The delight in perfected detail belonging to the Italian school of artists resulted in an arrangement of _grotesques_. Who knows that the goldsmith's trade was not responsible for these tiny fantastics, as so many artists began as apprentices to workers in gold and silver? This evidence of talented invention must be observed, for it set the fashion for many a later tapestry, notably the _Grotesque Months_ of the Seventeenth Century. Mingled with verdure and fruit, it is seen in work of the Eighteenth Century. But in its original expression is it the most talented. There we find that intellectual plan of design, that building of a perfect whole from a subtle combination of absolutely irreconcilable and even fabulous objects. Yet all is done with such beguiling art that both mind and eye are piqued and pleased with the impossible blending of realism and imagination.
Bacchiacca drew a filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing pages 84 and 85.) These men at that time (1550) had set their Flemish looms in Italy.
[Illustration: TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED
Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid]
Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor Carey, Esq., Boston]
And so it came that the Renaissance swept all before it in the world of tapestry. More than that, with the increase of culture and of wealth, with the increased mingling of the peoples of Europe after the raid of Charles V into Italy, the demand for tapestries enormously increased. They were wanted for furnishing of homes, they were wanted as gifts--to brides, to monarchs, to ambassadors. And they were wanted for splendid decoration in public festivals. They had passed beyond the stage of rarity and had become almost as much a matter of course as clothing.
Brussels being in the ascendency as a producer, the world looked to her for their supply, and thereby came trouble. More orders came than it was possible to fill. The temptation was not resisted to accept more work than could be executed, for commercialism has ever a hold. The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the lessening of care in every department.