Tapestries

In the latter 14th century, important tapestry workshops were established in the duchy of Burgundy, which included Flanders, and northern France. The driving forces behind this productivity were four brothers: Charles V, king of France, and the dukes of Burgundy, Berry, and Anjou. Their commissions supported numerous tapestry weavers, especially in Arras, Tournai, and Brussels. By the 16th century, Brussels had become one of the most important tapestry centers of Europe, along with other cities in Flanders such as Bruges, Ghent, and Lille. In addition to producing tapestries, some of these workshops trained foreigners in the craft. The English weavers who managed the famous Sheldon workshops established in England in the 1560s were taught in Flanders. Italy had tapestry workshops established under the auspices of various city-states, those of Florence, Milan, and Ferrara the most significant. Many tapestry commissions required months, if not years, of labor. These luxurious wall decorations, also serving as insulation from cold and damp, often were created in a series of a dozen or more pieces. Single tapestries in the series sometimes were as high as 15 feet and as long as 30 feet. Entire galleries of royal residences had tapestries in series covering the walls, providing visual entertainment, warmth, and prestige.

Artists designed the tapestries by drawing sketches for the patron; secular imagery, especially that involving classical mythology, was almost as popular as sacred imagery. Once the sketches were approved, the designs were converted into full-scale cartoons. Weaving the tapestry was a painstaking process because the weaver had to keep checking the cartoon being copied. There are isolated examples of tapestries commissioned to reproduce wall paintings, the most notable of which is the series created circa 1540 that copied the frescoes in the Gallery of Francis I at Fontainebleau (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Many tapestry designs, of course, reflected the styles of famous painters, some of whom themselves created the designs. Because tapestries were portable, they were carried from one residence to another, and they also were used for ceremonial purposes. Tapestries commissioned by Pope Leo X (1475-1521) and designed by Raphael (woven in Brussels, 1515-19) covered the walls of the Sistine Chapel on special occasions. Italian Renaissance art, particularly individualized figural forms and linear perspective, had a significant impact on 16th-century Flemish tapestry design. Because tapestries were woven from luxurious fabrics, including finely spun wool, silk, and sometimes gold or silver thread, and because the process was quite time-consuming, tapestries were among the most costly and desirable art objects of the Renaissance. King Henry VIII owned more than 2,000 of them. (See Ceremonies, pages 299-302 in chapter 12, for more information on tapestries.)

Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe

3.6 The Last Supper. Tapestry designed by Bernaert van Orley, probably woven in Flanders by Pieter de Pannemaker, before 1530. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 [1975.1.1915])