The Spanish Royal Tapestries

THE term tapestry is often applied to any hangings of mediæval workmanship whether woven on a frame or not. This use of the word is incorrect. Tapestry is a fabric woven with coloured wools on to warp threads in a loom or frame, in which the weft completely conceals the warp. It is woven all in one piece. This distinguishes it from embroidery or other needlework to which stitches are added after the groundwork of the fabric has been detached from the frame. The worker weaves directly from a design or cartoon which is supplied to him.

Tapestry frames are of two kinds. In the first the warp threads are arranged in a perpendicular frame, and the weaver sits before his work. This is known as high-warp (haute lisse) weaving, and is the method in use at the celebrated manufactory at Gobelins in France. In the other method the warp threads are stretched horizontally, and the weaver must bend over his work. This is known as low-warp (basse lisse) weaving, and is the process followed at Beauvais. On the whole the high warp weaving gives a fabric of firmer and finer texture.

The rest of the process is precisely similar. The weft threads of different colours, each attached to a separate bobbin or shuttle, are passed alternately behind and in front of the warp threads, leaving a little dot of colour behind. The second thread will, of course, take up the warp thread the first has passed over, and pass in front of that which the first one has passed behind. The two threads are then pushed together with a comb until they fall into one straight line. The warp is now completely concealed.

Tapestry weaving is an art that stands alone. Like furniture, tapestry was of utilitarian origin, and cannot, therefore, be judged by the standards applied to painting and the purely decorative arts. As originally used in ancient buildings, it was hung some feet from the walls to serve as a draught screen, or was suspended between pillars to shut off one apartment from another. It was generally hung, therefore, in undulating folds, the stiff panels and upholsteries of later workmanship being a spurious growth.

The decorative value of such hangings was, of course, seized on at once by the wealthy, who alone could afford them, and from the earliest times tapestries became things of beauty. But in estimating their artistic value we have to remember their original use. A tapestry curtain woven with a symmetrical central design would appear quite distorted when pushed aside by some one entering a room. Central unity, therefore, the great merit of painting, is in tapestry artistically bad. The designs that are most suitable are duplicated or repeated designs, with a crowded background. These will secure a certain uniformity in the suspended fabric. For this reason, therefore, such panels as Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles, though fine specimens of pictorial art, are, as tapestries, artistically faulty, beautiful though they are when considered merely as works of art.

Its first utilitarian purpose being fulfilled, tapestry becomes a decorative art designed only to please and rest the eye. Tragic subjects, therefore, such as the Descent from the Cross and the Passion of Our Lord, are unsuitable, though they constantly tempted the mediæval tapissier. Much finer are those works that depict stirring historical scenes, the Triumphs of Cæsar or the Conquest of Tunis, or those which deal with light mythological subjects with their pleasantly crowded backgrounds of fruit, flowers, and cupids. Dull and sombre colourings are also bad. The richest dyes, enriched with metallic threads of gold and silver, should glow against the background of the cold stone pillars. All these æsthetic rules, however, were constantly violated by the mediæval artificers, who could not rid themselves of the idea that art in any form should be didactic, and subserve the purposes of the Church and morality.

Tapestry weaving is certainly one of the most ancient of all the arts. Fragments have been left behind by all the early civilizations to bear witness to their skill. The art was practised by the early Egyptians, the Babylonians, Chinese, and Peruvians, while the Greeks and Romans brought it to a high state of perfection. It is noticeable that from the very beginning the texture of the fabric has scarcely altered, while the modern tapestry looms are but the natural development of the primitive frames used by the ancient Egyptians.

The earliest specimen of weaving that has been discovered was found in one of the Swiss lake dwellings, and can only be a relic of the later Stone Age. Fragments somewhat similar have come to light in stone coffins found in Yorkshire, while at Thornton, near Kolding, in Jutland, whole costumes have been discovered that must have belonged to the Age of Bronze.

The first historic references to the art come to us from early Egypt. Here the weavers were probably women. The Beni Hassan wall-paintings, which date from about 1600 B.C., depict weavers squatting at horizontal low-warp frames. There are three fragments of this early tapestry preserved in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Cairo. Their uniformly fine workmanship proves that the weaving of tapestries had been carried to a high degree of excellence in the reign of Thothmes III. The texture of the fabric is very fine, and the pattern is identical on both sides. Some elasticity of pattern has been achieved by the occasional slackening of warp threads. This points to a loom where the threads were weighted, but not fastened to a cylinder.