Book I., Canto iv.

Agnes Sorel owned a superb specimen at her _Château de Beauté_ in 1350. It is described as “a large piece of Arras, on which are pictured the deeds and battles of Judas Maccabaeus and Antiochus, and stretches from one of the gables of the gallery of Beauté to the other, and is the same height as the said gallery.”

During the troublous times in France under Charles VI, the Paris looms ceased to work, and Flanders supplied all the tapestry that came to France. In 1395, the Duke of Orleans orders his treasurer to deliver to Jaquet Dordin, “merchant and bourgeois of Paris,” 1,800 francs for “three pieces of high-warp tapestry of fine Arras thread.”

Leather was also extensively used during the Middle Ages for interior decoration: it was hung upon the walls and beds; it was spread upon the floors; and it covered the seats and backs of chairs, coffers, cabinets, shelves, folding stools, frames, frames for mirrors, and all kinds of boxes both large and small. In 1420, we hear of a piece of Cordovan called _cuirace vermeil_ “to put on the floor around a bed,” and also a “chamber hanging” of “silvered _cuir de mouton_, ornamented with red figures.” Charles V of France had “fifteen _cuirs d’Arragon_ to put on the floor in summer,” and the Duke of Burgundy’s inventory of 1427 mentions “leathers to spread in the chamber in summer time.”

The Duke of Berry had twenty-nine great _cuirs_ among his possessions, which were used to cover the walls, beds and chairs.

Leather made a very sumptuous, durable and decorative wall-hanging. The patterns of flowers, foliage, arms, devices and other figures were richly gilded, and stood out in high relief from the brilliant backgrounds of red, blue, green, orange, violet, brown or silver. Although the use of gilded leather (_cuirs dorés_) did not become general until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the art of gilding, silvering, painting and goffering leather had long been known. It is more than probable that the First Crusaders brought home specimens; but it is certain that Cordova was making beautiful gilded leathers in the eleventh century. The most beautiful, as well as the most beautifully worked, leathers came from Spain, where they were often called _Guadameciles_, from Ghadames in Africa where they were prepared for many years, and from which town the Moors carried the art into Cordova. Ebn’ Abd el Noûr el Hamîri el Toûnsi (of Tunis), in his geographical work written in the twelfth century, thinks it worth while to mention that the _djild el Ghadâmosi_ comes from Ghadames. The monk, Theophilus, in his _Diversarum artium Schedula_ shows how well Arabian leather was known, and describes the methods of preparing it for decoration; but from what he says it appears that leather was used at that period only for the coverings of chairs, stalls, benches, stools, etc., and not for wall-hangings.

From Cordova the manufacture spread into Portugal, Italy, France and Brabant. The great centres for gilded leathers in the Middle Ages were Cordova, Lille, Brussels, Liège, Antwerp, Mechlin and Venice; and each town impressed a special style upon its productions, which _connoisseurs_ are able to recognize.

The Cordovan leathers are stamped with patterns of very high relief, gilded and painted, the designs consisting of branches or large flowers in the style of the textiles of Damascus and India. The South Kensington Museum has a very fine collection of Spanish leathers ornamented with foliage, flowers, vases, birds and pomegranates. The colours of the background are green, blue, white, gold, red, etc.

The Flemish leathers are very similar to those of Cordova, but the relief is less pronounced and the designs are more delicate. The hangings of Flanders are almost exclusively made of calfskin, and they were highly prized throughout Europe.

Generally speaking, the earliest specimens of gilded leathers resemble on a large scale the miniatures in the manuscripts: there is little or no perspective, and the subjects are like those of the contemporary tapestry drawn from sacred or mythological stories. The details of the faces, ornaments, costumes, arms, etc., are stamped by hand-work and finished with a brush; and the background, instead of representing sky, is ornamented by guilloches (twisted bands) in gold and colour, applied by means of a goffering iron.

The Low Countries were almost as celebrated for their _orfèvrerie_ as for their tapestries. Celebrated schools of goldsmith’s work existed in the Netherlands during the tenth and eleventh centuries in Waulsort under the direction of d’Erembert, in Stavelot and in Maestricht; and the diocese of Liège had an important _atelier_ for enamel-work in the twelfth century. A very skilful goldsmith named Godefroid de Clerc worked in the town of Huy in the first half of the thirteenth century, and another was Friar Hugo, who made in the Abbaye d’Oignies the famous pieces now in the treasury of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Namur.

The principal towns of Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, Tournay, Liège and Brussels, possessed in the thirteenth century skilful goldsmiths who followed the principles of the School of the Rhine. In 1266, the Brussels goldsmiths formed an important Corporation to which John III, Count of Hainault, granted privileges. It was in the fourteenth century particularly that the Flemish goldsmiths acquired a great reputation.

A great deal of the goldsmith’s work during these centuries was ornamented with _niello_, the style of decoration following the Rhenish School.

The goldsmiths were sculptors, chisellers and engravers, as well as designers; and, moreover, modelled beautifully in wax. When their works were cast in silver, they ornamented these themselves with beaten bas-reliefs, or traced delicate patterns upon the surface of the metal with the burin. Wishing to make the figures stand out more prominently, they used cross-hatchings on the background and cut out the shadowy parts, which they then filled with black enamel. This made the uncovered portions of the silver shine with more brilliancy. To this effective work was given the name _niello_ (_nigellum_), on account of its colour. This black enamel was used to ornament the chalices and other church vessels, the hilts of swords, handles of knives, and particularly the handsome little coffers, or cabinets, which, with the _bahut_, comprised the furniture that the bride always carried to her new home. These little boxes were usually of ebony, ornamented more or less with incrustations of ivory, shell, mother-of-pearl, _pietra-dura_, or _niello_, according to the wealth of the respective families. When decorated with _niello_, the designs consisted of simple ornaments or arabesques, single figures or groups.

Western Europe made no glass in Mediaeval days: what was used in church and castle all came from the East. In the early inventories, whenever an object of coloured glass is found, it is always accompanied by a mention of its Oriental origin. It is doubtful whether even plain glass was manufactured in England, France, Germany or the Netherlands before the close of the Crusades. The efforts made as late as the fourteenth century by several French and German princes to attract glass-blowers to their dominions shows how scarce they were.

In 1338, we find a feudal noble giving a portion of his forest to a certain Guionet, who was acquainted with the methods of glass-making, to set up a glass factory, on condition of supplying his house every year with one hundred dozen bell glasses, twelve dozen little vase-shaped glasses, twenty dozen hanaps, or cups with feet, twelve amphorae, and other objects. As in all the other industrial arts, Flanders was well to the fore in the manufacture of plain glass. Before 1400, glass factories existed there; but the products were only white glass, not gilded nor enamelled. The Flemish wares, however, were highly prized, and were freely exported to other countries. In 1379, we find in the inventory of Charles V of France: “_Ung gobelet et une aiguière de voirre blant de Flandres garni d’argent_.”

To have glass mounted in silver shows how precious it was considered in those days. Moreover, the royal accounts of the end of the fourteenth century prove that Charles VI accorded high protection and recompense to the Flemish glass-blowers who established their industry in France. Before the end of the fifteenth century, we find entries that would seem to show that the Low Countries were no longer exclusively dependent on the Orient for coloured and enamelled glass. In the inventory of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1477), we read: “_Une coupe de voirre jaune garny d’or; ... une couppe de voirre vert garny d’or; ... un pot de voirre de couleur vert, garny d’or; ... un aiguière de voirre vert torssé garny d’or; ... deux petis pots de voirre bleu espez, garnis d’argent doré; ... ung voirre taillé d’un esgle, d’un griffon et d’une double couronne garny d’argent_.” These, however, may have come from Venice, which city had in the latter half of the fifteenth century learned from the Greeks the secret of making coloured, gilded and enamelled glass.

Painting on glass was never held in higher honour than during the fifteenth century: castles and mansions were adorned with coloured windows like the churches; and, therefore, a considerable number of windows of this period have survived. The Cathedrals of Tournay, Dietz and Antwerp offer splendid examples. In M. Levy’s _Histoire de la peinture sur verre_, are the names of several Flemish glass-painters that have escaped oblivion.

The principal schools that fostered all forms of Decorative Art were the Guilds of St. Luke. They sprang up in every prosperous city, and were very close corporations of trades unionism. The idea probably originated in Italy. A Society of St. Luke was established in Venice before 1290, and another in Florence in 1349. One Gerard de Groote organized a brotherhood of this kind in Cologne in the fourteenth century; and Societies of St. Luke were founded in Flanders in the fifteenth century. These Guilds exerted the greatest influence upon taste and skill, for in these Societies of Guilds of St. Luke, side by side with the Masters of Painting and Sculpture, were placed what we may call the Masters of the Decorative Arts. There were workers in stone and marble including mosaics in colour for the decoration of churches and chapels; workers in enamel and ceramics for vases, panelling and pavements; workers in wood, sculptors and carvers for the altar fronts, canopies, choir stalls, etc. (these _menuisiers_ also worked in marquetry and _intarsie_, and produced furniture for the sacristy, coffers, _bahuts_, etc., and pontifical seats); glass-workers who produced windows, panels and embroideries with glass beads for decoration; metalworkers, including goldsmiths, bronze-workers, who made sacred vessels, luminaries, fonts ornamented with _repoussé_-work, chiselling, engraving, incrustation with precious stones and _niello-niellure_; leather-workers (including makers of harness for wars and tourneys); gilders, setters of jewels; bookbinders; illuminators and painters of manuscripts; weavers and embroiderers of tapestries, silken stuffs, etc.

Society benefited by development of these arts very greatly, and the sumptuous adornment of the churches soon extended to private dwellings. Carved panels, or panels inlaid with precious woods, soon decorated the walls of wealthy houses that were further enriched by magnificent tissues of silk and gold, tapestries or panels of stamped leather as a background for pictures beautifully framed in carved and gilt wood. In marquetry furniture, the most remarkable objects were the coffers for jewels, and the cabinets (_stipi_), in ebony, shell and ivory, embellished with gilt, bronze, and the dower chests, “_arches de mariage_.”