14th Century Tapestries

There is a large gap in our knowledge of tapestry; we possess only examples from the last quarter of the 14th century. At this date the art was largely diffused throughout Europe, each district with its own style and characteristics. Large studios flourished in Paris and Arras; more modest ones were active at Tournai; small workshops blossomed sporadically in Brabant, Hainault, Flanders, and neighbouring places. In Switzerland and Germany, groups of artisans produced strips and small panels for the local clientele. Within the space of a hundred and fifty years, the art of tapestry had changed almost out of recognition.

It is easy to explain how techniques of tapestry reached the Franco-Flemish countries. Never had travel been as extensive as in the Middle Ages. Emperors and popes, princes and knights, priests, pilgrims, merchants, strolling players and stone carvers were always on the move; and no doubt were the tapestry weavers and their looms. It is harder to realise why anyone thought of transforming the occasional work of artisans in to an industry, backed by a powerful financial organisation, and of adapting what had originally been intended as religious decoration to a flourishing secular industry. In early princely inventories ‘tappiz de haulte lisse’ are only cursorily mentioned; but later more frequently. The vast halls of castles were decorated with ever larger and more luxurious tapestry wall hangings; tapestries served as screens to keep out the cold and wind. They then invaded the bedroom as canopies, and were spread out on benches and draped over chair backs, finally becoming themselves veritable ‘rooms’. So indispensable were these tapestry wall hangings that they accompanied their owners on journeys, and even went to war with them. Wear and tear in these circumstances was considerable, and they had to be renewed at considerable cost. These practical applications explain in part the favour they enjoyed, but they also had considerable prestige value. To own a tapestry was a sign of wealth, grandeur and power; and on public occasions, they were displayed ostentatiously as evidence of their owner’s social importance.

Nor were the church content with a few exiguous tapestry wall hangings; their walls were covered, and their naves partitioned, with tapestries. Dimensions increased, the spinning mills poured out their ‘fins filz’, the carpenter constructed their looms, the weavers their warps – in a vast boom, which revealed its peak at the end of the 15th century. In the early years of the 14th century Mahaut, Countess of Artois, was already buying tapestries as fast as she could. In Paris (where the ‘tapissiers de haulte lisse’ had formed a competitive corporation in 1302) she began her purchases in 1308: in 1313 she was buying in Arras; and in Paris, in 1315 she acquired a panel ‘a bestelets’, consisting of animals woven probably on a decorated background. According to contemporary documents a subject much sought after was the heraldic design or medallion.

Only towards the middle of the 14th century did tapestry wall hangings have more common complex designs, telling true stories in instalments as it were, each panel comprising a chapter, each series a complete tale, with its gallant precepts. Sometimes they were very long, like Les Enfans de Renaud de Montauban. In the third quarter of the 14th century this type of story became firmly established. Charles V of France, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (from 1384 also Count of Flanders), Louis of Anjou and Jean de Berry were at that time the great patrons of the Parisian weavers; Nicholas Bataille (active c.1368-1400), Pierre de Beaumetz (active c. 1382-1412), and Jacques Dourdin (active c. 1380-1407). Competition then started from Arras: Vincent Boursette (died1376) Huart Walois, Colart d’ Auxcy, Michael Bernard and Jehan Cosset. They were known as weavers, but were in fact ‘employers of weavers’. The Boursettes and the Walois were prominent citizens of Arras; Nicolas Bataille was varlet de chambre to the Duke of Anjou, and it would be hard to imagine them working at their looms.

The few surviving works of the 14th century are among the largest in the history of tapestry. Of the Apocalypse of St John only two thirds remain (it was begun for Louis of Anjou between 1375 and 1377 in the workshops of the Bataille). The preparation was long and detailed. The designer, Jehan de Bondolpf or de Bandol, known as Hennequin de Bruges (hence a Fleming), consulted illuminated manuscripts of the Apocalypse before undertaking the work. He is supposed to have gained little from them, because they could not convey the monumental mural sense, the length and breadth of a great wall surface. Yet the fact that they were consulted proves that tapestry was never (not even at that period) entirely free from the influence of the other arts, painting in particular. Moreover these links were reciprocal: if the rhythm, gesture, cadence, and graphic forms of these arts were transmitted to tapestry, they returned to their sources renewed and transmute. These many influences are bound up with those from other domains, from literature for example, so closely related to ‘courtly art’. To this rightly belongs the series of the Nine Heroes with the arms of Jean de Berry (fragments in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Woven about 1390, a little later than the Apocalypse, but probably by the same hand, it is not by the same designer and reveals a different inspiration – not so elevated, perhaps and therefore more allied to its period, and above all to the search for a chivalrous and romantic ideal, as it then existed in the various courts. In the Nine Heroes the heroes of the ancient and modern history and of the mythology live together on an Olympus of Gothic splendour, from which the hardness of the contemporary life cannot be entirely excluded. They are surrounded by the international language of cathedral spires, with backgrounds having the appearance of stained glass and weapons chiselled like reliquaries. Such elegant subjects were addressed to the addressed to the powerful and fortunate of that world, to a cavalier society in decline; yet they were destined still to be treated artistically in works of art created later in France, Flanders, Burgundy, and Savoy.

Les Tre Riches Heures (now at Chantilly) contains a miniature painted by the Limbourgs showing Jean de Berry at a banquet wearing an elaborate velvet costume trimmed with beaver, against a background borrowed from a tapestry wall hanging depicting the feats of Begue de Belin – an undulating line of lances, helmets horses, and warriors set in a landscape of gently rolling green hills. These subjects may have accounted for the popularity of tapestry wall hangings; purchasers may have identified themselves unconsciously and somewhat in aptly, with these heroes, their adventures and their conquests. Philip the Bold immediately commemorated the battle of Roosebeke, where Charles VI of France and Louis de Maele suppressed the Flemish revolt, with a tapestry which was woven in Arras by Michel Bernard. This exquisite work of art in wool, silk and gold thread was more than three hundred yards square. Charles VI did likewise when, in a tapestry by Jacques Dourdin and Nicolas Bataille, he commemorated the accolade bestowed on his brother the Duke of Orleans and his cousin Louis II of Anjou. This work ‘toute de imagerye d’ or’, was known as the Joutes St Denis. In these tapestry wall hangings, that have not survived, the present must have seemed to join hands with an idealised past. We know that when the English won the battle of Agincourt and took Paris, the beautiful tapestries of Charles VI were looted.

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