Editing Tapestry (section)

==Subjects and style==
[[File:The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries; Boar and Bear Hunt - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|700px|'' Boar and Bear Hunt'', one of the [[Devonshire Hunting Tapestries]], 1430–1450, V&A. 380 x 1020 cm, weight 50 kg. ]]
The new style of grand tapestries that were large and often in sets mostly showed subjects with large numbers of figures representing narrative subjects.  The [[iconography]] of a high proportion of narrative tapestries goes back to written sources, the [[Bible]] and [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]'' being two popular choices.

It is a feature of tapestry weaving, in contrast to painting, that weaving an area of the work containing only relatively plain areas of the composition, such as sky, grass or water, still involves a relatively large amount of slow and skilled work.  This, together with the client's expectation of an effect of overpowering magnificence, and the remoteness of the main centres from Italian influence, led to northern compositions remaining crammed with figures and other details long after classicizing trends in [[Italian Renaissance painting]] had reduced the crowding in paintings.

An important challenge to the northern style was the arrival in Brussels, probably in 1516, of the [[Raphael Cartoons]] for the pope's [[Sistine Chapel]] commission of a grand set depicting the [[Acts of the Apostles]]. These were sent from Rome and used the latest monumental classicizing [[High Renaissance]] style, which was also reaching the north through prints.

===Hunting===
Hunting scenes were also very popular.  These were usually given no specific setting, although sometimes the commissioner and other figures might be given portraits.  The four [[Devonshire Hunting Tapestries]] (1430–1450, V&A), probably made in Arras, are perhaps the largest set of 15th-century survivals, showing the hunting of bears, boars, deer, swans, otters, and falconry.  Very fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen stroll around beside the slaughter. [[Hunting of Birds with a Hawk and a Bow|Another set]], from after 1515, show a similar late-medieval style, although partly made with silk, so extra-expensive.

But the twelve pieces in ''[[Les Chasses de Maximilien]]'' (1530s, Louvre), made in Brussels for a Habsburg patron, show an advanced Renaissance compositional style adapted to tapestries.  These have a hunting scene for each month in the year, and also show specific locations around the city.  Goya was still designing hunting scenes in the 1770s.

===Military===
[[File:Fall of Tangier.jpg|thumb|''Fall of [[Tangier]]'', one of the [[Pastrana Tapestries]] (1470s), recording the victories of [[Afonso V of Portugal]] about a decade earlier. Woven in [[Tournai]]]] 
After a probable gap since the 11th century, in the late 14th century sets of tapestries returned as the grandest medium for "official [[military art]]", usually celebrating the victories of the person commissioning them.<ref>Pepper</ref> [[Philip the Bold]] commissioned a ''Battle of Roosbeke'' set two years after [[Battle of Roosbeke|his victory in 1382]], which was five metres high and totalled over 41 metres in width.  [[John of Gaunt]], [[Duke of Lancaster]] insisted it was changed when Philip displayed it at a diplomatic meeting in [[Calais]] in 1393 to negotiate a peace treaty; Gaunt regarded the subject-matter as inappropriate for the occasion.<ref>Campbell and Ainsworth, 16</ref>   The Portuguese [[Pastrana Tapestries]] (1470s) were an early example, and a rare survival from so early.  
[[File:La Bataille de Zama Jules Romain 1688 1690.jpg|thumb|''[[Battle of Zama]]'' (202 BC), from a set of the life of [[Scipio Africanus]], Gobelins copy of c. 1688, after designs by [[Giulio Romano (painter)|Giulio Romano]] and [[Francesco Penni]] for a set destroyed in the French Revolution]]

Many sets were produced of the lives of classical heroes that included many battle scenes. Not only the [[Trojan War]], [[Alexander the Great]], [[Julius Caesar]] and [[Constantine I]] were commemorated, but also less likely figures such as [[Cyrus the Great]] of ancient [[Persia]].

There were many 15th-century sets of contemporary wars, especially celebrating Habsburg victories. Charles V commissioned a large set after his decisive victory at the [[Battle of Pavia]] in 1525; a set is now in the [[Museo di Capodimonte]] in Naples.  When he led an expedition to North Africa, culminating in the [[Conquest of Tunis (1535)|Conquest of Tunis in 1535]] (no more lasting than that of [[Tangier]] depicted in the Pastrana tapestries), he took the Flemish artist [[Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen]] with him, mainly to produce drawings for the set of tapestries ordered on his return.

Contemporary military subjects became rather less popular as many 16th-century wars became religious, sometimes allegorical subjects were chosen to cover these.  But the [[Battle of Lepanto]] was commemorated with a Brussels set, and the defeat of the [[Spanish Armada]] with the [[Armada Tapestries]] (1591); these were made in [[Delft]], by a team who also made many tapestries of Dutch naval victories.  The Armada set were destroyed in the [[Burning of Parliament]] in 1834, but are known from prints.  Both sets adopted a high and distant aerial view, which continued in many later sets of land battles, often combined with a few large figures in the foreground.  The French tapestries commissioned by Louis XIV of the victories early in his reign were of this type.  Right at the end of the 16th century, a set (now in Madrid) was commissioned of the ''Triumphs and battles of [[Albert VII, Archduke of Austria|Archduke Albert]]'', who had just been made sovereign of the [[Spanish Netherlands]] (his military career had in fact been rather unsuccessful). The city council of [[Antwerp]] ordered it from the workshop of Maarten Reymbouts the Younger in Brussels, to be first seen on the occasion of his [[Royal entry]] to Antwerp in late 1599.

A set produced for [[John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough]] showing his victories was varied for different clients, and even sold to one of his opponents, [[Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria]], after reworking the generals' faces and other details.<ref>* Pepper; [http://www.britishbattles.com/spanish-succession/battle-blenheim.htm 1704 Battle of Blenheim depicted in tapestry at Blenheim Palace]</ref>

===Millefleur style===
[[File:(Toulouse) Mon seul désir (La Dame à la licorne) - Musée de Cluny Paris.jpg|thumb|360px|''The Lady and the Unicorn'': ''À mon seul désir'' ([[Musée national du Moyen Âge]], Paris). Probably Brussels, c. 1500.]]
[[Millefleur]] (or millefleurs) was a background style of many different small flowers and plants, usually shown on a green ground, as though growing in grass.  Often various animals are added, usually all at about the same size, so that a rabbit or dove and a [[unicorn]] are not much different in size.<ref>[[:File:Arazzo millefiori Pistoia parte centrale.jpg|Example made in Pistoia in Italy]]</ref>  Trees are usually far too small and out of scale with the flowers around them, a feature also generally found in medieval painting.

The millefleur style was used for a range of different subjects from about 1400 to 1550, but mainly between about 1480 and 1520.  In many subjects the millefleur background stretches to the top of the tapestry, eliminating any sky; the minimization of sky was already a feature of tapestry style; the [[Devonshire Hunting Tapestries]] show an early stage of the style.    Prominent millefleur backgrounds, as opposed to those mostly covered with figures, are especially a feature of allegorical and courtly subjects.  ''[[The Lady and the Unicorn]]'' set in Paris are famous examples, from around 1500.<ref>Osborne, 757</ref>

Millefleur backgrounds became very common for heraldic tapestries, which were one of the most popular relatively small types, usually more tall than wide.  These usually featured the coat of arms of the patron in the centre, with a wide floral field.  They would often be hung behind the patron when he sat in state or dined, and were made for many nobles who could not afford the huge narrative sets bought by royalty.  [[Enghien]] was a smaller weaving centre that seems to have specialized in these.<ref name="Osborne, 759"/>  Earlier types of heraldic tapestries had often repeated elements of the heraldry in patterns.

===Landscape===
[[File:Hunt of Maximilian, September, Louvre.jpg|thumb|"September", from ''[[Les Chasses de Maximilien]]'', 1531]]
After about 1520 the top workshops moved away from millefleur settings towards naturalistic landscape, with all the elements sized at a consistent perspective scale. Tapestries whose main content was landscape and animals are known as verdure subjects (from the French for "greenery").  This genre has suffered more than most from colour changes as the greens of tapestries are especially prone to fade, or turn to blues.  Smaller tapestries of this type remained popular until the 18th century, and had the advantage that workshops could make them without a specific order, and distribute them across Europe via a network of dealers.  From about 1600 they followed the wider trends in European [[landscape painting]] and prints.  [[Oudenarde]] specialized in these, but they were produced in many towns.<ref name="Osborne, 759"/>  As with paintings, the addition of a figure or two could elevate such pieces to a depiction of a story from [[classical mythology]], or a hunting subject.

===Arrival of Renaissance style and subjects===
Tapestry weavers in the Netherlands had become very comfortable working with the [[Gothic art|Gothic style]] by the late 15th century, and were slow to reflect the stylistic changes of the [[Italian Renaissance]]; perhaps pressure from the customers for tapestries led the way.  [[Old master print|Prints]] enabled Italian designs to be seen in the north.

A distinctive Italian subject was the [[Petrarch]]an ''triumph'', derived from his poem-cycle ''[[I trionfi]]'' (before 1374).  The first recorded tapestries were a three piece set ordered by Duke [[Philip the Bold]] of Burgundy from Paris in 1399. A set made in the 1450s for [[Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici|Giovanni de' Medici]], a leading patron of the latest Florentine style, used cartoons sent from Italy to the Netherlandish weavers.  But the subjects suited the tapestry weavers style, as most designs included packed crowds of elaborately-dressed figures, and there were moral messages to be drawn.<ref>Campbell and Ainsworth, 151</ref>