Excerpt from The Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, Vol. 21: June, 1926

Tapestries made during the period from 1375 until 1515 are the greatest achievement of tapestry weaving, because the requisites of design are more adequately met within these years than in any other period in the history of the craft.

The earliest tapestries held closely to the architectural tradition, as the King Arthur fragment now in America so clearly demon strates. A series of Gothic canopies each give shelter to a single figure archaically drawn; their structure and ornament have been faithfully transcribed from existing types of building. Then an increasing love of natural forms led the way for the verdure pieces, allegorical and romantic themes furnishing a slight subject for tapes tries entirely sprinkled over with sprightly growing plants; now and then active dogs, strange beasts or an occasional human figure claimed a space.

Until about 1450 no precise demarcation existed between French and Flemish workmanship. In the fourteenth century the Flemings dominated sculpture, painting and cartoon making, yet they worked in France, under French patronage, on earlier traditions. Their earthy, energetic natures were somewhat tempered by the greater sensitiveness and fastidious taste of the French. However, as the religious formulas relaxed which had heretofore checked their free dom of expression, the Flemish compositions seethed with interest, human figures failing to achieve first importance among the great mass of rich fabrics, jewels, architecture, flowers and animals. On the other hand, the French withstood this realism and carried on the earlier tradition of design.

Brussels became the chief centre of tapestry weaving in the last years of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries, weavers going to Italy, France, Spain and England; Tournai, Lille and Valenciennes shared in part its glory.

The tapestry,1 (figure 1) lately acquired by the Museum, belongs to this golden age of tapestry making and easily takes its place as the outstanding single purchase in any of the Museum's collections. It is an acquisition of first importance. The subject of the tapestry is the Deposition from the Cross, although in its narrowest sense the episode pictured here is more properly known as the Pieta. The scene fol lows the removal of the dead Christ from the cross and precedes the Entombment. In early times the last events in the life of Christ were narrated in seven scenes, beginning with the Entrance into Jerusalem and ending with the Entombment. Fourteen scenes have since come to be shown, of which the Deposition is the thirteenth. The set of Passion tapestries attributed to Jean de Rome includes eight scenes; in this case the Deposition is the seventh episode.

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