The many large pieces, mostly of a scriptural character, provided by Cardinal Wolsey for his palace at Hampton Court, were very fine. The most beautiful collection in the world—the Arazzi—now in the Vatican at Rome, may be judged of by looking at a few of the original cartoons at present in the Museum, drawn and coloured by Raffael's own hand. Duke Cosimo tried to set up tapestry work at Florence, but did not succeed. Later, Rome produced some good things; among others, the fine copy of Da Vinci's Last Supper still hung up on Maundy Thursday. England herself made like attempts—first at Mortlake, then years afterwards in London, at Soho. Works from these two establishments may be met with. At Northumberland House there is a room all hung with large pieces of tapestry wrought at Soho, and for that place, in the year 1758. The designs were done by Francesco Zuccherelli, and consist of landscapes composed of hills crowned here and there with the standing ruins of temples, or strewed with broken columns, among which are wandering and amusing themselves groups of country folks. Mortlake and Soho were failures. Not so the Gobelins at Paris, as may be observed in the beautifully executed specimens in the Museum. As now, so in ages gone by, pieces of tapestry were laid down for carpeting.
In many of our old-fashioned houses—in the country in particular—good samples of Flemish tapestry may be found. Close to London, Holland House is adorned with some curious specimens, especially in the raised style.
Imitated tapestry—if paintings on canvas may be so called—existed here hundreds of years ago under the name of "stayned cloth," and the workers of it were embodied into a London civic gild. Of this "stayned cloth" we have lately found hangings upon the walls of a dining-room in one mansion; in another ornamenting, with great effect, the top of a stair-case.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century Exeter Cathedral had several pieces of old painted or "stayned" cloth: "i pannus veteratus depictus cum ymaginibus Sancti Andree in medio et Petri et Pauli ex lateribus; i front stayned cum crucifixo, Maria et Johanne, Petro et Paulo; viij parvi panni linei stayned, &c."[1]
The very great use at that time of such articles in household furniture may be witnessed in the will, A.D. 1503, of Katherine Lady Hastings, who bequeaths, besides several other such pieces, "an old hangin of counterfeit arres of Knollys, which now hangeth in the hall, and all such hangyings of old bawdekyn, or lynen paynted as now hang in the chappell."[2]
