Triptych

“ There is hardly a finer piece of wood-carving on a large scale to be seen anywhere than on these massive doors, and they and the triptych should on no account be missed by any one who finds himself in the cathedral. ”

“ Nothing could be more exquisite than the Gothic shrines in ivory made in the thirteenth century, but descriptions, unless accompanied by illustrations, could give little idea of their individual charm, for the subject is usually the same: the Virgin and child, in the central portion of the triptych, while scenes from the Passion occupy the spaces on either side, in the wings. ”

“ The outstanding piece of sculpture was a life-size statue of the Magdalene which Göring had acquired from the Louvre. Similarly, the most important of the three altarpieces was a big triptych which also had come from the Louvre. Göring did not remove these objects by force. He obtained them by exchange after prolonged negotiations with the officials of the museum. According to the information given me, both parties were well pleased with the trade. As I recall, the Louvre received six objects from the Reichsmarschall’s collection in return for the triptych and the statue. ”

“ There was in each of them a look at once absent and eager--the look of those who have cared much and ardently for "man," and very little, comparatively, for men.
The miniatures had not been meant for the triptych, nor the triptych for them. It had been adapted to them by loving hands; but there was room for other things in the velvet-lined hollow, and a packet of letters was already reposing there. Julie slipped the letter of the morning inside the elastic band which held the packet ”

“ The upper zone is covered with geometrical tracery, similar to the outer borders. The lower one is divided into four compartments for each leaf of the door, eight within two, which are formed by cusped Gothic arches; within these spaces are painted standing figures of angels holding musical instruments in their hands and nimbi round their heads. The details and forms of the instruments and delicate ornamentation of the costumes and carpets, constitute one of the most beautiful details of this triptych. ”

“ Comparatively few works are attributed with certainty to this painter, chief among such are two altarpieces at Berlin, besides that mentioned above, “The Joys and Sorrows of Mary,” and “Life of St John the Baptist,” a “Deposition” and “Crucifixion” in the Escorial, the Prado triptych, another (“Annunciation,” “Adoration” and “Presentation”) at Munich, a “Madonna” and a “St John the Baptist” at Frankfort. The “Seven Sacraments” altarpiece at Antwerp is almost certainly his, likewise the “Deposition” in the Uffizi, the triptych of the Beaune hospital, and the “Seven Sorrows” at Brussels. ”

“ The fresco above the chancel arch—a Last Judgment—is particularly fine, both in colour and composition. It was discovered some twelve or thirteen years ago, dates apparently from the close of the fourteen hundreds, and is fairly well preserved; whilst the reredos of the high-altar—a triptych with scenes from the life of Saint Dymphna, sculptured in high relief and sheltered by an elaborate canopy of rich flamboyant work, most delicately carved—is of its kind unique. ”

“ Go from one to the other once or twice. Later painters of the Renaissance use this solemn theme as a mere excuse for obtruding the nude—and often the vulgar nude—into churches. On the same wall are a good triptych in grisaille by P. Pourbus (Way to Calvary, Descent from the Cross, Resurrection: from Notre-Dame at Damme) , and other pictures.
The remaining walls have portraits and other works, from the 17th century downwards, most of which need no explanation. A few of them, indeed, are not without merit. ”

“ The growing desire to get more and more light into the churches, and the consequent manufacture of purer and more transparent glass, affected the glazier’s colour scheme. For all that, the fashion of a window was, mutatis mutandis, that of the painting, carving, embroidery, goldsmith’s work, enamel and other craftsmanship of the period. The design of an ivory triptych is very much that of a three-light window. There is a little enamelled shrine of German workmanship in the Victoria and Albert Museum which might almost have been designed for glass ”

“ Solomon speaks of "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The pictures of Fra Angelico, and other artists of that age, are really pictures of gold; and it is wonderful to see how rich the effect, and how much delicate beauty is attained (by Fra Angelico at least) along with it. His miniature-heads appear to me much more successful than his larger ones. In a monkish point of view, however, the chief value of the triptych of which I am speaking does not lie in the pictures, for they merely serve as the framework of some relics, which are set all round the edges of the three leaves. ”

“ Memling: **Portrait of an unknown man, which may be contrasted for its comparative softness of execution with the harder work of his master beside it. Above these:—
211. Triptych, by Heemskerck (early Dutch School) , representing, Centre, the Entombment, Christ borne, as usual, by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. In front, the crown of thorns. Behind, the Magdalen; then the Madonna and St. John, the two Maries, and an unknown man holding a vase of ointment. L. and R. the donor and his wife, with their patron saints Peter and Mary Magdalen (keys, box of ointment) . ”

“ Identify as many of these as possible, and observe their archaic striving after effects too high for the artist. Second case: Limoges enamels, more modern in type (15th century) : Madonna holding the dead Christ, Crucifixion, Bearing of the Cross, and other scenes. Notice particularly (4575) , little triptych with a Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, and Circumcision, in all of which observe the conventional treatment. Third case: Limoges enamels of the High Renaissance (16th and 17th centuries) , Raphaelesque in spirit, better in execution, but far less interesting; good portraits in frames ”

“ The work is almost purely mechanical; the face of the tapestry being below, and the weaving done from the back, the workman has no means of knowing what effect he is producing, and can only trust to a rigid method. The making of tapestry on the high-warp loom approximates in method to the painting of a picture; the artificer produces his form and colour, stitch by stitch, by the exercise of his own intelligence, and sees, in his little swinging mirror, the actual surface forming itself insensibly under his hand, as if it were a picture on the easel. ”

“ That great usurper, the Renaissance, came creeping up to the North where the tapestry looms were weaving fairy webs. Pope Pius X wanted tapestries, those of the marvellous Flemish weave. But he wanted those of the new style of drawing, not the sweet restraint and finished refinement of the Gothic. Raphael’s cartoons were sent to Brussels’ workshops, and thus was the North inoculated with the Renaissance, and thus began the second phase of the supreme excellency of Flemish tapestries. It was the Renaissance expressing itself in the wondrous textile art. ”

“ High-warp tapestry we have traced lightly from Egypt through Greece and Rome and, almost losing the thread in the Middle Ages, have seen it rising a virile industry, nursed in monasteries. It was when the stirrings of artistic life were commencing under the Van Eycks in the North and under Giotto and the Tuscans in the South that the weaving of tapestries reached a high standard of production and from that time until the Nineteenth Century has been an important artistic craft. ”

“ His designs broke from the limit of the Gobelins, and were woven at Beauvais with the care and skill required for proper interpretation of his land of mythology. Such flushed skies of light, such clean, soft trees waving against them and such human elegance and beauty grouped beneath, have seldom been reproduced in tapestry, and almost make one wonder if, after all, the weavers of the Eighteenth Century were not right in copying a finished painting rather than in interpreting a decorative cartoon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are now in the time when the perfection of [Pg 54] production was reached in the tapestries we call Gothic. Artists had grown more certain of their touch in colour and design, and weavers worked with such conscientious care as is now almost unknown, and produced a quality of tapestry superior to that of their forebears. The Fifteenth Century and the first few years of the Sixteenth were spent in perfecting the style of the preceding century, and so great was the perfection reached, that it was impossible to develop further on those lines. ”

“ At first we see them pure and true, then muddy, uncertain, until a dull confusion comes, and the hanging is depressing. When, at the last, it came that a tapestry was but a painting in wool, with as many thousand differently united threads as would reproduce the shading of brush-blended paint, the whole thing fell [Pg 193] of its own weight, and we of to-day value less the unlimited pains of the elaborate dyer and weaver than we do the simpler work. ”

“ Later yet, all the antique eccentricities passed away, and the laws of perspective and balance were fully developed in an art which has an unspeakable charm. All the things that modern art has decreed as crude or childish has passed away, and the sweet flower of the Gothic perfection unfolded its exquisite beauty. This Gothic perfection was the Golden Age of tapestry. ”

“ Its charm is one that embodies chasteness, grace, and [Pg 66] simplicity, one that is so exquisitely finished, and so individual that the mind and eye rest lovingly upon its decorative expressions. It is averred that the introduction of the revived styles of Greece and Rome into France destroyed an art superior. One is inclined to this opinion in studying a tapestry of the highest Gothic expression, a finished product of the artist and the craftsman, both having given to its execution their honest labour and highest skill. ”

“ From that time on, every drawing has had certain characteristics, certain sophistications that the artist cannot escape except in a deliberate copy.
Modern art, we call it. In tapestry it began with a freedom of drawing in figures, and an adoption of classic ornament and architecture. In this connexion it is interesting to note the introduction of Greek or Roman detail in the columns that divide the scenes, to see saints gathered by temples of classic form instead of Gothic. ”

“ As the early worker in wools could not forget the beauties of earth, the foreground of many Gothic tapestries is sprinkled with the loved common flowers of every day, of the field and wood. This is one of the charming touches in early tapestry, these little flowers that thrust themselves with captivating inappropriateness into every sort of scene. The grave and awesome figures in the Apocalypse find them at their feet, and in scenes of battle they adorn the sanguinary sod and twinkle between fierce combatants. ”

“ If we took a piece of paper coloured with a flat even tint, and folded it in ridges, the quality of the tint would be at once changed, and so in tapestry the passing of the wool of the wefts, which form the pattern or picture, over the strong lines of the warp—which are broad enough to take the outlines of the cartoon upon them—produces that soft and varied play of colour—really colour in light and shade—which, over and above the actual dyes and artistic selection of tints, gives the peculiar charm and effect in tapestry. ”

“ The earliest glass, therefore, and the latest, the best and the worst, may alike be termed pictorial. The difference is in the conception as to what constituted a picture, say, in the thirteenth century and the seventeenth. It all depends upon the kind of picture attempted.
Archaic art aims already at nature. We probably do not give the early painter credit enough for his intention of rendering natural things naturally. In part at least the stiffness of his design comes from lack of skill, and often where we find him quaint he meant no doubt to be perfectly serious and matter-of-fact. ”

“ In the first fresco, whether we owe it to the young Raphael’s help or to the natural interest at starting, we recognise buoyancy and the love of experiment; and we have something of it again in the fairy-tale tableau, where the prince and the lady meet, but the colour has become gaudier and cheaper, the naïveté, the enchantment, the unconsciousness, have in some measure passed away, the tide of fancy is running lower, and it is now that we chiefly feel the lack of that well of science from which the artist can drink ever deeper as the years go by. ”

“ These tapestry hangings the curious traveller soon becomes accustomed to, and the more, I think, one sees of them, the more he admires them—the scenes of ancient mythology or allegorical design so beautifully wrought as to rival even oil paintings in beauty of color and design, and exciting a wonder at the skill and labor that were expended in producing with many colored threads these wondrous loom mosaics. ”