Goya achieved an immediate success. Time after time his cartoons were reproduced by the Spanish weavers. The King, pleased at the distinction with which the artist invested his Court, spent enormous sums upon tapestries, and encouraged his household to do the same. In the four years from 1776 to 1780 the sum of 817,956 _reales_ was expended at the Court on the purchase of tapestries and cartoons. Other well-known artists contributed cartoons to the Madrid workshops, among whom we find the names of Van Loo, Conrado, Giaquinto, Mengs, Jose de Castillo, Antonio Gonzalez, Mariano Nani, Andres Gines, Antonio Barbaza, and Jose de Salas. The French invasion caused the closing down of the workshops of Santa Barbara in 1808. Some years later they were reopened by the son of St. Ferdinand’s weaver, and once again beautiful fabrics were woven from the designs of Goya. The death of Ferdinand VII in 1833 gave a severe blow to the industry, but there are still looms in Santa Barbara where exquisite tapestries are executed under the direction of a descendant of Jacques Van der Goten. CHAPTER II THE FOUNDATION OF THE SPANISH ROYAL COLLECTION In order to understand how the finest collection of Renaissance tapestries in the world came to be in the royal palace at Madrid, it is necessary to know something of the complicated history of the Netherlands during the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the Flemish tapestry weaving industry was at the height of its reputation. During the earlier decades of the fifteenth century the Dukes of Burgundy were employed in the consolidation of their power by the acquisition of province after province in the Low Countries. By 1443 these territories included, in addition to the French duchy of Burgundy, Flanders, Artois, Namur, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Brabant, Limbourg, and the duchy of Luxembourg, and Burgundy had to be reckoned with as a great European power. The Court of Philip the Good was, indeed, the most luxurious in Europe, enriched with the finest paintings, the rarest books, and the most beautiful tapestries. Charles the Bold added Liége and Gelderland to the territories inherited from his father. On his death in 1477, Burgundy, Franche Comté, and Artois reverted to France. The rest of Charles’s dominions passed to his daughter Mary, who married Maximilian of Austria. On Maximilian’s election as Emperor, he made his son, Philip the Handsome, ruler of the Netherlands. The marriage of Philip with Joanna of Aragon secured to their son Charles the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. On Charles’s election as Emperor in 1519, in succession to his grandfather Maximilian, he united the sovereignties of Spain and of the Netherlands.