European Tapestry Production and Patronage 1400–1600
wealthy patrons could commission designs whose subjects embodied celebratory or propagandistic themes. Enriched with silk and gilt metallic thread, such tapestries were a central component of the ostentatious magnificence used by powerful secular and religious rulers to broadcast their wealth and might
from early 14th century A.C an industry capable of producing high quality large tapestries took roots in northern france and southern Netherlands (Belgium)
This development was stimulated by:
the availability of skilled weavers and dyers
by the existence of local guilds that supported and encouraged the development of this nascent industry
by the commissions of local patrons
By the mid-fifteenth century, (1450 A.D) numerous tapestry workshops existed in the low countries in towns such as:
From these centers, tapestries were exported throughout Europe
During the last quarter of the 1475 d.C high-quality Netherlandish production was increasingly dominated by the workshops in Brussels.
This was the result of three factors:
the decline of the industry in Arras and Tournai;
the emergence of Brussels as the principal seat of the Burgundian court in the Netherlands
the monopoly that the Brussels artists’ Guild of Saint Luke secured in 1476 over the fabrication of figurative tapestry cartoons
The Battle with the Sagittary and the Conference at Achilles' Tent (from Scenes from the Story of the Trojan War) ca. 1470–90
The conservative tendency to make extremely rich in details tapestries was challenged by a set of ten tapestries traditionally known as the Acts of the Apostles (1516–21) that was commissioned by Papa leone X in 1515 designed by raffaello sanzio
The first Netherlandish painter whose tapestry designs reflect an informed response to the aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance was Bernaert van Orley, during the 1520s
The Last Supper ca. 1525–28- Bernaert Van Orley
He forged a style that combined elements of the Netherlandish tradition, such as:
multiple narrative and complex anecdotal, decorative, and landscape detail (attention to details)
with the italian traditions
the visualization of each scene as a realistic presentation of a moment of physical or emotional drama embodied by lifesize figures acting in clearly defined perspectival settings
During the second quarter of the sixteenth century,(1525-1550 A.D) we find technical and artistic achievements. A number of smaller enterprises were set up elsewhere in Europe.
The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (from the Unicorn Tapestries)1495–1505
there were workshops established by Ercole II d’Este in Ferrara in 1536 where designs by dosso dossi and Giulio Romano, among others, were produced.
In 1539, a workshop was also established in Mantova by Federigo Gonzaga
A number of the weavers involved in these workshops subsequently relocated to Florence when Cosimo I de' Medici established two workshops in 1545.
Although the workshops in Mantua and Ferrara were defunct by, respectively, 1563 and 1582, the Florence workshops continued
Religious persecution had cast its shadow over the Netherlandish industry from the late 1520s
During the 1530s and 1540s, increasing numbers of Flemish weavers relocated to towns in the Germanic states that were more tolerant of their beliefs
The number of migrants was to increase dramatically during the late 1560s as Philip II of Spain sought to repress the reform movement in the Netherlands.
With the arrival of the Duke of Alba and his army in 1568 and the institution of the Council of Troubles, this exodus turned into a flood as weavers migration emigrated to more tolerant regions in the northern Netherlands (Holland), the Germanic states, France, and England
Although production did continue during the late sixteenth century, the tapestries made during this era are of much lower quality
new centers of importance emerged in:
Flemish weavers were eventually lured across Europe, and this transfer of skill led to the success of the Gobelins factory in Paris that finally stole Flanders’s crown in the late 1700s
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