine artistic
appreciation of Mr. Ffoulke, is America able to enjoy the best
expression of Italian tapestry of the Seventeenth Century.

The part that Venice ever played in the history of tapestry is the
splendid one of consumer. In her Oriental magnificence she exhibited
in palace and pageant the superb products of labour which others had
executed. Without tapestries her big stone palaces would have lacked
the note of soft luxury, without coloured hangings her balconies would
have been but dull settings for languid ladies, and her water-parades
would have missed the wondrous colour that the Venetian loves. Yet to
her rich market flowed the product of Europe in such exhaustless
stream that she became connoisseur-consumer only, nor felt the need of
serious producing. Workshops there were, from time to time, but they
were as easily abandoned as they were initiated, and they have left
little either to history or to museums. Venice was, in the Sixteenth
Century, not only a buyer of tapestries for her own use, but one of
the largest markets for the sale of hangings to all Europe. Men and
monarchs from all Christendom went there to purchase. The same may be
said of Genoa, so that although these two cities had occasional
unimportant looms, their position was that of middleman--vendors of
the works of others. In addition to this they were repairers and had
ateliers for restoring, even in those days.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] E. Müntz, "La Tapisserie."

CHAPTER IX

FRANCE

WORKING UP TO GOBELINS FACTORY

In following the great sweep of tapestry production we arrive now in
France, there to stay until the Revolution. The early beginnings were
there, briefly rivalling Arras, but Arras, as we have seen, caught up
the industry with greater zeal and became the ever-famous leader of
the Fifteenth Century, ceding to Brussels in the Sixteenth Century,
whence the high point of perfection was carried to Paris and caused
the establishment of the Gobelins. The English development under James
I, we defer for a later considering.

Francis I stands, an over-dressed, ever ambitious figure, at the
beginning of things modern in French art. He still smacks of the
Middle Ages in many a custom, many a habit of thought; his men clank
in armour, in his châteaux lurk the suggestion of the fortress, and
his common people are sunk in a dark and hopeless oppression. Yet he
himself darts about Europe with a springing gait and an elegant
manner, the type of the strong aristocrat dispensing alike arts of war
and arts of the Renaissance.

Was it his visits, bellicose though they were, to Italy and Spain,
that turned his observant eye to the luxury of woven story and made
him desire that France should produce the same? The Sforza Castle at
Milan had walls enough of tapestry, the pageants of Leonardo da
Vinci, organised at royal command of the lovely Beatrice d'Este,
displayed the wealth of woven beauty over which Francis had time to
deliberate in those bad hours after the battle at Milan's noted
neighbour, Pavia.

  [Illustration: THE FINDING OF MOSES

    Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Cartoon after Poussin. The Louvre
      Museum]

  [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF JUNO

    Gobelins under Louis XIV.]

The attention of Francis was also turned much to Spain through envy of
that extraordinary man of luck and ability, the Emperor Charles V, and
from whom he made abortive and sullen efforts to wrest Germany, Italy,
anything he could get. In his imprisonment in Madrid, Francis had time
in plenty on which to think of many things, and why not on the
wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to
make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little
boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not
whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one
which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer
of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the
same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to
remember in regard to the class of designs of his own and succeeding
periods in France.

How he got his ideas we can reasonably trace, and the result of them
was that he established a royal tapestry factory in beautiful
Fontainebleau, which lies hid in grateful shade, stretching to
flowered fields but a reasonable distance from the distractions of
Paris.

It pleased Francis--and perhaps the beautiful Diane de Poitiers and
Duchesse d'Étampes--to critique plays in that tiny gem of a theatre at
the palace, or to feed the carp in the pool; but also it gave him
pleasure to wander into the rooms where the high-warp looms lifted
their utilitarian lengths and artists played at magic with the wools.

Alas, one cannot dress this patronage of art with too much of
disinterestedness, for these marvellous weavings were for the
adornment of the apartments of the very persons who caused their
productions.

The grand idea of state ateliers had not yet come to bless the
industry. For this reason the factory at Fontainebleau outlasted the
reign of its founder, Francis I, but a short time.

Nevertheless, examples of its works are still to be seen and are of
great beauty, notably those at the Museum of the Gobelins in Paris.
That a series called the _History of Diana_ was produced is but
natural, considering the puissance at court of the famous Diane de
Poitiers.

When Francis' son, Henri II, enfeebled in constitution by the Spanish
confinement, inherited the throne, it was but natural that he should
neglect the indulgences of his father and prefer those of his own. The
Fontainebleau factory strung its looms and copied its cartoons and
produced, too, certain hangings for Henri's wife, the terrible
Catherine de Medici, on which her vicious eyes rested in forming her
horrid plots; but Henri had ambitions of his own, small ambitions
beside those which had to do with jealousy of Charles Quint. He let
the factory of Francis I languish, but carried on the art under his
own name and fame.

To give his infant industry a home he looked about Paris and decided
upon the Hôpital de la Trinité, an institution where asylum was found
for the orphans of the city who seem, in the light of the general
brutality of the time, to have been even in more need of a home than
the parentless child of modern civilisation. A part of the scheme was
to employ in the works such children as were sufficiently mature and
clever to work and to learn at least the auxiliary details of a craft
that is also an art.

In this way the sixty or so of the orphans of La Trinité were given a
means of earning a livelihood. Among them was one whose name became
renowned. This was Maurice du Bourg, whose tapestries surpassed all
others of his time in this factory--an important factory, as being one
of the group that later was merged into the Gobelins.

It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind
that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things
Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his
school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but
in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world
found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinité
that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an
underscoring. This set was composed of fifteen pieces illustrating in
sweeping design and gorgeous colouring the _History of Mausolus and
Artemisia_. Intense local and personal interest was given to the set
by making an open secret of the fact that by Artemisia, the Queen of
Halicarnassus, was meant the widowed Queen of France, Catherine de
Medici, who adored posing as the most famous of widows and adding
ancient glory to her living importance. To this _History_ French
writers accord the important place of inspirer of a distinctively
French Renaissance.

The weaver being Maurice du Bourg, the chief of the factory of La
Trinité, the artists were Henri Lerambert and Antoine Carron, but the
set has been many times copied in various factories, and Artemisia has
symbolised in turn two other widowed queens of France.

Into the throne of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under
the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was
filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at
last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that
grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his
place, and the habit being strong upon him, he was in eternal
conflict. Some there be who are developed by sympathy, but Henri IV
was developed by opposition, and thus it was that although opposed in
the matter by his Prime Minister, Sully, he established factories for
the weaving of tapestries in both high and low warps.

With the desire to see the arts of peace instead of evidences of war
throughout his kingdom just rescued from conflict, he took all means
to set his people in the ways of pleasing industry. The indefatigable
Sully was plucking the royal sleeve to follow the path of the plough,
to see man's salvation, material and moral, in the ways of
agriculture. But Henri favoured townspeople as well as country
people, and with the Edict of Nantes, releasing from the bondage of
terror a large number of workers, he showed much industry in
encouraging tapestry factories in and near Paris, and as these all
lead to Gobelins we will consider them.

  [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)

    Gobelins, Seventeenth Century]

  [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)

    Gobelins Tapestry]

Henri IV, notwithstanding his Prime Minister Sully's opposition to
what he considered a favouring of vicious luxury, began to occupy
himself in tapestry factories as early in his reign as his people
could rise from the wounds of war. Taking his movements
chronologically we will begin with his establishment in 1597 (eight
years after this first Bourbon took the throne) of a high-warp
industry in the house of the Jesuits in the Faubourg St. Antoine,
associating here Du Bourg of La Trinité and Laurent, equally renowned,
and the composer of the St. Merri tapestries.[14]

Flemish workers in Paris were at this same time, about 1601,
encouraged by the king and under protection of his steward. These
Flemings were the nucleus of a great industry, for it was over them
that two famous masters governed, namely, François de la Planche and
Marc Comans or Coomans. In 1607 Henri IV established the looms which
these men were called upon to direct.

These two Flemings, great in their art, were men of family and of some
means, for their first venture in the manufacture of tapestry was a
private enterprise like any of to-day. They looked to themselves to
produce the money for the support of the industry. Combining
qualities of both the artist and the business man, they took on
apprentices and also established looms in the provinces (notably Tours
and Amiens) where commercialism was as prominent as in modern methods;
that is to say, that by turning off a lot of cheaper work for smaller
purses, a quick and ready market was found which supplied the money
necessary for the production of those finer works of art which are
left to delight us to-day.

This manner of procedure of De la Planche and Comans has an interest
far deeper than the mere financial venture of the men of the early
Seventeenth Century, because it forces upon us the fact that at that
time, and earlier, no state ateliers existed. It was Henri IV who
first saw the wisdom of using the public purse in advancing this
industry. He established Du Bourg in the Louvre. With Henri Laurent he
was placed in the Tuileries, in 1607, and that atelier lasted until
the ministry of Colbert in the reign of Louis XIV.

In about 1627 the great De la Planche died and his son, Raphael,
established ateliers of his own in the Faubourg St. Germain, turning
out from his looms productions which were of sufficient excellence to
be confused with those of his father's most profitable factory.
Chronologically this fact belongs later, so we return to the influence
of Henri IV and the master gentleman tapissiers, De la Planche and
Comans.

The very name of the old palace, Les Tournelles, calls up a crowd of
pictures: the death of Henri II at the tournament in honour of the
marriage of his son with Marie Stuart, the subsequent razing of this
ancient home of kings by Catherine de Medici, and its reconstruction
in its present form by Henri IV. It is here that Richelieu honoured
the brief reign of Louis XIII by a statue, and it is here that Madame
de Sevigné was born. But more to our purpose, it was here that, in
1607, Henri IV cast his kingly eye when establishing a certain
tapestry factory. It was here he placed as directors the celebrated
Comans and De la Planche. It happened in time, that the looms of Les
Tournelles were moved to the Faubourg St. Marceau and these two men
came in time to direct these and all other looms under royal
patronage.

Examples are not wanting in museums of French work of this time,
showing the development of the art and the progress that France was
making under Henri IV, whose energy without limit, and whose interests
without number, would to-day have given him the epithet of strenuous.

Under his reign we see the activity that so easily led France up to
the point where all that was needed was the assembling of the
factories under the direction of one great master. The factories
flourishing under Henri IV were La Trinité, the Louvre, the
Savonnerie, the Faubourg St. Marceau and one in the Tuileries. But it
needed the power of Louis XIV to tie all together in the strength of
unity.

The assassin Ravaillac, fanatically muttering through the streets of
Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest
month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal
coach, not only gave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these
industries that the king had cherished for his people against the
opposition of his prime minister. The tale of tapestry is like a vine
hanging on a frame of history, and frequent allusion therefore must be
made to the tales of kings and their ministers.

As it is not always a monarch, but often the power behind the throne
that rules, we see the force of Richelieu surging behind the reign of
the suppressed Louis XIII, whose rule followed that of the regretted
Henri IV. The master of the then new Palais-Royal had minor interests
of his own, apart from his generous plots of ruin for the Protestants,
for all the French nobility, and for the House of Austria to which the
queen belonged. Luxurious surroundings were a necessity to this man,
refined in the arts of cruelty and of living. It was no wonder that
under him tapestry weaving was not allowed to die, but was fostered
until that day when the Grand Monarch would organise and perfect.

In 1643, Louis XIV came to the throne under the guidance of Anne of
Austria, but it was many years before he was able to make his
influence appreciable. Meanwhile, however, others were fostering the
elegant industry. It was as early as 1647 that two celebrated tapestry
weavers came to Paris from Italy. They were Pierre Lefèvre or Lefebvre
and his son Jean. The first of these was the chief of a factory in
Florence, whither he presently returned. Jean Lefebvre stayed in
Paris, won his way all the better for being released from parental
rule, and in time received the great honour of being appointed one
of the directors of the Gobelins, when that factory was finally
organised as an institution of the state.

  [Illustration: GOBELINS BORDER (DETAIL) SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]

  [Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING

    After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Château Henri
      Quatre, Pau]

During the regency of Louis XIV there were also factories outside of
Paris. The high-warp looms of Tours were of such notable importance
that the great Richelieu placed here an order for tapestries of great
splendour with which to soften his hours of ease. Rheims Cathedral
still harbours the fine hangings which were woven for the place they
now adorn, an unusual circumstance in the world of tapestry. These
hangings (_The Story of Christ_) were woven at Rheims, where the
factory existed well known throughout the first half of the
Seventeenth Century. The church had previously ordered tapestries from
another town executed by one Daniel Pepersack, and so highly approved
was his work that he was made director of the Rheims factory.[15]

A factory which lasted but a few years, yet has for us a special
interest, is that of Maincy, founded in 1658. It is here that we hear
of the great Colbert and of Lebrun, whose names are synonymous with
prosperity of the Gobelins. For the factory at Maincy, Lebrun made
cartoons of great beauty, notably that of _The Hunt of Meleager_,
which now hangs in the Gobelins Museum in Paris. Louis Blamard was the
director of the workmen, who were Flemish, and who were afterwards
called to Paris to operate the looms of the newly-formed Gobelins, and
the reason of the transference forms a part of the history of the
great people of that day.

Richelieu in dying had passed over his power to Mazarin, who had used
it with every cruelty possible to the day. He had coveted riches and
elegance and had possessed himself of them; had collected in his
palace the most beautiful works of art of his day or those of a
previous time. After Mazarin came Foucquet, the great, the
iconoclastic, the unfortunate.

It was at Foucquet's estate of Vaux near Maincy that this tapestry
factory of short duration was established and soon destroyed. The
powerful Superintendent of Finance, with his eye for the beautiful and
desire for the luxury of kings, built for himself such a château as
only the magnificence of that time produced. It was situated far
enough from Paris to escape any sort of ennui, and was surrounded by
gardens most marvellous, within a beauteous park. It lay, when
finished, like a jewel on the fair bosom of France. The great
superintendent conceived the idea of pleasing the young king, Louis
XIV, by inviting the court for a wondrous fête in its lovely
enclosure.

Foucquet was a man of the world, and of the court, knew how to please
man's lighter side, and how to use social position for his own ends.
France calls him a "dilapidateur," but when his power and incidentally
the revenues of state, were laid out to produce a day of pleasure for
king and court, his taste and ability showed such a fête as could
scarce be surpassed even in those days of artistic fêtes champêtres.

The great gardens were brought into use in all the beauty of flower
and vine, of lawn and bosquet, of terrace and fountain. When the
guests arrived, weary of town life, they were turned loose in the
enchanting place like birds uncaged, and to the beauty of Nature was
added that of folk as gaily dressed as the flowers. The king was
invited to inspect it all for his pleasure, asked to feast in the
gardens, and to repose in the splendid château.

He was young then, in the early twenties, and luxury was younger then
than now, so he was pleased to spend the time in almost childish
enjoyments. A play _al fresco_ was almost a necessity to a royal
garden party, which was no affair of an hour like ours in the busy
to-day, but extended the livelong day and evening. Molière was ready
with his sparkling satires at the king's caprice, and into the garden
danced the players before an audience to whom vaudeville and _café
chantant_ were exclusively a royal novelty arranged for their
delectation.

It is easy to see the elegant young king and his court in the setting
of a sophisticated out-of-doors, wandering on grassy paths, lingering
under arches of roses, plucking a flower to nest beside a smiling
face, stopping where servants--obsequious adepts, they were
then--supplied dainty things to eat and drink. Madame de Sevigné was
there, she of the observant eye, an eye much occupied at this time
with the figure of Superintendent Foucquet, the host of this glorious
occasion. This gracious lady lacked none of the appearance of
frivolity, coiffed in curls, draped in lace and soft silks, but her
mind was deeply occupied with the signs of the times. All the elegance
of the château, all the seductive beauty of terrace, garden, and
bosquet, all the piquant surprises of play and pyrotechnics, what were
they? Simply the disinterested effort of a subject to give pleasure
to His Majesty, the King.

There were those present who had long envied Foucquet, with his
ever-increasing power and wealth, his ability to patronise the arts,
to collect, and even to establish his tapestry looms like a king, for
his own palace and for gifts. This grand fête in the lovely month of
June did more than shower pleasure, more than gratify the lust of the
eye. In effect, it was a gathering of exquisite beauties and charming
men, lost in light-hearted play; in reality, it proved to be an
incitive to envy and malice, and a means to ruin.

Among the observant guests at this wondrous fête champêtre was
Colbert, young, ambitious, keen. He was not slow to see the holes in
Foucquet's fabric, nor were others. And so, whispers came to the king.
Foucquet's downfall is the old story of envy, man trying to climb by
ruining his superiors, hating those whose magnificence approaches
their own. Foucquet's unequalled entertainment of the king was made to
count as naught. Louis, even before leaving for Paris, had begun to
ask whence came the money that purchased this wide fertile estate
stretching to the vision's limit, the money that built the château of
regal splendour, the money that paid for the prodigal pleasures of
that day of delights? Foucquet thought to have gained the confidence
and admiration of the king. But, on leaving, Louis said coldly, "We
shall scarce dare ask you to our poor palace, seeing the superior
luxury to which you are accustomed." A fearful cut, but only a straw
to the fate which followed, the investigations into the affairs of
Superintendent Foucquet. His arrest and his conviction followed and
then the eighteen dreary years of imprisonment terminating only with
the superintendent's life. Madame de Sevigné saw him in the beginning,
wept for her hero, but after a while she, too, fell away from his
weary years.

  [Illustration: CHILDREN GARDENING

    After Charles Lebrun. Gobelins, Seventeenth Century. Château Henri
      Quatre, Pau]

  [Illustration: GOBELINS GROTESQUE

    Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris]

With his arrest came the end of the glories of the Château of Vaux
near Maincy, and so, too, came an end to the factory where so fine
results had been obtained in tapestry weaving. Yet the effort was not
in vain, for some of the tapestries remain and the factory was the
school where certain celebrated men were trained.

It may easily have been that Louis XIV discovered on that day at Vaux
the excellence of Lebrun whom he made director at the Gobelins in
Paris when they were but newly formed. Foucquet, wasting in prison,
had many hours in which to think on this and on the advancement of the
very man who had been keenest in running him to cover, the great
Colbert. It was well for France, it was well for the artistic industry
whose history occupies our attention, that these things happened; but
we, nevertheless, feel a weakness towards the man of genius and energy
caged and fretted by prison bars, for he had shown initiative and
daring, qualities of which the world has ever need.

Foucquet's factory lasted three years. It was directed by Louis
Blamard or Blammaert of Oudenarde, and employed a weaver named Jean
Zègre, who came from the works at Enghien, works sufficiently known to
be remarked. Lebrun composed here and fell under the influence of
Rubens, an influence that pervaded the grandiose art of the day. The
earliest works of Lebrun, three pieces, were later used to complete a
set of Rubens' _History of Constantine_. _The Muses_ was a set by
Lebrun, also composed for the Château of Vaux. The charm of this set
is a matter for admiration even now when, alas, all is destroyed but a
few fragments.

The disgrace of Foucquet was the last determining cause of the
establishment of the Gobelins factory under Louis XIV, an act which
after this brief review of Paris factories (and an allusion to
sporadic cases outside of Paris) we are in position at last to
consider. Pursuit of knowledge in regard to the Gobelins factory leads
us through ways the most flowery and ways the most stormy, through
sunshine and through the dark, right up to our own times.

  [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY, AFTER LEBRUN, EPOCH LOUIS XIV

    Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]

  [Illustration: THE VILLAGE FÊTE

    Gobelins Tapestry after Teniers]

FOOTNOTES:

[14] For the facts here cited see E. Müntz, "Histoire de la
Tapisserie," and Jules Guiffrey, "Les Gobelins."

[15] See Loriquet, "Les Tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims."

CHAPTER X

THE GOBELINS FACTORY, 1662

Colbert saw the wisdom of taking direction for the king, Louis XIV, of
the looms of Foucquet's château. Travel being difficult enough to make
desirable the concentration of points of interest, Colbert transferred
the looms of Vaux to Paris. To do this he had first to find a habitat,
and what so suitable as the Hotel des Gobelins, a collection of
buildings on the edge of Paris by which ran a little brook called the
Bièvre. The Sieur Leleu was then the owner, and the sale of the
buildings was made on June 6, 1662.

This was the beginning only of the purchase, for Louis XIV added
adjoining houses for the various uses of the large industries he had
in mind, for the development of arts and crafts of all sorts, and for
the lodging of the workers.

The story of the original occupants of the premises is almost too well
known to recount. The simple tale of the conscientious "dyers in
scarlet" is told on the marble plaque at the present entry into the
collection of buildings still standing, still open to visitors. It is
a tale with a moral, an obvious simple moral with no need of Alice's
Duchess to point it out, and it smacks strong of the honesty of a
labour to which we owe so much.

Late in the Fifteenth Century the brothers Gobelin came to the city
of Paris to follow their trade, which was dyeing, and their ambition,
which was to produce a scarlet dye like that they had seen flaunting
in the glowing city of Venice. The trick of the trade in those days
was to find a water of such quality that dyes took to it kindly. The
tiny river, or rather brook, called the Bièvre, which ran softly down
towards the Seine had the required qualities, and by its murmuring
descent, Jean and Philibert pitched the tents of their fortune.

They succeeded, too, so well that we hear of their descendants in
later centuries as having become gentlemen, not of property only, but
of cultivation, and far removed from trades or bartering. Their name
is ever famous, for it tells not only the story of the two original
dyers, but of their subsequent efforts in weaving, and finally it has
come to mean the finest modern product of the hand loom. Just as Arras
gave the name to tapestry in the Fourteenth Century, so the Gobelins
has given it to the time of Louis XIV, even down to our own day--more
especially in Europe, where the word tapestry is far less used than
here.

The tablet now at the Gobelins--let us re-read it, for in some hasty
visit to the Latin Quarter we may have overlooked it. Translated
freely it reads, "Jean and Philibert Gobelin, merchant dyers in
scarlet, who have left their name to this quarter of Paris and to the
manufacture of tapestries, had here their atelier, on the banks of the
Bièvre, at the end of the Fifteenth Century."

Another inscription takes a great leap in time, skips over the
centuries when France was not in the lead in this art, and
recommences with the awakening strength under the wise care of Henri
IV. It reads:

"April 1601. Marc Comans and François de la Planche, Flemish tapestry
weavers, installed their ateliers on the banks of the Bièvre."

"September 1667, Colbert established in the buildings of the Gobelins
the manufacture of the furniture (_meubles_) of the Crown, under the
direction of Charles Lebrun."

The tablet omits the date that is fixed in our mind as that of the
beginning of the modern tapestry industry in France, the year 1662,
but that is only because it deals with a date of more general
importance, the time when the Gobelins was made a manufactory of all
sorts of gracious products for the luxury of palaces and châteaux, not
tapestries alone, but superb furniture, and metal work, inlay,
mounting of porcelains and all that goes to furnish the home of
fortunate men.

In that year of 1667 was instituted the ateliers supported by the
state, not dependent upon the commercialism of the workers. This made
possible the development of such men as Boulle with his superb
furniture, of Riesner with his marquetry, of Caffieri with his marvels
in metal to decorate all _meubles_, even vases, which were then coming
from China in their beauty of solid glaze or eccentric ornament.

Here lies the great secret of the success of Louis XIV in these
matters, with the coffers of the Crown he rewarded the artists above
the necessity of mere living, and freed each one for the best
expression of his own especial art. The day of individual financial
venture was gone. The tapestry masters of other times had both to work
and to worry. They had to be artists and at the same time commercial
men, a chimerical combination.

The expense of maintaining a tapestry factory was an incalculable
burden. A man could not set up a loom, a single one, as an artist sets
up an easel, and in solitude produce his woven work of art. Other
matters go to the making of a tapestry than weaving, matters which
have to do with cartoons for the design, dyes, wools, threads, etc.;
so that many hands must be employed, and these must all be paid. The
apprentice system helped much, but even so, the master of the atelier
was responsible for his finances and must look for a market for his
goods.

What a relief it was when the king took all this responsibility from
the shoulders and said to the artists and artisans, "Art for Art's
sake," or whatever was the equivalent shibboleth of that day. Here was
comfort assured for the worker, with a housing in the Gobelins, or in
that big asylum, the Louvre, where an apartment was the reward of
virtue. And now was a market assured for a man's work, a royal market,
with the king as its chief, and his favourites following close.

The ateliers scattered about Paris were allied in spirit, were all the
result of the encouragement of preceding monarchs, but it remained for
Le Grand Monarque to gather all together and form a state solidarity.

Kings must have credit, even though others do the work. It was the
labour of the able Colbert to organise this factory. He was in favour
then. It was after his acuteness had helped in deposing the splendid
brigand Foucquet, and his power was serving France well, so well that
he brought about his head the inevitable jealousy which finally threw
him, too, into unmerited disgrace.

Colbert, then, although a Minister of State, head of the Army of
France, and a few other things, had the fate of the Gobelins in his
hand. As the ablest is he who chooses best his aids, Colbert looked
among his countrymen for the proper director of the newly-organised
institution. He selected Charles Lebrun.

The very name seems enough, in itself. It is the concrete expression
of ability, not only as an artist, but as a leader of artists, a
director, an assembler, a blender. He called to the Gobelins, as
addition to those already there, the apprentices from La Trinité, the
weavers from the Faubourg St. Germain, and from the Louvre. He
established three ateliers of high-warp under Jean Jans, Jean Lefebvre
and Henri Laurent; also two ateliers of low-warp under Jean Delacroix
and Jean-Baptiste Mozin. When charged with the decoration of
Versailles he had under his direction fifty artists of differing
scopes, which alone would show his power of assembling and leading, of
blending and ordering. Workers at the Gobelins numbered as many as two
hundred fifty, and apprentices were legion.

Ten or twelve important artists composed the designs for tapestries,
yet the mind of Lebrun is seen to dominate all; his genius was their
inspiration. It was he whose influence pervaded the decorative art of
the day. More than any others in that grand age he influenced the
tone of the artistic work. We may say it was the king, we may have
styles named for the king, but it was Lebrun who made them what they
were. The spirit of the time was there, monarch and man made that, but
it was Lebrun who had the talent to express it in art. It was a time
when France was fully awake, more fully awake than Italy who had, in
fact, commenced the somnolence of her art; she was strong with that
brutal force that is recently up from savagery, and she took her
grandeur seriously.

At least that was the attitude of the king. No lightness, no
effervescing cynical humour ever disturbed the heavy splendour of his
pose. And this grand pose of the king, Lebrun expressed in the heavy
sumptuousness of decoration. The tapestries of that time show the mood
of the day in subject, in border and in colour. All is superb,
grandiose.

Rubens, although not of France, dominated Europe with his magnificence
of style, a style suited to the time, expressing force rather than
refinement, yet with a splendid decorative value in the art we are
considering. Flanders looked to him for inspiration, and his lead was
everywhere followed. His virile work had power to inspire, to transmit
enthusiasm to others, and thus he was responsible for much of the
improvement in decorative art, the re-establishment of that art upon
an intellectual basis. Designs from his hands were full, splendid and
self-assertive; harmony and proportion were there. A study of the
_Antony and Cleopatra_ series and of the plates given in this volume
will establish and verify this.

  [Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]

  [Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]

Lebrun's century was the same as that of Rubens, but the former had
the fine feeling for art of the Latin, who knows that its first
province is to please. A comparison between the two men must not be
carried too far, for Rubens was essentially a painter, attacking the
field of decoration only with the overflow of imagination, while
Lebrun's life and talent were wholly directed in the way of
beautifying palaces and châteaux. Yet Rubens' work gave a fresh
impulse to tapestry weaving in Brussels while Lebrun was inspiring it
in France.

Lebrun had, then, to direct the talent and the labour of an army of
artists and artisans, and to keep them working in harmony. It was no
mean task, for one artist alone was not left to compose an entire
picture, but each was taken for his specialty. One artist drew the
figures, another the animals, another the trees, and another the
architecture; but it was the director, Lebrun, who composed and
harmonised the whole. Thus, although the number of tapestries actually
composed by him is few, it was his great mind that ordered the work of
others. He was the leader of the orchestra, the others were the
instruments he controlled.

It was while at Vaux that Lebrun had more time for his own
composition. He there produced a series called _Les Renommés_,
masterpieces of pure decorative composition. These were designed as
portières for the Château of Maincy. They came to be models for the
Gobelins, and were woven to hang at royal doors, the doors of Foucquet
being at this time dressed with iron bars.

The Gobelins wove seventy-two sets after this beautiful model which
had made Lebrun's début as an artist. Foucquet had given him a more
pretentious work; it was to complete a suite, the _History of
Constantine_, after Raphael. Rubens had given a fresh flush of
popularity to this subject, which again became the mode. The _History
of Meleager_ was begun at Vaux and finished at the Gobelins. Later,
Vaux forgotten, or at least a thing of the past, Lebrun's decorative
genius found expression in the series called _The Months_ or _The
Royal Residences_, of which there were twelve hangings.

In these last the scheme is the perfection of decoration, with the
subject well subdued, yet so subtly placed that notwithstanding its
modesty, the eye promptly seeks it. The castle in the distance, the
motive holding aloft the sign of the Zodiac, are seen even before the
splendid columns and the foliage of the middle-ground.

Such a hanging has power to play pretty tricks with the imagination of
him who gazes upon it. The columns, smooth and solid, declare him at
once to be in a place of luxury. Beyond the foreground's columns, but
near enough for touching, are trees to make a pleasant shade, and
beyond, in the far distance, is the château set in fair gardens, even
the château where the lovely Louise de la Vallière held her court
until conscience drove her to the convent.

The set of most renown, woven under Lebrun's generalship, was that
splendid advertisement of the king's magnificence known as the
_History of the King_. Louis demanded above all else that he should
appear splendidly before men. He was jealous of the magnificence of
all kings and emperors, whether living or dead. Even Solomon's
glory was not to typify greater than his. With this end in view, pomp
was his pleasure, ceremony was his gratification. Add to these an
insatiable vanity that knows not the disintegrating assaults of a
sense of humour, and we have a man to be fed on profound adulation.

  [Illustration: DESIGN BY RUBENS]

  [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. DESIGN BY RUBENS

    Royal Collection, Madrid]

The subjects for the _History of the King_ were chosen from official
solemnities during the first twelve years of his reign. Lebrun's task,
into which he threw his whole soul, was to celebrate the power and the
glory of his master, to show the king in perpetual picture as the
greatest living personage, and to still his fears with regard to long
defunct royal rivals. His life as a man was pictured, his marriage,
his treaties with other nations, and his actions as a soldier in the
various battles or military conquests. In the latter affairs he had
not even been present, but poet's license was given where the
glorification of the king was concerned. The flattery that surrounds a
king thus gave him reason to think that his persecutions in the
Palatinate and his constant warfare were greatly to his glory.

It is the tapestry in this set that is called _Visit of Louis XIV to
the Gobelins_ that interests us strongly, as being delightfully
pertinent to our subject. The picture shows the king in chary
indulgence standing just within the court of the Royal Factory, while
eager masters of arts and crafts strenuously heap before him their
masterpieces. (Plate facing page 114.)

The borders of these sumptuous hangings are to be enjoyed when the
original set can be seen, for the borders are Lebrun's special care.
The three pieces added late in the reign are drawn with different
borders, and no stronger example of deteriorating change can be given,
the change in the composition of the border which took place after the
passing of Lebrun. The pieces in the set of the _Life of the King_
numbered forty; with the addition of the later ones, forty-three. They
were repeated many times in the succeeding years, but on low-warp,
reduced in size, and without the superb decorative border which was
composed by Lebrun's own hand for the original series.

François de la Meulen was Lebrun's able coadjutor in the direction of
this famous set. Eight artists accustomed to the work were charged
with the cartoons, but Lebrun headed it all. It is interesting to note
that the temptation to sport in the fields of pure decoration, led him
into the personal composition of the border. These borders are the
very acme of perfection in decoration, full of strength, of grace, and
of purity. They suggest the classic, yet are full of the warm blood of
the hour; they are Greek, yet they are French, and they foreshadow the
centuries of beautiful design which France supplies to the world.

The colouring of these tapestries seems to us strong, but it is not a
strength of tone that offends, rather it adds force to the subject. The
charge is made that in this suite the deplorable change had taken place
which lifted tapestries from their original intent and made of them
paintings in wool. That change certainly did come later, as we shall
see and deplore, but at present the colours kept comparatively low
in number. The proof of this was that only seventy-nine tones were
discoverable when the Gobelins factory in recent years examined this
hanging for the purposes of reproducing it.

  [Illustration: LOUIS XIV VISITING THE GOBELINS FACTORY

    Gobelins Tapestry, Epoch Louis XIV]

Lebrun's task in this series seems to us far more simple in point of
picturesqueness than it did to him, for the affairs of the time were
those depicted. They were the events of the moment, and the personages
taking part in them were given in recognisable portraiture. Figure a
tapestry of to-day depicting the laying of a cornerstone by our
National President, every one in modern dress, every face a portrait,
and Lebrun's task appears in a new light. Yet he was able to
accomplish it in a way which gratified the overfed vanity of Louis and
which more than gratifies the art lover of to-day.

The set called the _History of Alexander_ is one of Lebrun's famous
works. In subject it departs from the affairs of the time of the Sun
King, to portray the Greek Conqueror, to whom Louis liked to be
compared. For us the classic dress is less piquant than the gorgeous
toilettes of France in the Seventeenth Century, and the battle of the
Granicus is less engaging than scenes from the life of Louis XIV. But
this is a famous set, and paintings of the same may be found in the
Louvre.

Originally the tapestries were but five, but the larger ones having
been divided into three each, the number is increased. The Gobelins
factory wove several sets, and, the model becoming popular, it was
copied many times in Brussels and elsewhere, often with distressing
alterations in drawing, in border, and in colour.

There were other suites produced at the Gobelins at this wonderful
time of co-operation between Colbert, the minister, and Lebrun, the
artist. Colbert, in his wisdom of state economy, had repaired the
ravages of the previous ministry, and had the coffers full for the
government's necessities and the king's indulgences. Well for the
liberal arts, that he counted these among the matters to be fostered
in this wonderful time, which rises like a mountain ridge between
feudal savagery and modern civilisation.

But Colbert, powerful as was his position, had yet to suffer by reason
of the despotism of the absolute monarch who ruled every one within
borders of bleeding France. Louis began, before youth had left him,
the terrible persecution of the people in the name of religion, and
established also an indulgent left-hand court. The prodigious
expenditures for these were bound to be liquidated by Colbert.
Faithful to his master, he produced the money.

The charm of royalty surrounded Louis, he was idealised by a people
proud of his position as the most magnificent monarch of Europe; but
Colbert was denounced as a tax collector and a persecutor, yet
suffered in silence, if he might protect his king. Before he died,
Louvois had undermined his credit even with the king, and his funeral
at night, to avoid a mob, was a pathetic fact. France has now
reinstated him, say modern men--but that is the irony of fate.

CHAPTER XI

THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)

Colbert died most inopportunely in 1684 and was succeeded by his
enemy, and for that matter, the enemy of France, the man of jealousy
and cruelty, Louvois. He had long hated Colbert for his success,
counting as an affront to himself Colbert's marvellous establishment
of a navy which he felt rivalled in importance the army, over which
the direction was his own.

On finding Colbert's baton in his hand, it was but human to strike
with it as much as to direct, and one of his blows fell upon the head
of the Gobelins, Lebrun. Thus history is woven into tapestry. Lebrun
was not at once deposed; first his magnificent wings were clipped, so
that his flights into artistic originality were curtailed. This petty
persecution had a benumbing effect. New models were not encouraged.
Strangely enough, the scenes that glorified the king were no longer
reproduced, nor those of antique kings like Alexander, whose greatness
Louis was supposed to rival.

It is not possible to tell the story of tapestry without telling the
story of the times, for the lesser acts are but the result of the
greater. There are matters in the life of Louis XIV that are
inseparable from our account. These are the associating of his life
with that of the three women whom he exalted far higher than his
queen, Marie Thérèse, the well-known, much-vaunted mesdames, de la
Vallière, de Montespan and de Maintenon.

Even before the death of Colbert, Louvois, with his army, had
encouraged the religious persecutions and wars of the king, and
shortly after, the widow of the poet Scarron became the royal spouse.
Relentless, indeed, were the persecutions then. It was in the same
year of the marriage that Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, through
the hand of the weak Le Tellier, an action which gave Louvois ample
excuse for depleting the state coffers. Making military expense an
excuse, he turned his blighting hand toward the Gobelins and
restricted the director, Lebrun, even to denying him the golden
threads so necessary for the production of the sumptuous tapestries.

And so for a time the productions of the looms lacked their accustomed
elegance. Under Madame de Maintenon, the spirit of a morose religion
pervaded the court. All France was suffering under it, and in its name
unbelievable horrors were perpetrated in every province. Paris was not
too well informed of these to interfere with bourgeois life, but at
court the hypocritical soul of Madame de Maintenon made
self-righteousness a virtue.

An almost laughable result of this pious rectitude was a certain order
given at the Gobelins. Madame de Maintenon had thrust her leading nose
between the doors of the factory and had scented outraged modesty in
the reproduction there of the tapestries woven from models of Raphael,
Giulio Romano and the classicists, cartoons in great favour after the
hampering of Lebrun's imagination. The naked gods from Olympus must
be clothed, said this pious and modest lady.

This was very well for her rôle, as her influence over the king lay
deep-rooted in her pose of heavy virtue; but at the Gobelins, the
tapestry-makers must have laughed long and loud at the prudery which
they were set to further by actually weaving pictured garments and
setting them into the hangings where the lithe limbs of Apollo, and
Venus' lovely curves, had been cut away. The hanging called _The
Judgment of Paris_ is one of those altered to suit the refinement of
the times.

Louvois' dominance lasted as long as Lebrun, so the genius of the
latter never reasserted itself in the factory. Two methods of supply
for designs came in vogue, and mark the time. One was to turn to the
old masters of Italy's high Renaissance for drawings. This brought a
quantity of drawings of fables and myths into use, so that palace
walls were decorated with Greek gods instead of modern ones. Raphael,
as a master in decoration, was carefully copied, also other men of his
school. The second source of cartoons was chosen by Louvois, who
searched among previous works for the most celebrated tapestries and
had them copied without change.

Thus came the Gobelins to reproduce hangings that had not originated
in their ateliers. All this traces the change that came from the
clipping of Lebrun's wings of genius. Identification marks they are,
when old tapestries come our way.

Pierre Mignard succeeded Lebrun as director of the Gobelins after the
death of the greatest genius of decoration in modern times. Lebrun
had seen such prosperity of tapestry weaving that eight hundred
workers had scarcely been enough to supply the tapestries ordered.
When Mignard came for his five years of direction, things had mightily
changed, and he did nothing to revive or encourage the work. He owed
his appointment entirely to Louvois, whose protégé he had long been.
The same year, 1691, saw the death of them both.

Until 1688 the factory was at its best time of productiveness,
reaching the perfection of modern drawing in its cartoons, and, in its
weaving, equalling the manner of Brussels in the early Sixteenth
Century.

From then on began the decline, for the reasons so forcibly written on
pages of history. The French king's ambition to conquer, his
animosity--jealousy, if you will--toward Holland, his unceasing
conflict with England, added to his fierce attacks on religionists,
especially in the Palatinate--all these things required the most
stupendous expenditures. The Mississippi was now discovered, the
English colonists were in conflict with the French, here in America,
and the New World was becoming too desirable a possession for Louis to
be willing to cede his share without a struggle; and thus came the
expense of fighting the English in that far land which was at least
thirty days' sail away.

Perhaps Mignard worked against odds too great for even a strong
director. Such drains on the state treasury as were made by the
self-indulgent court, and by the political necessities, demanded not
only depriving the Gobelins of proper expensive materials, but in the
department of furniture and ornaments, demanded also the establishment
of a sinister melting pot, a hungry mouth that devoured the precious
metals already made more precious by the artistic hands of the
gold-working artists.

Mignard's futile work was finished by his demise in 1695. Such was
then the pitiable conditions at the Gobelins that it was not
considered worth while to fill his place. Thus ended the first period
of that beautiful conception, art sustained by the state, artists
relieved from all care except that of expressing beauty.

The ateliers were closed; the weavers had to seek other means of
gaining their living. The busy Gobelins, a very Paradise of workers,
an establishment which felt itself the pride of Paris and the pet of
the king, full of merry apprentices and able masters, this happy
solidarity fell under neglect. The courtyards were lonely; the Bièvre
rippled by unused; the buildings were silent and deserted. Some of the
workers were happy enough to be taken in at Beauvais, some returned to
Flanders, but many were at the miserable necessity of dropping their
loved professions and of joining the royal troops, for which the
relentless ambition of the king had such large and terrible use.

The time when the factory remained inactive were the dolorous years
from 1694 to 1697. It was in the latter year that peace was signed in
the Holland town of Ryswick, which ended at least one of Louis' bloody
oppressions, the fierce attacks in the Palatinate.

The place of Colbert was never filled, so far as the Gobelins was
concerned. Louvois had not its interests in his hard hands, nor had
his immediate followers in state administrations up to 1708, which
included Mansard (of the roofs) and the flippity courtesan, the Duc
d'Antin. But power was later given to Jules Robert de Cotte to raise
the fallen Gobelins by his own wise direction, assisted by his
father's political co-operation (1699-1735). Once again can we smile
in thinking of the factory where the wares of beauty were produced. Of
course, the artists flocked to the centre, eager to express
themselves. The one most interesting to us was Claude Audran. Others
there were who contributed adorable designs and helped build up the
most exquisite expressions of modern art, but, alas, their modesty was
such that their names are scarce known in connexion with the art they
vivified.

The aged Louis was ending his forceful reign in increasing weakness,
deserted at the finish by all but the rigid de Maintenon; and
four-year-old Louis, the grandson of the Grand Dauphin, was succeeding
under the direction of the Regent of Orleans. New monarchs, new
styles, the rule was; for the newly-crowned must have his waves of
flattery curling about the foot of the throne. Louis XIV, the Grand
Monarque, lived to his pose of heavy magnificence even in the
furnishing and decorating of the apartments where he ruled as king and
where he lived as man. Sumptuous splendour, expressed in heavy design,
in deep colouring, with much red and gold, these were the order of the
day, and best expressed the reign.

But with Philip as regent, and the young king but a baby, a gayer mood
must creep into the articles of beauty with which man self-indulgently
decorates his surroundings. Pomp of a heavy sort had no place in the
regent's heart. He saw life lightly, and liked to foster the belief
that a man might make of it a pretty play.

Thus, given so good excuse for a new school of decoration, Claude
Audran snatched up his talented brush and put down his dainty
inspirations with unfaltering delicacy of touch. He wrote upon his
canvas poems in life, symphonies in colour, created a whole world of
tasteful fancy, a world whose entire intent was to please. He left the
heavy ways of pomp and revelled in a world where roses bloom and
ribbons flutter, where clouds are strong to support the svelte deity
upon them, and where the rudest architecture is but an airy trellis.

The classic, the Greek, he never forgot. It was ever his inspiration,
his alphabet with which he wrote the spirit of his composition, but it
was a classic thought played upon with the most talented of
variations. Pure Greek was too cold and chaste for the temper of the
time in which he lived and worked and of which he was the creature;
and so his classic foundation was graced with curves, with colour,
with artful abandon, and all the charming fripperies of one of the
most exquisite periods of decoration. Gods and goddesses were a
necessary part of such compositions, and a continual playing among
amorini, but such deities lived not upon Olympus, nor anywhere outside
France of the Eighteenth Century. The heavy human forms made popular
by the inflation of the Seventeenth Century were banished to some dark
haven reserved for by-gone modes, and these new gods were exquisite
as fairies while voluptuous as courtesans. They were all caught young
and set, while still adolescent and slender, in suitable niches of
delicate surroundings.

The talent of Audran, not content with figures alone, was lavishly
expended on those ingenious decorative designs which formed the frame
and setting of the figures, the airy world in which they lived and in
the borders that confined the whole.

Only a study of tapestries or their photographs can show the radical
depth of the change from the styles prevailing under the influence of
Madame de Maintenon to those produced by Audran and his school under
the regence. The difference in character of the two dominations is the
very evident cause. It is as though the severe moral pose of de
Maintenon had suppressed a whole Pandora's box of loves and graces
who, when the lid was lifted by the Regent, flew, a happy crew, to fix
themselves in dainty decorative effect, trailing with them their
complement of accessory flowers, butterflies, clouds and tempered
grotesques.

Philippe d'Orleans, under the influence of the corrupt cleverness of
Cardinal du Bois, celebrated the few years of his regency by
bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the
time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by
returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's
mate--with war as the natural result of that insult.

But he also let artists have their way, and the style that they
supplied him, shows a talented invention unsurpassed. Audran we will
place at the top, but only to fix a name, for there was a whole army
of men composing the tapestry designs that so delighted the people of
those days and that have gone on thrilling their beholders for two
hundred years, and which distinguish French designs from all
others--which give them that indefinable quality of grace and softness
that we denominate French. Wizards in design were the artists who
developed it and those who continue it in our own times.

CHAPTER XII

THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)

Audran had in his studio André Watteau, whose very name spells
sophisticated pastorals of exceeding loveliness. Watteau worked with
Audran when he was producing his most inspired set of tapestry, on
which we must dwell for a bit for pure pleasure. This set is called
the _Portières des Dieux_.

That they were portières, only door-hangings, is a fact too important
to be slipped by. It denotes one of the greatest changes in tapestries
when the size of a hanging comes down from twenty or thirty feet to
the dimensions of a doorway. It speaks a great change in interiors,
and sets tapestries on a new plane. Later on, they are still further
diminished. But the sadness of noting this change is routed by the
thrills of pleasure given by the exquisite design, colour and weave.

The _Portières of the Gods_ was, then, a series of eight small
hangings, four typifying the seasons and four the elements, with an
appropriate Olympian forming the central point of interest and the
excuse for an entourage of thrilling and graceful versatility. This
set has been copied so many times that even the most expert must fail
in trying to identify the date of reproduction. Two hundred and thirty
times this set is known to have been reproduced, and such talented
weavers were given the task as Jans and Lefebvre.

  [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XV]

In this exquisite period, which might be called the adolescence of
the style Louis XV, Audran and his collaborators produced another
marvellous and inspired set of portières. These were executed for the
Grand Dauphin, to decorate his room in the château at Meudon, and were
called the _Grotesque Months in Bands_. The most self-sufficient of
pens would falter at a description of design so exquisite, which is
arranged in three panels with a deity in each, a composition of
extraordinary grace above and below them, and a bordering band of
losenge or diaper, on which is set the royal double L and the
significant dolphin who gave his name to kings' sons. The exquisite
art of Audran and of the regence cannot be better seen than in this
set of tapestries which was woven but once at the royal factory,
although repeated many times elsewhere with the border altered,
Audran's being too personal for other chambers than that of the prince
for whom it was composed. Recently copies have been made without
border.

The name of the artist, Charles Coypel, must not be overlooked, for it
was he who composed the celebrated suite of _Don Quixote_.
Twenty-eight pieces composed the series, and they were drawn with that
exquisite combination of romantic scenes and fields of pure decorative
design that characterised the charm of the regence. In the centre of
each piece (small pieces compared to those of Louis XIV) was a scene
like a painting representing an incident from the adventure of the
humorously pathetic Spanish wanderer; and this was surrounded with so
much of refined decoration as to make it appear but a medallion on
the whole surface. This set was so important as to be repeated many
times and occupied the factory of the Gobelins from 1718 to 1794.
Charles Coypel was but twenty when he composed the first design for
this suite. Each year thereafter he added a new design, not supplying
the last one until 1751. But, while all honour is due Coypel, Audran
and Le Maire and their collaborators must be remembered as having
composed the borders, the pure decorative work which expresses the
tender style of transition, the suggestive period of early spring that
later matured into the fulsome Rococo. America is enriched by five of
these exquisite pieces through Mr. Morgan's recent purchase.

But while artists were producing purity in art, those in political
power were, with ever-increasing effect, plunging morals into the mud.
Philippe, the Regent, died, the corrupt Duke of Bourbon took the place
of minister, and poor Louis XV was still but thirteen years old, and
unavoidably influenced by the lives of those around him. Even the
Gobelins was under the hand of the shallow Duke d'Antin. Yet even when
the king matured and became himself a power for corruption, the
artists of the Gobelins reflected only beauty and light. It is to
their credit.

It is an ungrateful task to pick flaws with a period so firmly
enthroned in the affections as that of the regence and the early years
of the reign of Louis XV. The beauties of its pure decoration lead us
into Elysian fields that are but reluctantly left behind. But the
designs and tapestry weavers of that time left us two distinct
classes of production, and to be learned in such matters, the amateur
contemplates both. This second style is ungrateful because it trains
us away from art, delicate and ingenious, and plants us before
enormous woven paintings.

Now it never had been the intention of tapestry to replace painting.
Whenever it leaned that way a deterioration was evident. It was by the
lure of this fallacy that Brussels lost her pre-eminence. It was
through this that the number of tones was increased from the twenty or
more of Arras to the twenty thousand of the Gobelins. It was through
this that the true mission of tapestry was lost, which was the mission
of supplying a soft, undulating lining to the habitat of man, and
flashes of colour for his pageants.

Under Louis XIV the pictures came thick and fast, as we have seen, but
in deep-toned, simple colour-scheme. Now, with the De Cottes as
directors at the Gobelins, and with a new reign begun, more pictures
were called for.

The splendid _History of the King_ of Louis XIV could not be
forgotten; the history of his successor must be similarly represented,
and what could this be but a series of woven paintings. The flower of
the time was an exquisitely complicated decoration on a small scale.
The larger expression was not spontaneous.

Louis XV, poor boy, was not old enough to have had many events outside
the nursery, so it took imagination--perhaps that of the elegant
profligate, Duke d'Antin--to suggest an occasion of appropriate
splendour and significance. The official reception of the Turkish
ambassador in 1721 was the subject chosen, and under the direction of
Charles Parrocel became a superb work, full of court magnificence of
the day and a valuable portrayal to us of the boyhood of the king.

The same type of big picture was continued in the series of _Hunts of
Louis XV_, lovely forest scenes wherein much unsportsmanlike elegance
displays itself in the persons of noble courtiers. The Duc d'Antin
favoured these and they were reproduced until 1745.

It is probable that the Bible fell into neglect in those days, too
heavy a volume for pointed, perfumed fingers accustomed to no books at
all. Bossuet, Voltaire, were they not obliged to set to the sonorous
music of their voices the reforming and satirical attacks on manners
and morals of the aristocrats at a time when books lay all unread? But
at the Gobelins ateliers the Bible, wiped clean of dust, was much
consulted for inspiration in cartoons. Charles Coypel dipped into the
Old Testament, and Jouvenet into the New, with the result of several
suites of tapestries of great elegance--all of which might much better
have been painted on canvas and framed.

Charles Coypel, the talented member of a talented family of painters,
also made popular the heroine _Armide_, who seemed almost to come of
the Bible, since Tasso had set her in his Christian _Jerusalem
Delivered_. The seductive palace and entrancing gardens where Renaud
was kept a prisoner, gave opportunity for fine drawing in this set.

  [Illustration: HUNTS OF LOUIS XV

    Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry]

  [Illustration: ESTHER AND AHASUERUS SERIES

    Gobelins, about 1730. Cartoon by J. F. de Troy; G. Audran, weaver]

The Iliad of Homer came in for its share of consideration at the hands
of Antoine and Charles Coypel, who made of it a set of five scenes. It
was Romanelli, the Italian, who painted a similar set, a hundred
years before, for Cardinal Barberini, which set came to America in the
Ffoulke collection. After the death, in 1730, of the Duke d'Antin,
that interesting son of Madame de Montespan, several directors had the
management of the Gobelins in hand, the Count of Vignory and the Count
of Angivillier being the most important prior to the Revolution. These
were men who held the purse-strings of the state, and could thereby
foster or crush a state institution, but the direction of the Gobelins
itself, as a factory, was in the hands of architects, beginning with
the able De Cotte. As the factory had many ateliers, these were each
directed by painters, among whom appear such interesting men of talent
as Oudry, Boucher, Hallé.

Although d'Antin was dead when it commenced, he is accredited with
having inspired and ordered the important hanging known as the
_History of Esther_. (Plate facing page 131.) The first piece, from
cartoons by Jean François de Troy, was sent to the weavers in 1737,
and the last piece, which was painted in Rome, was finished in 1742.
This set shows as ably as any can, the magnificent style of production
of the period. It had from the beginning an immense popularity and was
copied many times. Even now it is a favourite subject for those whose
perverted taste leads them into the dubious art of copying tapestry in
paints on cloth.

The serious accusation against this set, which in composition seems
much like the tableaux in grand opera, is that it invades the art of
painting. And that is the fault of woven art at that period. The
decline in tapestry in Paris began when both weavers and painters
struggled for the same results, the weavers quite forgetting the
strength and beauty that were peculiar to their art alone.

This fault cannot be laid to the weavers only, who numbered such men
as Neilson the able Scot, and Cozette, who, with wondrous touch, wove
the set of _Don Quixote_; nor were the artists at fault, for they
included such men as Audran and Boucher. No, it was the director who
blighted and subverted talent, and the vitiated public taste that
shifted restlessly and demanded novelty. The novelty that came in
large hangings was a suppressing of the delicate subjects that delight
the imagination by their playful grace, their association of human
life with all that is gaily exquisite. The mode was for leaving the
land of idealised mythology, for discarding the flowers, the scrolls,
the happy loves and charming crew that lived among them, and for
plunging into Roman history, real and ugly, enwrapped in drapings too
full, cumbered with forced accessory, or into such mythology as is
represented in _Cupid and Psyche_. (Plate facing page 132.)

The _History of Esther_ illustrates the loss of imagination sustained
by the border which had come to be a mere woven imitation, in shades
of brown and yellow, of a carved and gilded, wooden frame. At the
close of the reign of Louis XV, borders were frankly abandoned
altogether. Compare this state of things with the days when Audran and
Coypel were producing the sets of _The Seasons_, _The Months_, and
_Don Quixote_. It is aridness compared to talented invention.

  [Illustration: CUPID AND PSYCHE

    Gobelins Tapestry. Eighteenth Century. Design by Coypel]

  [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE OF RUSSIA

    Gobelins under Louis XVI.]

The top note of the imitation of painting was struck when the Gobelins
set the task of becoming a portrait maker. (Plate facing page 133.)
The work was done, it was bound to be, as royalty backed the demand.
Portraits were woven of Louis XV (to be seen now at Versailles), and
his queen, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and others less well
known. A better scheme for limiting the talent of the weaver could not
have been suggested by his most ingenious enemy. He was a man of
talent or his art had not reached so high, and as such must be
untrammelled; but here was given him a work where personal discretion
was not allowed, where he must copy tone for tone, shade by shade, the
myriad indefinite blendings of the brush.

It is this practice, pursued to its end, that has made of the tapestry
weaver a mere part of a machine, and tapestry-making a lost art, to
remain in obscurity until weavers return to the time before the French
decadence.

The temper of those who hold in their hands the direction of the
people, these are the determining causes of the products of that age.
If d'Angivillier was responsible for displacing a transcendent art
with a false one, if he routed a dainty mythology and its accessories
with the heavy effort and paraphernalia of the Romans, on whom shall
we place the entirely supportable responsibility of diminishing
tapestries from noble draperies down to mere furniture coverings?

The result came happily, with much fluttering of fans, dropping of
handkerchiefs, with powder, patches, intrigues, naughty sports, and a
general necessity for a gay company to divide itself into groups of
four or two--a lady and a cavalier, forsooth--the inevitable man and
maid. In the time of the preceding king, Louis XIV, the court lived in
masses. Life was a pageant, a grand one, moving in slow dignity of
gorgeous crowds, but a pageant on which beat the fierce light of a
throne jealous of its grandeur. No chance was here for sweet escape
and no chance for light communing.

But all that saw a change. The needs of the lighter court and the
lighter people, were for reminders that life is a merry dance in which
partners change often, and sitting-out a figure with one of them is
part of the game.

Perhaps the huge apartments were not to the taste of Regent Philippe,
and certainly they were not convenient to the life of the king when he
came to man's estate. So, down came the ceiling's height, and closer
drew the walls, until the model of the Petit Trianon was reached and
considered the ideal--if that were not indeed the miniature Swiss
Cottage.

What place had an acre of tapestry in these little rooms? How could
yards of undulating colour hang over walls that were already overlaid
with the most exquisite low relief in wood that has ever been carved
this side of the Renaissance in Italy? No place for it whatever. So,
out with it--the fashions have changed.

But there was the furniture. That, too, was smaller than hitherto. But
this was the day of artists skilled in small design, and they must
fill the need.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)

And so it came about that tapestry fell from the walls, shrunk like a
pricked balloon and landed in miniature on chairs, sofas and screens.

How felt the artists about this domesticating of their art? We are not
told of the wry face they made when, with ideals in their souls, they
were set to compose chair-seats for the Pompadour. Her preference was
for Boucher. Perhaps his revenge showed itself by treating the
bourgeoise courtisane to a bit of coarseness now and then, slyly hid
in dainties.

The artist, Louis Tessier, appeased himself by composing for furniture
a design of simple bouquets of flowers thrown on a damask background;
but, with such surety of hand, such elegance, are these ornaments
designed and composed, that he who but runs past them must feel the
power of their exquisite beauty.

In this manufacture of small pieces the Gobelins factory unhappily put
itself on the same footing as Beauvais and much confusion of the
products has since resulted. The dignity of the art was lowered when
the size and purpose of tapestries were reduced to mere furniture
coverings. The age of Louis XV, looked at decoratively, was an age of
miniature, and the reign that followed was the same. When small
chambers came into vogue, furniture diminished to suit them, and not
only were walls too small for tapestries to hang on, but chairs, sofas
and screens offered less space than ever before for woven designs, now
preciously fine in quality and minutiæ.

Tapestry weaving now entered the region of fancy-work for the
drawing-room's idle hour, and we see even the king himself, lounging
idly among his favourite companions, working at a tiny loom, his
latest pretty toy. Compare this trifling with the attitude of Henri IV
and Louis XIV toward tapestry weaving, and we have the situation in a
nutshell.

Louis XV passed from the scene, likewise the charming bits of
immorality who danced through his reign. However much we may
disapprove their manner of life, we are ever glad that their taste
sanctioned--more than that--urged, the production of a decorative
style almost unsurpassed. To the artists belong the glory, but times
were such that an artist must die of suppression if those in power
refuse to patronise his art. So we are glad that Antoinette Poisson
appreciated art, and that Jeanne Verbernier made of it a serious
consideration, for, what was liked by La Pompadour and Du Barry must
needs be favoured by the king.

When Louis XVI came to the throne, the return to antiquity for
inspiration had already begun, but did not fully develop until later
on, when David became court painter under Napoleon. Yet the tonic note
of decoration was classic. Designs were still small and details were
from Greek inspiration. As tapestries were still but furniture
coverings, this was not to be regretted, for nothing could be
better suited to small spaces, nor could drawing be more exquisitely
pure and chaste than when copied from Greek detail.

  [Illustration: CHAIR OF TAPESTRY. STYLE OF LOUIS XV]

  [Illustration: GOBELINS TAPESTRY (DETAIL) CRAMOISÉE. STYLE LOUIS XV]

Count d'Angivillier kept the Gobelins factory from all originality,
sanctioned only the small wares for original work, and forced a
slavish copying of paintings for the larger pieces. It is not deniable
that some beautiful hangings were produced, but the sad result is that
pieces of so many tones lose in value year by year, through the
gentle, inexorable touch of time; and, more deplorable yet, the
ambition and the originality of the master-weavers was deprived of its
very life-blood, and in time was utterly atrophied.

In the time of Louis XVI, when Marie Antoinette was in the flower of
her inconsiderate elegance, the note of the day was for art to be
small, but perfect; the worth of a work of art was determined by its
size--in inverse ratio. It was a time lively and intellectual and
frivolous, and its art was the reflection of its desire for
concentrated completeness.

In the reign of Louis XVI ripened, not the art of Louis XIV, but the
political situation whose seeds he had planted. The idea of revolution
which started in the little-considered American colonies, took hold of
the thinkers of France, even to the king of little power. But instead
of being a theory of remedy for important men to discuss, it acted as
a fire-brand thrown among the inflammable, long-oppressed Third
Estate--with results deplorable to the art which occupies our
attention.

The Gobelins was already suffering at the début of the Revolution.
Its management had been relegated to men more or less incapable; its
art standards had been forced lower and lower. Added to that its
operatives were engaged at lessened rates and often had to whistle for
their pay at that. The contractors asked for nothing better than to be
engaged as masters of ateliers at fixed rates.

Then came the full force of the Revolution with such deplorable and
tragic results for the Gobelins. In the madness of the time the
workers here were not exempt from the terrible call of Robespierre.
The almoner of the factory was arrested, and at the end of two months
not even a record existed of his execution, which took place among the
daily feasts of La Guillotine. A high-warp weaver named Mangelschot
met the same fate. Jean Audran, once contractor for high-warp, then
placed at the head of the factory, was arrested, but escaped with
imprisonment only.

During his absence he was replaced as head by Augustin Belle, whose
respect for the Republic and for his head made him curry favour with
the mob in a manner most deplorable. He caused the destruction by fire
of many and many a superb tapestry at the Gobelins, giving as his
reason that they contained emblems of royalty, reminders of the hated
race of kings. The amateur can almost weep in thinking of this
ruthless waste of beauty.

It was a celebrated bonfire that was built in the courtyard of the
Gobelins when, by order of the Committee on Selection, all things
offensive to an over-sensitive republican irritability were heaped for
the holocaust. As the Gobelins was instituted by a king, patronised by
kings, its works made in the main for palaces and pageants after the
taste of kings, it was only too easy to find tapestries meet for a
fire that had as object the destruction of articles displaying
monarchical power.

During the four horrid years when terror reigned, the workers at the
Gobelins continued under a constant threat of a cessation of work. Not
only was their pay irregular, but it was often given in paper that had
sadly depreciated in value. Then the decision was made to sell certain
valuable tapestries and pay expenses from this source of revenue. But,
alas, in those troublous times, who had heart or purse to acquire
works of art. A whole skin and food to sustain it, were the serious
objects of life.

Under the Directory, funds were scarce in bleeding France, and all
sorts of ways were used to raise them. In the past times when Louis
XIV had by relentless extravagance and wars depleted the purse, he
caused the patiently wrought precious metals to be melted into
bullion. Why not now resort to a similar method? So thought a minister
of one of the Two Chambers, and suggested the burning of certain
tapestries of the royal collection in order that the gold and silver
used in their weaving might be converted into metal.

Sixty pieces, the most superb specimens of a king's collection, were
transported to the court of La Monnaie, and there burned to the last
thread the wondrous work of hundreds of talented artists and artisans.
The very smoke must have rolled out in pictures. The money gained was
considerable, 60,000 livres, showing how richly endowed with metal
threads were these sumptuous hangings. The commission sitting by,
judicial, dispassionate, presided with cold dignity over the
sacrifice, and pronounced it good.

A hundred workers only remained at the Gobelins which had once been a
happy hive of more than eight times that number, and these were
constrained to follow orders most objectionable and restrictive.
Models to copy were chosen by a jury of art, and such were its
prejudices that but little of interest remained. Ancient religious
suites, and royal ones were disapproved. New orders consisted of
portraits. But if we thought it a prostitution of the art to weave
portraits of Louis XV in royal costume, or Marie Antoinette in the
loveliness of her queenly fripperies, what can be said of the low
estate of a factory which must give out a portrait of Marat or
Lepelletier, even though the great David painted the design to be
copied. The hundred men at the Gobelins must have worked but sadly and
desultorily over such scant and distasteful commissioning.

There were works upon the looms when the Commission began inspecting
the works of art to see if they were proper stuff for the newly-made
Republic to nurse upon. In September, 1794, they found and condemned
twelve large pieces on the looms unfinished, and on which work was
immediately suspended. Of three hundred and twenty-one models
examined, which were the property of the factory, one hundred and
twenty were rejected. In fact, only twenty were designated as truly
fit for production, not falling under the epithets "anti-republican,
fanatic or insufficient." The latter description was applied to all
those exquisite fantasies of art that make the periods Louis XV and
Louis XVI a source of transcendent delight to the lover of dainty
intellectual design, and include particularly the work of Boucher.

The mental and moral workings of the commission on art may be tested
by quoting from their own findings on the _Siege of Calais_, a hanging
by Berthélemy, depicting an event of the Fourteenth Century. This is
what the temper of the times induced the Commission--among whom were
artists too--to say: "Subject regarded as contrary to republican
ideas; the pardon accorded to the people of Calais was given by a
tyrant through the tears and supplications of the queen and child of a
despot. Rejected. In consequence the tapestry will be arrested in its
execution."

The models allowed in this benumbing period were those of hunting
scenes, and antique groups such as the _Muses_, or scenes from the
life of Achilles.

A vicious system of pay was added to the vicious system of art
restriction. And so fell the Gobelins, to revive in such small manner
as was accorded it in the Nineteenth Century.

Its great work was done. It had lifted up an art which through
inflation or barrenness Brussels had let train on the ground like a
fallen flag, and it had given to France the glory of acquiring the
highest period of perfection.

To France came the inspiration of gathering the industry under the
paternal care of the government, of relieving it from the exigencies
of private enterprise which must of necessity fluctuate, of keeping
the art in dignified prosperity, and of devoting to its uses the
highest talent of both art and industry.

The Revolution and the Directory both hesitated to kill an institution
that had brought such glory to France, that had placed her above all
the world in tapestry producing. But what deliberate intent did not
accomplish, came near being a fact through scant rations. Operators at
the Gobelins were irregularly paid, and the public purse found onerous
the burden of support.

But with the coming of Napoleon the personal note was struck again. A
man was at the head, a man whose ambition invaded even the field of
decoration. The Emperor would not be in the least degree inferior in
splendour to the most magnificent of the hereditary kings of France.
The Gobelins had been their glory, it should add to his.

Louis David was the painter of the court, he whose head was ever
turned over his shoulder toward ancient Greece and Rome, who not only
preferred that source of inspiration, but who realised the flattery
implied to the Emperor by using the designs of the countries he had
conquered. It was a graceful reminder of the trophies of war.

So David not only painted Josephine as a lady of Pompeii elongated on
a Greek lounge, but he set the classic style for the Gobelins factory
when Napoleon gave to the looms his imperial patronage. It was David
who had found favour with Revolutionary France by his untiring efforts
to produce a style differing fundamentally from the style of kings,
when kings and their ways were unpopular. Technical exactness, with
classic motives, characterises his decorative work for the Gobelins.

The Emperor was hot for throne-room fittings that spoke only of
himself and of the empire he had built. David made the designs,
beautiful, chaste, as his invention ever was, and dotted them with the
inevitable bees and eagles. Percier, the artist, helped with the
painting, but the throne itself was David's and shows his talent in
the floating Victory of the back and the conventionalised wreaths of
the seat. The whole set, important enough to mention, embraced eight
arm chairs and six smaller ones, besides two dozen classic seats of a
kingly pattern, and screens for fire and draughts, all with a red
background on which was woven in gold the pattern of wreaths and
branches of laurel and oak.

The Emperor made the Gobelins his especial care. He committed it to
the discretion of no one, but was himself the director, and allowed no
loom to set up its patterns unsanctioned by his order. Even his
campaigns left this order operative. Is it to his credit as a genius,
or his discredit as a tyrant, that the chiefs of the Gobelins had to
follow him almost into battle to get permission to weave a new
hanging?

Portraits were woven--but let us not dwell on that. That portraits
were woven at the Gobelins (portraits as such, not the resemblance of
one figure out of a mass to some great personage) brings ever a sigh
of regret. It is like the evidence of senility in some grand statesman
who has outlived his vigour. It is like the portrait of your friend
done in butter, or the White House at Washington done in a paste of
destroyed banknotes. In other words, there is no excuse for it while
paint and canvas exist.

Napoleon's own portrait was made in full length twice, and in bust ten
times. The Empress was pictured at full length and in bust, and the
young King of Rome came in for one portrait. The summit of bad art
seemed reached when it was proposed to copy in wool a painting of
portrait busts, carved in marble. This work was happily unfinished
when the empire gave place to the next form of government.

It is unthinkable that Napoleon would not want his reign glorified in
manner like to that of hereditary kings with pictured episodes, the
conquests of his life, dramatic, superb. David the court painter,
supplied his canvas _Napoleon Crossing the Alps_, and others followed.
Copying paintings was the order at the Gobelins, remember, and that
kind of work was done with infinite skill. Numbers of grand scenes
were planned, some set up on the looms, but the great part were not
done at all. Napoleon's triumph was full but brief; the years of his
reign were few. He interrupted work on large hangings by his
impatience to have the throne-room furniture ready for the reception
of Europe's kings and ambassadors. And when the time came that another
man received in that room, the big series of hangings which were to
picture his reign, even as the _Life of the King_ pictured that of
Louis XIV, were scarcely begun.

CHAPTER XIV

BEAUVAIS

Another name to conjure with, after Gobelins is Beauvais. In general
it means to us squares of beautiful foliage,--foliage graceful,
acceptably coloured, and of a pre-Raphaelite neatness. But it is not
limited to that class of work, nor yet to the chair-coverings for
which the factory of Beauvais is so justly celebrated. This factory
has woven even the magnificent series of Raphael, the designs without
which the Sistine Chapel was considered incomplete. But this is
anticipating, and an inquiry into how these things came about is a
pleasure too great to miss.

The factory at Beauvais was founded by Colbert, under Louis XIV, in
1664. In that respect it resembles the Gobelins factory, but there
existed an enormous difference which had to do with the entire fate of
the enterprise. The Gobelins was founded for the king; Beauvais was
founded for commerce. The Gobelins was royally conceived as a source
of supply for palaces and châteaux of royalty and royalty's friends.
Beauvais was intended to supply with tapestry any persons who cared to
buy them, to the end that profit (if profit there were) should be to
the good of the country.

So the factory was founded at Beauvais as being convenient to Paris,
although it was not known as a place where the industry had
flourished hitherto, notwithstanding the old tapestries still in the
cathedral which are accorded a local origin in the first half of the
Sixteenth Century. And the king granted it letters patent, and large
sums of money to start the enterprise, which had to be given a
building, and men to manage it and to work therein, and materials to
work with, in fact, the duplicate in less degree of the appropriations
for the Gobelins, except that the furniture department was omitted.

The idea was practically the same as that in the mind of the paternal
Henri IV when he united the scattered factories with royal interest
and patronage, but with always the large end in view of benefiting his
people financially, as well as in the province of art. With our modern
republican views we can criticise the disinterestedness of a monarch
who maintains a factory at enormous public expense exclusively for the
indulgence of kings.

And yet, it seems impossible to make both an artistic and commercial
success of a tapestry factory--at least this is the conclusion to
which one is forced in a study of the Beauvais factory.

Louis Hinart was the man appointed to construct the buildings and to
stock them, and the royal appropriation therefor, was 60,000 livres.
He was to engage a hundred workers for the first year, more to be
added; and special prizes were temptingly offered for workmen coming
from other countries, and to the contractor for each tapestry sold for
exportation.

  [Illustration: HENRI IV BEFORE PARIS

    Beauvais Tapestry, Seventeenth Century. Design by Vincent]

  [Illustration: HENRI IV AND GABRIELLE D'ESTRÉES

    Design by Vincent]

Thus was trade to be encouraged, and the venture put on its feet
commercially. But alas, the factory was not a success. Tapestries were
woven, hundreds of them, and they delight us now wherever we can find
them, whether low warp or high, whether large pieces with figures or
smaller pieces almost entirely verdure of an entrancing kind. But the
orders for large hangings, the heavy patronage from outside France,
was of the imagination only, and the verdures for home consumption did
not meet the expenses of the factory. After twenty years of struggle,
Hinart was completely ruined and ceded the direction of the factory to
a Fleming of Tournai, Philip Béhagle. As most of the workers were
Flemish, this was probably not disagreeable to them.

Béhagle, more energetic than Hinart, with a gift for initiative, set
the high-warp looms to work with extraordinary activity. As though he
would rival the great Gobelins itself, he reproduced the most
ambitious of pieces, the Raphael series, _Acts of the Apostles_, and a
long list of ponderous groups wherein oversized gods disport
themselves in a heavy setting of architecture and voluminous
draperies. He also produced some contemporary battle scenes which are
now in the royal collection of Sweden.

Not content with copying, Béhagle set up a school of design in the
factory, realising that the base of all decorative art was design. Le
Pape was the artist set over it. From this grew many of the lovely
smaller patterns which have made the factory famous. Its garlands have
ever been inspired, and its work on borders is of exquisite conception
and execution.

It is considered a great fact in the history of the factory that the
king paid it a visit in 1686; that he paraded and rested his important
person under the shade of the living verdure in its garden. But it
seems more to the point that Béhagle made for it a success both
artistic and commercial, and this continued as long as he had breath.

Also was it a feather in his cap that at the time when the Gobelins
factory was sighing and dying for lack of funds, the provincial
factory of Beauvais not only remained prosperous, but opened its doors
to many of the starving operatives from the Gobelins ateliers, thus
saving them from the horrid fate of joining the Dragonades, as some of
their fellows had done.

But the followers of the able Béhagle had not his capability. After
his twenty years of prosperity the factory languished under the
direction of his widow and sons, and that of the brothers Filleul, and
Micou, up to the time when the Regent Philip was fumbling the reigns
of government, and when everything but scepticism and Les Precieuses
was sinking into feeble disintegration. The factory became a financial
failure from which the regent had not power to lift it.

Again we see the name of the son of Madame de Montespan, the Duke
d'Antin, who was at this time director of buildings for the crown and
in this capacity had the power of choosing the directors of both the
Gobelins and Beauvais. The place of director at Beauvais was empty;
d'Antin must have the credit of filling it wisely with the painter
Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we
are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high
place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais
from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to its most brilliant
flowering.

  [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]

  [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI

    Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]

It is only as the history of a factory touches us that we are
interested in its changes. The result of Oudry's direction is one that
we see so frequently in a small way that it is agreeable to recognise
its cause. Oudry was pre-eminently a painter of animals. Add to this
the tendency to draw cartoons in suites and the demand for furniture
coverings, and at once we have the _raison d'être_ of the design seen
over and over again nowadays on old tapestried chairs, the designs
picturing the _Fables of La Fontaine_. These were the especial work of
Oudry who composed them, who put into them his best work as animal
painter, and who set them on the looms of Beauvais many times.

They had a success immediate. They became the fashion of the day, and
the pride of the factory. If the artist had drawn with inspiration,
the weavers copied with a fidelity little short of talent. So it is
not surprising that a set of sofa and chairs on which these tapestries
are displayed brings now an average of a thousand dollars a piece,
even though the furniture frames are not excessively rich.

Beauvais set the fashion for this suite, but as success has imitators
who hope for success, many factories both in and out of France copied
this series. How shall we know the true from the false? By that sixth
sense that has its origin in a taste at once instinctive and
cultivated.

Oudry drew hangings for the small panelled spaces of the walls, to
accompany this set of _Fables_. He also painted scenes from Molière's
comedies, which at least show him master of the human figure as well
as of the lines of animals.

We are now, it must be remembered, in the time of Louis XV, the time
of beautiful gaiety and light sarcasm, of epigramme, and miniature,
and of all that declared itself _multum in parvo_. Therefore it was
that even wall-hangings were reduced in size and polished, so to
speak, to a perfection most admirable. Paintings were copied, actually
copied, on the looms, but however much the fact may be deplored that
tapestry had wandered far from its original days of grand simplicity,
it were unjust not to recognise the exquisite perfection of the manner
in vogue in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, and of the
perfection of the craftsman.

The pieces of Beauvais that are accessible to us are indeed charming
to live with, especially the verdures of Oudry on which he left the
trace of his talent, never omitting the characteristic fox or dog, or
ducks, or pheasants that give vital interest to a peep into the
enchanted woodland. At the same time the factory of Aubusson, and
looms in Flanders, were throwing upon the market a quantity of
verdures, of which the amateur must beware. Oudry verdures or outdoor
scenes are but few in model, and beautifully woven.

  [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XIV]

In the prosperity of Beauvais, ambition carried Oudry into a gay
rivalry with the Gobelins. Charles Coypel had gained fame by a set of
hangings in which scenes were taken from Don Quixote. Oudry asked
himself why he should not rival them at Beauvais. The result was a
similar series, but composed by Charles Natoire, the artist who had
drawn a set of _Antony and Cleopatra_ for the Gobelins. The same idea
extended to the furniture coverings which ran to this design as well
as to the _Fables_. Thus originated a set familiar to those of us
nowadays who covet and who buy the rare old bits that the niggard hand
of the past accords to the seeker after the ancient.

Exquisite indeed are the hangings by the great interpreter of the
spirit of his time, François Boucher. His designs broke from the limit
of the Gobelins, and were woven at Beauvais with the care and skill
required for proper interpretation of his land of mythology. Such
flushed skies of light, such clean, soft trees waving against them and
such human elegance and beauty grouped beneath, have seldom been
reproduced in tapestry, and almost make one wonder if, after all, the
weavers of the Eighteenth Century were not right in copying a finished
painting rather than in interpreting a decorative cartoon. But such
thoughts border on heresy and schism; away with them.

Casanova, Leprince, and a host of others are tacked onto the list of
artists who painted models. We can no longer call them cartoons, so
changed is the mode for Beauvais. But Oudry and Boucher are
pre-eminent.

To the former, who was director as well as artist, is attributed the
fame of the factory and the resulting commercial success. The factory
had a house for selling its wares under the very nose of the Gobelins;
had another in the enemy's country, Leipzig. And kings were the
patrons of these, as we know through the royal collections in Italy,
and Stockholm, where the King of Sweden was an important collector.

It was in 1755 that Beauvais found itself without the support of its
leaders. Both Oudry and his partner in business matters, Besnier, had
died. And we are well on toward the time when kingly support was a
feeble and uncertain quantity. The factory lacked the inspiration and
patronage to continue its importance.

In a few years more fell the blight of the Revolution. The factory was
closed.

It re-opened again under new conditions, but its brilliant period was
past. Will the conditions recur that can again elevate to its former
state of perfection this factory that has given such keen delight,
whose ancient works are so prized by the amateur? It has given us
thrilling examples of the highly developed taste of tapestry weaving
of the Eighteenth Century, it has left us lovable designs in
miniature. We repulse the thought that these things are all of the
past. The factory still lives. Will not the Twentieth Century see a
restoration of its former prestige?

If it were only for the reproduction of the sets of furniture of the
style known as Louis XVI, the Beauvais loom would have sufficient
reason for existing at the present day. Scenes from Don Quixote,
however, and the pictured fables of La Fontaine which we see on old
chairs, seem to need age to ripen them. These sets, when made new,
shown in all the freshness and unsoiled colour, and unworn wool, and
unfaded silk do not give pleasure.

  [Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY]

  [Illustration: CHAIR COVERING

    Beauvais Tapestry. First Empire]

But the familiar garlands and scrolls adapted from the Greek, that
were woven for the court of Marie Antoinette, these are ever old and
ever new, like all things vital. On a background of solid colour, pale
and tawny, is curved the foliated scroll to reach the length of a
sofa, and with this is associated garlands or sprays of flowers that
any flower-lover would worship. Nothing more graceful nor more
tasteful could be conceived, and by such work is the Beauvais factory
best known, and on such lines might it well continue.

CHAPTER XV

AUBUSSON

Perhaps because of certain old and elegant carpets lying under-foot in
the glow and shadows of old drawing-rooms that we love, the name of
Aubusson is one of interesting meaning. And yet history of tapestry
weaving at Aubusson lacks the importance that gilds the Gobelins and
Beauvais.

It just escaped that _sine qua non_, the dower of a king's favour. But
let us be chronological, and not anticipate.

If antiquity is the thing, Aubusson claims it. There is in the town
this interesting tradition that when the invincible Charles Martel
beat the enemies of Christianity and hammered out the word peace with
his sword-blade, a lot of the subdued Saracens from Spain remained in
the neighbourhood. It was at Poitiers in 732 that the final blow was
given to show the hordes of North Africa that while a part of Spain
might be theirs, they must stop below the Pyrenees.

When swords are put by, the empty hand turns to its accustomed crafts
of peace. Poitiers is a weary journey from Africa if the land ways are
hostile, and all to be traversed afoot. Rather than return, the
conquered Saracens stayed, so runs the legend of Aubusson, and quite
naturally fell into their home-craft of weaving. They had a pretty
gift indeed to bestow, for at that time, as in ages before, the
world's best fabrics came from the luxurious East. And so the
Saracens, defeated at Poitiers by Charles Martel, wandered to nearby
Aubusson, wove their cloths and gave the town the chance to set its
earliest looms at a date far back in the past.

The centuries went on, however, without much left in the way of
history-fabric or woven fabric until we approach the time when
tapestry-history begins all over France, like sparse flowers glowing
here and there in the early spring wood.

When the Great Louis, with Colbert at his sumptuous side, was by way
of patronising magnificently those arts which contributed to his own
splendour, he set his all-seeing eye upon Aubusson, and thought to
make it a royal factory.

He was far from establishing it--that was more than accomplished
already, not so much by the legendary Saracens as by the busy populace
who had as early as 1637 as many as two thousand workers. Going back a
little farther we find a record of four tapestries woven there for
Rheims.

It was, perhaps, this very prosperity, this ability to stand alone
that made Louis and Colbert think it worth while to patronise the
works at Aubusson. But it must be said that at this time (1664) the
factory was deteriorating. Tapestry works are as sensitive as the
veriest exotic, and without the proper conditions fail and fade. The
wrong matter here was primarily the cartoons, which were of the