Part 10 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BELFRY, TOURNAI.]

From the Belfry we visited the ancient Church of St. Brice which stands in one of the very oldest quarters of the city. Almost facing the church are two buildings known as the Roman houses. Although hardly dating from the time of the Romans they are undoubtedly very ancient. Only the outer walls, however, remain of the original construction, the interiors dating from a much later period. One of these houses was untenanted when we were there, and the other was an estaminet. We entered it and ordered drinks, and asked if we could see the up-stairs rooms, but apparently they were not very tidy as the landlady declined to show them, a.s.suring us that there was nothing to see. At No. 18 on the same street, rue Barre-Saint-Brice, is another estaminet in a house of very ancient construction. After quite a search we found the caretaker of the church. As old as the oldest part of the cathedral this structure is a remarkable example of Romanesque architecture. Externally it looks from the rear like three stone barns built close together, but its square tower is lofty and imposing, although much injured by a silly sort of hat which was stuck on early in the last century. The most interesting object within was a quaint Tournai tapestry representing a variety of Biblical subjects.

In the year 1653 archeologists and historians throughout Europe were greatly excited over one of the most interesting finds of ancient relics ever recorded. In the house now No. 8 on the Terrace Saint-Brice, on one side of the church, was dug up at a depth of eight feet a veritable museum of arms and jewels since known as the Treasure of Childeric I, whose marriage with Basina was preceded by so many portents. More than a hundred gold coins of the Byzantine Emperors were found, several hundred golden bees, a quant.i.ty of silver money of great antiquity, divers clasps and buckles--all mingled with the remains of human bones, which may have been those of the Merovingian King and his imperious spouse. One ring bore a bust of a man with long hair holding a lance, with the inscription _Childerici Regis_. After pa.s.sing through various hands the collection came into the possession of Louis XIV, and eventually into the Bibliotheque Royale at Paris. Here, in 1831, it was stolen. The thieves were pursued and threw their booty into the Seine, where a few pieces were afterwards recovered and are now in the numismatic collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris.

Not far from this interesting old quarter are some picturesque remains of the ancient city walls, two ivy covered towers facing a moat in which there is still some water. These are called the Marvis Towers, and were erected during the thirteenth century. On our way back to the station we made a little detour in order to see the curious _Pont des Trous_--literally ”the Bridge of the Holes,” meaning loopholes--the most ancient specimen of mediaeval military architecture in Belgium.

The tower on the side farthest from the centre of the city was built prior to 1259, the other in 1304, and the bridge with its three ogival arches in 1330. Across the bridge at short intervals are narrow loopholes to enable the defenders to fire at foes approaching by way of the River Scheldt. One of the towers is said to contain a fine vaulted room, but as we were unable to find any one who knew who had the key to the little door at its foot we did not see this room or the pa.s.sage-way across the bridge. Between this bridge and the railway line we noticed a high stone wall of ancient construction which, from its location, may also have been a fragment of the city walls. Further on is the Henry VIII tower, which was built by the English monarch after he captured the city in 1513, as part of a citadel intended to hold the citizens in check. The tower is slightly over seventy-five feet in diameter and the walls at the base are said to be twenty feet thick. The rest of the citadel has long since disappeared and this vestige of it is now the centre of a pleasant little park much frequented on sunny days by nursemaids and children. Amid these peaceful surroundings it was, when we saw it, hard to picture the old tower as having ever been the scene of fierce conflicts with furious foes striving to batter a breach in its ma.s.sive walls or scale it with long ladders, while its defenders fired volley after volley through its tiny windows and flung down big stones or boiling tar from its parapet.

The strategy of the early part of the present war did not call for a protracted defence of Tournai, with the result that, as this is being written, the old city is reported to have suffered little or no damage. In view of the frequency with which it had been contended for in former wars it is to be hoped that this one--which has so far been more destructive than all previous wars put together--will pa.s.s quaint old Tournai by and that the great cathedral with its five towers and marvellous stone carvings may be spared for generations yet to come.

CHAPTER XIII

SEVEN CENTURIES OF TOURNAISIAN ART

The citizens of Tournai of to-day have given to their beautiful city the name of ”Ville d'Art.” To be sure, the same t.i.tle is claimed for Bruges and Ghent, for Antwerp and Malines. The first two are justly proud of their many beautiful monuments of the past and their a.s.sociations with the work of the early Flemish painters, Antwerp of its connection with the later development of painting in Flanders and the most artistic of the early printers, Malines of its lace and its splendid examples of religious architecture and art. Tournai, however, has a broader t.i.tle to the phrase than any of them in that the artistic activities of its gifted sons have not been confined to one medium or two, but have been independently developed along half a score of different lines and during a period covering more than seven centuries. Not only is the city a rich repository of the artistic productions of past ages, but it is still more notable in having been one of the most prolific producers of beautiful and artistic things.

To the true connoisseur a stay of several weeks in this fine old border town would be none too long to afford opportunity to study all of its collections and rummage in out-of-the-way corners for stray specimens that the dealers and bargain hunters have overlooked.

Unfortunately, neither the Professor nor I can lay claim to more than a rudimentary knowledge of such matters and in the chronicle of our rambles in the City of Art there may be much to make the judicious grieve. It is not, however, so much in order to give an account of what we saw that this chapter is written as in the hope that it may suggest how much there is to see for those whose eyes are better trained and more discriminating than ours.

Tournai looms large in the history of early Flemish painting, for it was here that the next important group of masters after the Van Eycks appeared. As early as the first half of the fourteenth century paintings on cloth were executed at Tournai, followed by what was termed ”flat painting” for panels. About 1406 the first of the great artists whose names have come down to us settled at Tournai. This was Robert Campin. He acquired the right of citizens.h.i.+p in 1410 and died in 1444, being thus a contemporary of the Van Eycks. He is known to have painted many works, but until recently none of these had been definitely identified. Now, thanks to the earnest and patient study of Belgian scholars, he seems likely to be given his rightful place as one of the greatest of the early Flemish masters--after having been completely forgotten for nearly five hundred years! His most important work is an altarpiece in the possession of the Merode family at Brussels, while the Frankfort Museum and the Prado at Madrid contain some fine examples of his skill.

It is known that Robert Campin was the master of two other Tournai artists, Rogier Van der Weyden and Jacques Daret, of whom the former soon far surpa.s.sed his teacher in renown. Daret entered the atelier of Robert Campin in 1418, when a lad of fourteen, obtained the t.i.tle of apprentice in 1427, and became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1432. One of his pictures, a panel showing the Nativity, was in the collection of the late Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Van der Weyden, whose Walloon name was Roger de la Pasture, became one of Campin's apprentices in 1427--the same date as Daret--and was admitted to the guild of the painters at Tournai in 1432. He spent much of his time at Brussels, however, and is sometimes considered as belonging to that city rather than Tournai. A ”Descent from the Cross” now at the Escorial is his most famous picture. It was painted for the Archers'

Company at Louvain and a copy of it, made by the master himself, was hung in the Church of St. Pierre in that city. About 1430 Van der Weyden was commissioned to paint four large panels for the Hall of Justice in the new Hotel de Ville at Brussels. Two of these showed Trajan, the Just Emperor, and the other two depicted the Justice of Herkenbald, and for more than two centuries the series was regarded as the finest group of paintings in the Low Countries. They were destroyed at the bombardment of Brussels in 1695, but tapestries copied from the originals still exist in the Museum at Berne, having been captured by the Swiss when Charles the Bold was defeated at Granson.

In 1443 the artist began what in the judgment of the art critics was his most important work, an altarpiece representing ”The Last Judgment” for the chapel of a hospital at Beaune, near Dijon in Burgundy, where it still remains. The museum at Antwerp contains a triptych of the Seven Sacraments by this master, showing the interior of a cathedral suggestive of that of Tournai--and, in fact, it was for the Bishop of Tournai that it was originally painted. Nearly every important art gallery in Europe contains one or more works by Van der Weyden, who not only was very industrious, receiving numerous orders from the great men of his day, but fortunate in having most of his masterpieces preserved from the destruction that overtook so much of the work of the early Flemish artists.

The former Cloth Hall of Tournai, erected in 1610, was completely and very successfully restored in 1884, and is now used to house an admirable little collection of paintings and a museum of antiquities.

The paintings are, for the most part, the work of Tournai artists, and most of its three hundred and eighty t.i.tles are of local rather than international interest. There are several works, however, of the highest rank, and the museum as a whole serves admirably to ill.u.s.trate the fact that the traditions and inspiration of the first great masters of Flemish painting, whose work has made the name of Tournai ill.u.s.trious for all time, have never been wholly forgotten in their native city. To be sure, there is nothing to represent Robert Campin or Jacques Daret, nor had the caretaker ever heard of either of them--a fact hardly to be wondered at, since the works of the former have not yet been fully identified by the critics. Van der Weyden is credited with a ”Descent from the Cross” in the museum catalogue, but many critics hold this to be a copy of a lost work by Hugo Van der Goes. Those in charge of the museum have wisely included some excellent photographs of the more famous works by Van der Weyden in the leading European galleries--a plan that might well be followed with respect to the other notable works by Tournaisian artists. The masterpiece of the collection is the well known ”Last Honours to Counts Egmont and Horn,” by Louis Gallait, the greatest of Tournai's modern artists, whose statue stands in the little park before the railway station. A replica of this fine but gruesome work was painted by the artist for the Antwerp museum. The Tournai museum contains nearly a dozen other works bequeathed to the city by this painter, including several admirable portraits--a branch in which he was especially skilful. The powerful ”Abdication of Charles V” by this master hangs in the Brussels museum, and his notable ”Last Moments of the Comte d'Egmont” in the museum of Berlin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TRIPTYCH OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS BY ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN.]

Equally fine in a very different way, but less widely known, is a spirited painting by a comparatively unknown artist, Van Severdonck, representing the Princess of Epinoy valiantly defending a breach in the walls during the siege of Tournai in 1581. We were unable to obtain a photograph of this admirable work as it is so hung that it is difficult to get a good light upon it. A fine portrait of St. Donatian is attributed in the catalogue to Jan Gossaert or Mabuse (from Maubeuge where he was born). By some critics it is a.s.signed to Bellegambe, who was born at Douai in French Flanders and was a contemporary of Gossaert. The museum also contains works by Hennebicq, who painted the historical picture of Philip Augustus granting a charter to the city of Tournai in the Hotel de Ville; Hennequin, the teacher of Gallait; Stallaert, whose ”Death of Dido” is in the museum of Brussels, and several other natives of Tournai who are less well known. From Robert Campin, who settled at Tournai about 1406 and died in 1444, to Louis Gallait, whose three great masterpieces were painted between 1840 and 1850, and to Stallaert and Hennebicq, who laid aside their brushes in the first decade of the present century, there extends a period of five hundred years during which the n.o.ble art of painting has been practised and taught at Tournai by men of commanding genius--a record in the history of art that no town in the world of similar size has ever equalled.

It is worthy of remark, in pa.s.sing, that the art of sculpture which was practised at Tournai with such notable success as early as the thirteenth century, and steadily thereafter for several hundred years, has not survived to the present day. There are no modern sculptors in the list of Tournaisian artists, but the cathedral is a veritable museum of the stone carvings of the past. The men of the chisel, moreover, must be credited with giving some of the inspiration that made the work of the early artists of the brush so notable. Van der Weyden, particularly, shows the influence of sculpture and a marked appreciation of its effects in the framework and backgrounds of many of his pictures. Moreover, for several centuries the sculptors of Tournai enjoyed a renown that extended throughout Flanders and northern France. In the churches of Tournai and of many other cities examples of their work can be seen that show a continuous record of achievement from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.

Closely allied to the carvers of stone were those who worked in metals and of these Tournai had its full share. A street of the Goldsmiths (rue des Orfevres) near the Grande Place indicates the importance of that industry in ancient times. The best example of this branch of Tournaisian art is to be found in the treasury of the cathedral. This is the superb Cha.s.se, or Reliquary of St. Eleuthereus, which is considered to be one of the finest products of the goldsmith's art during the Middle Ages. While the name of the maker of this masterpiece is unknown, it is unquestionably of Tournaisian origin and was completed in 1247. Built in the form of a sarcophagus, and made of silver, heavily gilded, it is almost bewildering in the richness and intricacy of its decorations and filigrees. At one end is a large seated figure of Christ, at the other of St. Eleuthereus, while the sides contain figures of the Virgin and the Apostles. Around, above and below these chief figures the artist has placed a labyrinth of minor ones, of churches and landscapes, of columns, arches and architectural embellishments, all carved with a richness of design that cannot be adequately described. Still older, for it dates from 1205, is the Cha.s.se de Notre Dame, another treasure of the cathedral.

This was made by Nicolas de Verdun, a citizen of Tournai, and is of wood, painted and adorned with curious bas-reliefs representing incidents from the New Testament. A third cha.s.se, which on account of its great value is kept under lock and key in the treasury, like that of St. Eleuthereus, is called the Cha.s.se des Damoiseaux. It is made of silver and bears in relief, and enamelled, the arms of some of the patrician families of the city in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Confrerie des Damoiseaux held many brilliant tournaments in Tournai and other cities. This cha.s.se, the keeper told us, was not made at Tournai, but at Bruges. Although very beautiful, it is not considered so notable a work of art as its companion.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Tournai rivalled Dinant as a producer of fine copper and bra.s.sware, and in this industry the artistic instincts of its citizens soon led them to produce pieces of remarkable distinction. One of the finest of these is the baptismal font in the church of Notre Dame at Hal, made in 1446. The artisans of Tournai turned out a prodigious number of fine products of the copper-smith's art during the two centuries mentioned--lamps, candlesticks, chandeliers, funeral monuments, crucifixes and other religious articles; and, in fact, it was not until the eighteenth century that this industry declined, only to give place to the manufacture of gilded bronze ware.

The cathedral and the museum of antiquities contain some choice examples of another great Tournaisian art industry of the Middle Ages--the manufacture of rich tapestries. During the fourteenth century the renown of the products of Tournai in this field was already considerable, and between 1440 and 1480 its artisans surpa.s.sed even those of Arras. In richness of colouring, diversity and sprightliness of subjects, beauty of design and workmans.h.i.+p, the tapestries of Tournai rank among the finest art productions of the Middle Ages. In 1477, when Louis XI seized Arras and dispersed its workmen, many of them fled to Tournai, Audenaerde and Brussels, establis.h.i.+ng the industry in those cities. Tournai, where it had already made great progress, was the first to benefit by this emigration and for a time became the leading tapestry-making centre in Europe. It was the school of Tournai that was the true forerunner of the still more famous tapestry weavers of Brussels in depicting historical and mythological scenes of the utmost vivacity and richness, while the ateliers of Audenaerde specialised more largely in quieter pastoral scenes and landscapes. Philip the Good, the most fastidious connoisseur of his age, ordered several tapestries at Tournai, including the history of Gideon in eight panels to decorate the Hall of the Order of the Golden Fleece. In the cathedral the most notable of the Tournai tapestries ill.u.s.trates vividly the story of Joseph, while one of the best in the museum depicts the history of Abraham--the angels announcing the birth of Isaac. The border of a Tournai tapestry usually bears the mark of the ateliers of that city, a castle tower, which is plainly to be seen on the one last mentioned.

The cathedral also possesses a remarkable tapestry of Arras, made by Pierrot Fere in 1402, and depicting incidents connected with the lives of St. Piat and St. Eleuthereus and the plague at Tournai. This masterpiece originally hung above the stalls in the choir, and more than half of it has been destroyed at one time or another. The remainder has been placed in a continuous panel, like a panorama, around a semi-circular chapel back of the treasury, and const.i.tutes one of the most curious relics of the mediaeval art to be seen in Europe. According to some authorities the designs for this work were drawn by one of the artists of the Tournai school of painters from which Van der Weyden subsequently received his instruction. At all events the scenes are extremely nave, and the artist has inserted sundry little devils who are giving expression to their contempt of the various religious ceremonies depicted in some of the sections in a manner that, to say the least, is most unconventional.

The wars and troubles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries very nearly extinguished the art industries of Tournai, the number of master-weavers of tapestries declining from two hundred and fourteen between 1538 and 1553 to forty in 1693, and twenty-nine in 1738. It was only a few years after the last date, however, when a new art industry became established in the city. In 1751 a native of Lille, named Francois Peterink, began the manufacture at Tournai of fine porcelains. Dinner sets elaborately decorated and daintily formed, vases, statues and statuettes of ”biscuit” equal to the finest products of Sevres, Saxony or England, were turned out in considerable quant.i.ties for more than a century, and the porcelains of Tournai became so renowned that princes vied with one another to secure these works of art. It is still possible for the collector to secure some of these fine products, the trademarks being a rude castle tower or two crossed swords with tiny crosses at their intersecting angles. In the finest tableware these are usually in gold, but red or some other colour should not be despised, as the genuine Tournai ware is becoming rare and already brings high prices. These marks, it should be added, have been imitated, and the amateur will do well to consult expert advice before purchasing.

Still another noteworthy art industry of Tournai merits at least a word in pa.s.sing. From the very earliest period after the art of making stained or painted gla.s.s was invented the ateliers of the ”Ville d'Art” have excelled in this fine branch of handicraft. During the fifteenth century Tournaisian artists made the seven stained gla.s.s windows in the transept of the cathedral that depict in glowing colours the history of the contest between Childeric and Sigebert and the donations and privileges granted to the bishop and the cathedral by Chilperic. Not only are these scenes of the utmost interest historically, but the student of costumes and customs during the Middle Ages and the student of early Flemish art will both find in them abundant material for study. It has already been said that the cathedral of Tournai is in itself a history of Flemish architecture covering a period of well-nigh a thousand years. It is also a veritable museum of Flemish art, and especially of Tournaisian art, in almost all of its many branches.