ER AND AHASUERUS SERIES

Gobelins, about 1730. Cartoon by J. F. de Troy; G. Audran, weaver]

The Iliad of Homer came in for its share of consideration at the hands
of Antoine and Charles Coypel, who made of it a set of five scenes. It
was Romanelli, the Italian, who painted a similar set, a hundred
years before, for Cardinal Barberini, which set came to America in the
Ffoulke collection. After the death, in 1730, of the Duke d'Antin,
that interesting son of Madame de Montespan, several directors had the
management of the Gobelins in hand, the Count of Vignory and the Count
of Angivillier being the most important prior to the Revolution. These
were men who held the purse-strings of the state, and could thereby
foster or crush a state institution, but the direction of the Gobelins
itself, as a factory, was in the hands of architects, beginning with
the able De Cotte. As the factory had many ateliers, these were each
directed by painters, among whom appear such interesting men of talent
as Oudry, Boucher, Halle.

Although d'Antin was dead when it commenced, he is accredited with
having inspired and ordered the important hanging known as the
_History of Esther_. (Plate facing page 131.) The first piece, from
cartoons by Jean Francois de Troy, was sent to the weavers in 1737,
and the last piece, which was painted in Rome, was finished in 1742.
This set shows as ably as any can, the magnificent style of production
of the period. It had from the beginning an immense popularity and was
copied many times. Even now it is a favourite subject for those whose
perverted taste leads them into the dubious art of copying tapestry in
paints on cloth.

The serious accusation against this set, which in composition seems
much like the tableaux in grand opera, is that it invades the art of
painting. And that is the fault of woven art at that period. The
decline in tapestry in Paris began when both weavers and painters
struggled for the same results, the weavers quite forgetting the
strength and beauty that were peculiar to their art alone.

This fault cannot be laid to the weavers only, who numbered such men
as Neilson the able Scot, and Cozette, who, with wondrous touch, wove
the set of _Don Quixote_; nor were the artists at fault, for they
included such men as Audran and Boucher. No, it was the director who
blighted and subverted talent, and the vitiated public taste that
shifted restlessly and demanded novelty. The novelty that c