THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

In discussing the great wood structures such as screens, house fronts, roofs, and other large pieces of mechanism, which developed in boldness and variety in the fifteenth century, we must not forget that the abundance of oak timber in the north of Europe both suggested much of this timber art and admitted of bold features of construction from the size of the logs and the tenacity of the material. A large portion of England and perhaps an equal proportion of Ireland were covered with dense forests of oak. The eastern frontier of France, great portions of Burgundy, and many other districts in France, Germany, Flanders, and other northern countries, were still forests, and timber was to be had at low prices and in any quantity. Spanish chestnut had been introduced probably by the Romans into England.

Though churches, castles, and manors were built of stone or brick, or both, yet whole cities seem to have been mainly constructed out of timber. The London of the fifteenth century, like a hundred other cities, though abounding in noble churches and in great fortified palaces, yet presented the aspect of a timber city. The houses were framed together, as a few still are in some English towns and villages, of vast posts sixteen to twenty-four inches square in section, arching outwards and meeting the projecting floor timbers, and so with upper stories, till the streets were darkened by the projections. The surfaces of these posts were covered with delicate tracery, niches and images. In the streets at Chester an open gallery or passage is left on the first floor within the timbers of the house fronts. In the court of St. Mary's guild in Coventry, whole chambers and galleries are supported on vast arches of timber like bridges. Oriels jutted out under these overhanging stories, and the spaces between the framing posts were filled in, sometimes with bricks, sometimes with laths and mortar, or parts (as the century wore on) more frequently with glass.

In London and Rouen, in Blois and in Coventry, these angle posts were filled with niches and statuettes or fifteenth century window tracery sunk into the surfaces. The dark wooden houses were externally a mass of imagery. In the great roofs of these centuries, such as the one spoken of at Westminster, the hammer beams were generally carved into figures of angels gracefully sustaining the timber behind them with outstretched wings; and these figures were painted and gilt. A magnificent example remains intact in the church of Knapton in Norfolk.

The number of excellent workmen and the size and architectural character of so much of the woodwork of the day contributed to give all panelled work, no matter of what description, an architectural type; and furniture shared in this change. Coffers and chests, as well as standards or stall-ends in churches, and bench-ends in large rooms and halls, were designed after the pattern of window tracery. The panel in the above woodcut from a French chest of this date, is a very delicate and beautiful example. Little buttresses and pinnacles were often placed on the angles or the divisions between the panels. At South Kensington, the buffet, n^o. 8,439 and the chest, n^o. 2,789, with other pieces are of this kind; also a grand cabinet of German make in the same collection. This last, n^o. 497, is of the rudest construction, but a few roughly cut lines of moulding and some effective ironwork give it richness and dignity that are wanting in many pieces more scientifically made and more decoratively treated.

The quantity of tapestry employed in these centuries in fitting up houses and the tents used either during a campaign or in progresses from one estate to another was prodigious, and kept increasing. Lancaster entertained the king of Portugal in his tent between MouÇal and MalgaÇo, fitted up with hangings of arras "as if he had been at Hertford, Leicester, or any of his manors." As early as 1313, when Isabel of Bavaria made her entry into Paris, the whole street of St. Denis, Froissart tells us, "was covered with a canopy of rich camlet and silk cloths, as if they had the cloths for nothing, or were at Alexandria or Damascus. I (the writer of this account) was present, and was astonished whence such quantities of rich stuffs and ornaments could have come, for all the houses on each side of the street of St. Denis, as far as the ChÂtelet, or indeed to the great bridge, were hung with tapestries representing various scenes and histories, to the delight of all beholders." The expense incurred in timber work on these occasions may be estimated from the long lists of pageants, and the scale on which each was prepared on this and like occasions.

Of the early Italian furniture of the mediÆval period there is at South Kensington one fine specimen, a coffer of cypress, covered with flat surface imagery filled in with coloured wax composition. It dates from the fourteenth century. The better known Italian furniture of the quattrocento or "fourteen hundred period," i.e. the fifteenth century, is gilt and painted. The richness of this old work is owing to the careful preparation of the ground or bed on which the gold is laid and the way in which the preparation was modelled with the tool. The old gold is, besides, both thicker and purer, more malleable, and less liable to suffer from the action of the atmosphere than the gold we now use for this purpose. The paintings executed on such pieces of furniture as offered suitable surfaces to the artist, boxes and coffers (and, for church uses, reliquaries), are equal to the finest works of that kind and of the same period.

Many artists worked in this way. Dello Delli was the best known in regard to such productions. His work became so entirely the fashion that, according to Vasari, no house was complete without a specimen of it. Andrea di Cosimo was another. It need not be said that such men and their contemporaries had a number of pupils similarly employed. Every piece of painted furniture attributed to Dello Delli cannot be warranted. There are, however, specimens which we believe to be from his hand in the Kensington collection, and numbers of fronts and panels and fragments of great merit which illustrate his style.

Besides this kind of decoration, the Venetians had derived from Persia and India another beautiful system of surface ornament; marquetry, a fine inlay of ivory, metal, and woods, stained to vary the colour. The work is in geometric patterns only. It is found on the ivory boxes and other objects sculptured in that material, and attributed to Italian as well as to Byzantine sources. In the fifteenth century Florence also came prominently to the front in the manufacture of these and other rich materials; as well as of ivory inlaid into solid cypress wood and walnut, known as Certosina work. The style is Indian in character, and consists in geometric arrangements of stars made of diamond-shaped pieces: varied with conventional flowers in pots, &c. The name Certosina is derived from the great Certosa, charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery between Milan and Pavia: where this kind of decoration is employed in the choir fittings of the splendid church of that monastery.

We are inclined to the belief (as already said) that the manufacture of geometrical work of this kind was originally imported from Persia by the Venetians. There are in the Kensington museum some very interesting old chairs made for the castle of Urbino, and part of the furniture of Guidobaldo II., whose court, like that of RÉnÉ, king of Provence, was the resort of troubadours, poets, and philosophers. These chairs are covered with geometric marquetry of white and stained ivory, &c., the very counterpart of the Bombay work now brought to this country. That manufacture, in the opinion of Dr. Birdwood, was also of Persian origin and thence found its way to Bombay. The Persians continued long into the last century the inlaying of ivory in walnut wood, and their geometric marquetry is still made.

The forms of chairs in use in Italy early in the fifteenth century were revivals of the old Roman folding chair. The pairs of crosspieces are sometimes on the sides, sometimes set back and front, and in that case arm and back pieces are added. Generally we may say that the fine Italian furniture of that day owed its beauty to inlaying, surface gilding, tooling and painting. Gilt chests and marriage trays, inlaid tables, and chairs are also to be seen at South Kensington.

As in Italy, so in England, France, Germany, and later in Spain, the splendour hitherto devoted to the glory of ecclesiastical furniture, utensils, or architectural decoration was gradually adopted in the royal and other castles and houses. State rooms, halls of justice, sets of rooms for the use of the king or his barons were furnished and maintained. The large religious establishments also demanded the skill of artists and workmen, and to a greater extent north than south of the Alps. Many monastic houses in the north of Europe were seats of feudal jurisdiction. These communities executed great works in wood, stall-work, presses, coffers, &c., as large and continuous societies alone are able to carry through tasks that want much time for completion. All this helped to encourage the manufacture of woodwork of the finest kind. Hence the mediÆval semi-ecclesiastical character maintained sway in every art connected with architecture and furniture longer in northern countries than in Italy, where both old traditions and monumental remains recalled rather the glories of antique art, and where the revival of classic learning had begun.

As regards English art it is certain that, partly from the influence of foreign queens, partly from foreign wars, and partly from the incessant intercourse with the rest of Europe kept up by religious houses, many of the accomplishments of other countries were known and practised here by foreign or native artists.

It is true that the wars of the Roses, more bloody and ruinous than any experienced in this country, delayed that growth of domestic luxury which might have been expected from the then wealth of England. But when Henry the seventh established a settled government, and from his time downwards, the decorations and the accumulation of furniture in houses, libraries, and collections of works of art rapidly increased. Many of the books in the "King's library," and many pictures and movables still in possession of the crown, may be traced to that day.

It is difficult, indeed, to imagine the England which Leland saw in his travels. It must have been full of splendid objects, and during the reign of Henry the feudal mansions, as well as the numerous royal palaces of Windsor, Richmond, Havering, and others, were filled with magnificent furniture. Mabuse and Torrigiano were employed by the king, and this example found many imitations; artists, both foreign and English, made secular furniture, as rich and beautiful as that of the churches and religious houses which covered the country.

Taste in furniture, as in architecture, both in continental Europe and in these islands had nevertheless passed the fine period of mediÆval design. The "Gothic" or pointed forms and details had become uninventive and commonplace. The whole system awaited a change. The figure sculpture, however, of the latter years of this century, though life-sized statues had lost much of the dignity and simplicity of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was approaching the realization of natural form, which it attained in such excellence in the succeeding century. The ingenuity and raciness of the smaller figure carving both in stall-work of churches and on the tops and fronts of boxes and caskets, in panel-work of cabinets or doors, &c., during the last half of the fifteenth century are scarcely surpassed by the more academic and classical figure design of the sixteenth. Carvers on all kinds of wood furniture and decoration of houses delighted in doubling their figures up into quaint and ingenious attitudes, and if the architecture was latterly tame, though showy and costly, imagery continued to be full of individuality and inventiveness.