ARAZZO (Tapestry). - It is a special fabric produced on a high-and-low warp loom with threads of dyed wool and silk in many shades, and sometimes also with threads of gold and silver; it is ordinarily used as wall decoration. It is always figured; but the figured subject, except for the border, is never symmetrical or repeated, and for this reason, as well as for the weaving technique, it differs from the carpet. Although the cartoons are often supplied by painters, the tapestry-maker interprets the figures according to the needs of his technique and with great freedom even as regards style. Some rare German specimens from the 13th century are still technically indistinguishable from carpets. In the 14th century and the early part of the following century, the manufactories of Paris and Arras predominate; the latter gives its name to similar products in Italian.
The series of tapestries depicting the Apocalypse in Angers Cathedral and the other depicting the lives of the saints in Tournai Cathedral (1402) are respectively the most significant examples of the two workshops.
But already at the beginning of the 15th century, Flemish tapestry-weavers gained a supremacy that they would hold for more than two centuries. The series of the Passion in S. Marco, Venice (1450), belongs to the Tournai workshop. Although painters from all countries supplied cartoons to the Flemish tapestry-weavers, they always gave their works a characteristic local flavour, mostly derived from the pictorial vision of Roger van der Weyden or Memling. The Brussels workshop developed and fixed the characteristics of borders and reached the highest expression of art with the series of the Acts of the Apostles (1515-19) on cartoons by Raphael (Vatican) or with that of the Apocalypse in Madrid (mid-16th century). In 1662, with the foundation of the royal manufactory of the Gobelins in Paris, French tapestry-weaving was strengthened, to which the followers of Rubens and the academic and classicizing painters of the 17th century supplied cartoons. Sacred representations then became rarer and almost disappeared in the Beauvais manufactory, which dominated the following century, while by now the tapestry, almost assimilated to painting for its thousands of shades, followed more closely the stylistic developments and rapidly declined.
In Italy, the art of tapestry was introduced in the 15th century by Flemish craftsmen, who long dominated production, imposing their style as well. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, the manufactories of Ferrara and Mantua asserted themselves with series such as those of St George and St Maurilius (Ferrara, Duomo), the Life of the Virgin (Como, Duomo), Moses (Milan, Duomo), etc. The Florentine manufactory rose to a high level of art with the series of Joseph (Palazzo Pitti, Quirinale) on cartoons by Bronzino and other Tuscan mannerists; with those of the Old Testament on cartoons by A. Allori and that of the Passion on cartoons by Cigoli and Albani. While the Roman manufactories exhausted themselves in the repetition of famous paintings, those of Turin and