Excerpt from A Handbook to the Loan Exhibition of French Tapestries, Mediaeval, Renaissance, and Modern, From the Public and Private Collections of France: Arranged Through the Courtesy of the French Government, November 21, 1947, to February 29, 1948 The Gobelins and Beauvais factories have been renowned the world over for some three hundred years. Aubusson and Felletin, whose work in the past was somewhat coarser, have with their present-day production attained the same high reputation. Paint ers, dyers, and weavers, vying in intelligence, taste, and knowledge, have drawn world-wide attention to this rejuvenated and ever more vital art. They have reanimated French tapestry without deserting its soundest traditions. These traditions have remained faithful, or rather have returned across the centuries, to the most decorative achievements of the art, the tapestries of the Middle Ages. Regard the thickness of those mediaeval webs; count their relatively few colors and admire the freshness and vigor they retain in spite of their age; wonder at the daring that went into the design of the Apocalypse of Angers, or at that charming fantasy which, against all likelihood, spangles the fields of certain tapestries with a thousand flowers consider that deliberate rejection of a too strict realism, that elevated fantasy which conceived the Lady with the Unicorn. Then turn to our modems and see what a salutary lesson they have drawn from all this, with what perceptiveness they have recaptured the savor of the mediaeval tapestries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.