The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages, 3rd ed.: Including Some Notices of the Ancient Historical TapestriesMenzies, Sutherland, active 1840-1883
History
The Art of Needle-work, from the Earliest Ages, 3rd ed.: Including Some Notices of the Ancient Historical Tapestries
Menzies, Sutherland, active 1840-1883
Needlework; Tapestry
25. Justice. In this subject the figures of Religion,
Charity, and Justice are seen above the papal armorial
bearings. The last figure gives name to the whole.
When the cartoons were finished they were sent into Flanders to be
woven (at the famous manufactory at Arras) under the superintendence
of Barnard Van Orlay of Brussels, and Michael Coxis, artists who had
been for some years pupils of Raphael at Rome. Two sets were executed
with the utmost care and cost, but the death of Raphael, the murder of
the Pope, and subsequent intestine troubles seem to have delayed their
appropriation. They cost seventy thousand crowns, a sum which is said
to have been defrayed by Francis the First of France, in consideration
of Leo's having canonised St. Francis of Paola, the founder of the
Minims.
Adrian the Second was a man "alienissimo da ogni bell'arte;" an
indifference which may account for the cartoons not being sent with
the tapestries to Rome, though some accounts say that the debt for
their manufacture remained unliquidated, and that the paintings were
kept in Flanders as security for it. They were carried away by the
Spanish army in 1526-7 during the sack of Rome, but were restored by
the zeal and spirit of Montmorenci the French general, as set forth in
the woven borders of the tapestries Nos. 6 and 9. Pope Paul the Fourth
(1555) first introduced them to the gaze of the public by exhibiting
them before the Basilica of St. Peter on the festival of Corpus
Domini, and also at the solemn "function of Beatification." This use
of them was continued through part of the last century, and is now
resumed.
In 1798 they were taken by the French from Rome and sold to a Jew at
Leghorn, and one of them was burnt by him in order to extract the gold
with which they were richly interwoven; but happily they did not
furnish so much spoil as the speculator hoped, and this devastation
was arrested. The one that was destroyed represented Christ's Descent
into Limbus; the rest were repurchased for one thousand three hundred
crowns, and restored to the Vatican in 1814.
We have alluded to two sets of these tapestries, and it is believed
that there were two; whether _exactly_ counterparts has not been
ascertained. We have traced the migrations of one set. The other was,
according to some authorities, presented by Pope Leo the Tenth to our
Henry the Eighth; whilst others say that our king purchased it from
the state of Venice. It was hung in the Banqueting House of
Whitehall, and after the unhappy execution of Charles the First, was
put up, amongst other royal properties, to sale. Being purchased by
the Spanish ambassador, it became the property of the house of Alva,
and within a few years back was sold by the head of that illustrious
house to Mr. Tupper, our consul in Spain, and by him sent back to this
country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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