page_title: International Gothic
section_title: Tapestry
hierarchical_section_title: International Gothic / Survey / Tapestry
context_page_description: International Gothic is a period of Gothic art which began in Burgundy, France, and northern Italy in the late 14th and early 15th century. It then spread very widely across Western Europe, hence the name for the period, which was introduced by the French art historian Louis Courajod at the end of the 19th century.
  Artists and portable works, such as illuminated manuscripts, travelled widely around the continent, leading to a common aesthetic among the royalty and higher nobility and considerably reducing the variation in national styles among works produced for the courtly elites. The main influences were northern France, the Netherlands, the Duchy of Burgundy, the Imperial court in Prague, and Italy. Royal marriages such as that between Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia helped to spread the style.
  It was initially a style of courtly sophistication, but somewhat more robust versions spread to art commissioned by the emerging mercantile classes and the smaller nobility.
context_section_description: A further vehicle of the International Gothic style was provided by the tapestry-weaving centers of Arras, Tournai and Paris, where tapestry production was permanently disordered by the English occupation of 1418–36.  Under the consistent patronage of the Dukes of Burgundy, their courtly International Gothic style, elongated figures, rich details of attire, crowded composition, with figures disposed in tiers, owe their inspiration to manuscript illuminators and directly to painters: Baudouin de Bailleul, a painter established at Arras, supplied cartoons for tapestry workshops there and at Tournai, where elements of a local style are hard to distinguish (Weigert, p. 44). The Chatsworth Hunts (Victoria and Albert Museum) are inspired by Gaston de Foix's book on hunting and the many weavings of Trojan War cycles by contemporary romances.
  Tapestry too was an art that was portable. Suites accompanied their seigneurial owners from one unheated and empty château to another. Tapestry weavers themselves could be induced to move workshops, though they remained tied to the accessibility of English wool. Religious and secular subjects vied in this essentially secular art.
  A medium of Late Gothic style that is easily overlooked because it has virtually entirely disappeared is that of painted hangings, which served as a less expensive substitute for woven hangings but could be produced, with appropriate themes, on short notice.
caption: Arras tapestry of about 1410 (the dog and rabbits signify lust)
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