Man was
breaking his bonds and becoming freed for centuries to come. The time
was well-named for the new birth. Like another Birth of long ago, it
occurred in the South, and its influence gradually spread over the
entire civilised world. The Renaissance, starting in Italy, gradually
flushed the whole of Europe with its glory. Artists could not be
restrained. Throbbing with poetry to be expressed, they threw off
design after design of inspired beauty and flooded the world with
them. The legitimate field of painting was not large enough for their
teeming originality which pre-empted also the field of decorative
design as well. Many painters apprenticed themselves to goldsmiths and
silversmiths to become yet more cunning in the art of minute design,
and the guilds of Florence held the names best known in the fine arts.

Tapestry weaving seems a natural expression in the North, the
impulsive supplying of a local need. Possibly Italy felt no such need
throughout the Middle Ages. However that may be, when her artists
composed designs for woven pictures there were no permanent artisans
at home of sufficient skill to weave them.

But up in the North, craftsmen were able to produce work of such
brilliant and perfect execution that the great artists of Italy were
inspired to draw cartoons. And so it came, that to make sure of having
their drawings translated into wool and silk with proper artistic
feeling, the cartoons of Raphael were bundled off by trusty carriers
to the ateliers of Flanders. Thus Italy got her tapestries of the
Renaissance, and thus Flanders acquired by inoculation the rich art of
the Renaissance.

The direct cause of the change in Flemish style of tapestries was in
this way brought about by the Renaissance of Italy. New rules of
drawing were dominating. Changes were slower when travelling was
difficult, and the average of literacy was low; but gradually there
came creeping up to Brussels cartoon after cartoon in the new method,
for her skilled workmen to transpose into wool and silk and metal,
"thread of Arras," and "gold and silver of Cyprus." Italy had the
artists, Brussels had the craftsmen--what happier combination could be
made than the union of these two? Thus was the great change brought
about in tapestries, and this union is the great fact to be borne in
mind about the difference between the Gothic tapestries and those
which so quickly succeeded them.

From now on the old method is abandoned, not