TAPESTRY. - It is a special fabric made with a high-and-low warp loom using threads of wool and silk colored in many gradations and sometimes also with threads of gold and silver; it is ordinarily used as wall decoration. It is always figured; but the figurative theme, with the exception of the border, is never symmetrical or repeated, and for this reason, as well as for the technique of weaving, it differs from the carpet. Although the cartoons are often supplied by painters, the tapestry maker interprets the figurations according to the needs of his technique and with great freedom also as regards style. A few rare German examples of the 13th century are still technically indistinguishable from carpets. In the 14th century and the early years of the following century the manufactories of Paris and Arras prevail; from the latter derives the Italian name for such products. The series of tapestries with stories of the Apocalypse in the cathedral of Angers and the other with stories of saints in that of Tournai (1402) are respectively the most significant examples of the two workshops.
But already at the beginning of the 15th century the Flemish tapestry makers won a primacy that they would hold for more than two centuries. To the manufactory of Tournai belongs the series of the Passion in S. Marco in Venice (1450). Although painters from all countries supplied cartoons to the Flemish tapestry makers, they always impressed upon their works a characteristic local quality depending for the most part on the pictorial vision of Roger van der Weyden or of Memling. The manufactory of Brussels develops and fixes the characteristics of the borders and reaches its highest artistic expression with the series of the Acts of the Apostles (1515-19) after cartoons by Raphael (Vatican) or with that of the Apocalypse in Madrid (mid-16th century). In 1662, with the founding of the royal manufactory of the Gobelins in Paris, French tapestry making flourished again, for 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 manufactory of Beauvais, which dominated the following century, while by then the tapestry, almost assimilated to painting through its many thousands of tints, followed its stylistic vicissitudes more closely and rapidly declined.
In Italy the art of tapestry was imported in the 15th century by Flemish craftsmen, who for a long time dominated production, also imposing their style. Between the 15th and 16th centuries the manufactories of Ferrara and Mantua established themselves with the series of St. George and St. Maurilius (Ferrara, Cathedral), of the life of Mary (Como, Cathedral), of Moses (Milan, Cathedral), etc. The Florentine one rises to a high level of art with the series of Joseph (Pal. Pitti, Quirinale) after cartoons by Bronzino and other Tuscan mannerists; with those of the Old Testament after cartoons by A. Allori and that of the Passion after cartoons by Cigoli and Albani. While the Roman manufactories exhaust themselves in the repetition of famous paintings, those of Turin and Na-
TAPESTRY. - The Marys at the tomb and Noli me tangere. Tapestry on a cartoon by Zanino di Pietro (15th century) - Venice, Museum of the Basilica of St. Mark.
Naples, which rose to their greatest splendor in the eighteenth century, turned predominantly to secular subjects.