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All of these workers, from director down to apprenticed lad, were bound by the guild to do or not do, according to its infinite code, to the end that the art of tapestry-making be held to the highest standards. The laws of the guilds make interesting reading. The guild prevailed all over Europe and regulated all crafts.
Add to this, tapestries were the fashion. Every man of wealth and importance felt them a necessary chattel to his elegance. And add to this, too, that Mortlake had almost a clean field. It was nearly without rival in fine tapestry-making at that time. Brussels had declined, and the Gobelins was not formed in its inspired combination.
The former Bishop's Palace, dating from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, is now the Palace of Justice. The present episcopal residence is immediately to the north of the Cathedral and is modern. As a tapestry-making centre Beauvais ranks with the famous Gobelin Manufactory at Paris.
Sully, standing at the elbow of Henri IV of France, called James I of England the wisest fool in Europe. A part of his wisdom was the encouraging in his own kingdom the royal craft of tapestry-making. To this end he followed the example set by that grand Henri of Navarre, and gave the crown's aid to establish and maintain works for tapestry production.
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.
However it is, theirs is to us a simple time of primitive emotion and romance, and the tapestries they have left us encourage the whim. The time of Gothic perfection in tapestry-making is included in the few years lying between 1475 and 1520. Life was at that time getting less difficult, and art had time to develop.
The exquisite portrait of the beautiful Empress Eugénie by this delectable court painter has a delicacy and grace that is all unhurt by contrast with more modern schools of painting. But fancy the texture of the lovely flesh copied in the medium of woven threads, no matter how delicately dyed and skilfully wrought. Painting is one art, tapestry-making is entirely another.
The Walloon provinces had been less severely tried, and the coal industry, as well as the foundries, in the Meuse valley soon recovered their former activity. Tapestry-making was also resumed in Oudenarde and Brussels, copper-working in Malines, dyeing in Antwerp and linen-weaving in the Flemish country districts.
It is an ancient art, as the work of craftsmen goes, and more than one writer who has studied deeply the fascinating intricacies of haute and basse lisse, of colour, texture, design, and what not, has not hesitated to proclaim the city as having been the grandest centre of tapestry-making which the world has ever known; and regret can but be universal that it came to an end when its citizens were put to the sword by Louis XI.
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