International studio (48.1913)

INTERNATIONAL
• STUDIO ■
VOL. XLVIII. No. 192 Copyright, 1913, by John Lane Company FEBRUARY, 1913

The acts of the apostles tap-
estries, AFTER RAPHAEL
BY GEORGE LELAND HUNTER
The tapestries are at the Vatican.
The cartoons are at the Victoria and Albert
Museum in South Kensington. There are copies
of the tapestries in the Spanish Royal Collection,
the Imperial Austrian Collection, the French
National Collection, the Berlin Museum, Hamp-
ton Court, the Beauvais Cathedral, the Cathedral
of Loretto, the Dresden Museum.
At the Metropolitan Museum there are neither
cartoons nor tapestries, but, instead, there is a set
of wonderful photographs of the tapestries, taken
for Mr. Morgan by special permission of His Holi-
ness the Pope, and by Mr. Morgan presented to
the Museum. These photographs, of extraordi-
nary size and framed, are on exhibition in the
photograph room of the Library of the Museum.
By contemporaries, as well as by posterity, the
tapestries were praised without end. They were
admired by Frances I and Louis XIV, Henry VIII
and Charles I, Charles V and Philip II. By en-
gravers and painters, as well as by weavers, they
were copied over and over again. The tapestries
were first shown on December 26, 1519, in the
Sistine Chapel, for which they were planned.
The company assembled represented the learning
and refinement of the world. There were red-
robed cardinals and velvet-capped painters, gaily
clad young noblemen and somber-go wned scholars,
and foreign ambassadors in the picturesque attire
of their various countries. All were enthusiastic.
They were unable to express the full extent of
their admiration. “Every one present,” wrote
one of the guests, “was speechless at the sight of
these hangings, and it is the unanimous opinion
that nothing more beautiful exists in the universe. ”
Another guest wrote: “After the Christmas
celebrations were over, the Pope exposed in his
chapel seven tapestries (the eighth not being fin-

ished) executed in the West [in Flanders]. They
were considered by everybody the most beautiful
specimens of the weaver’s art ever executed. And
this in spite of the celebrity already attained by
other tapestries—those in the antechamber of
Pope Julius II, those made for the Marchese of
Mantua after the cartoons of Mantegna, and those
made for the King of Naples. They were de-
signed by Raphael of Urbino, an excellent painter,
who received from the Pope 100 ducats for each
cartoon. They contain much gold, silver, and
silk, and the weaving cost 1,500 ducats apiece—a
total of 16,000 ducats ($160,000) for the set—as
the Pope himself says, though rumor would put
the cost at 20,000 golden ducats.”
The tapestries were woven in Brussels under the
supervision of the Flemish painter, Barend Van
Orley, friend and pupil of Raphael. Brussels was
then the world’s principal center of tapestry pro-
duction, Arras, that gave its name to the English
arras and the Italian arazzi, having been captured
and ruined in 1477 by Louis XI. The atelier
selected was that of Pieter Van Aelst, who was
tapestry weaver not only to Philip the Handsome
but also to his son, the future Emperor Charles V.
Of Van Aelst’s success in interpreting the car-
toons Vasari wrote thirty years later: “One is
astonished at the sight of this series. The execu-
tion is marvelous. One can hardly imagine how
it was possible, with simple threads, to produce
such delicacy in the hair and beards and to express
the suppleness of flesh. It is a work more Godlike
than human; the waters, the animals and the habi-
tations are so perfectly represented that they
appear painted with the brush, not woven.”
The original tapestries woven for Leo X had
their share of vicissitude. The walls of the Vati-
can were no protection. The portableness of the
tapestries made them the easy prey of looters and
thieves, while the other decorations of the Sistine
—the frescoes—stayed securely in place. Their
first misfortune was to be pawned immediately

LXXIII