Illustration: Edward Burne-Jones. The Attainment tapestry design.
One of the most popular style projections of the Victorians, particularly in Britain, was that of the medieval. Although the Gothic Revivals main period was between about 1840 and 1870, re-enactments and reinterpretations were still proving popular with both artists and designers, as well as the general public, right up until the end of the century and indeed beyond.
How the Victorians visually interpreted the medieval world is an interesting one as it was often portrayed in textile formats, particularly within the medium of tapestry. Tapestry was seen by many of those fascinated with all things medieval, as being a craft that was steeped in the traditions of this early period and one that had a natural affinity to the era. Although many original medieval tapestries were often actually embroideries rather than woven tapestries, it mattered little to the average Victorian with their propensity to project their needs and wants onto past cultural periods, ignoring the areas that might well have troubled them and their interpretations. We do the same today and often reflect our own imaginings and concerns onto periods that would have had difficulty recognising our versions of their worlds.
Although the Victorian interpretation of the medieval was an obvious nineteenth century construct, it is often the same one that we ourselves popularly project on to that medieval world and sometimes for similar reasons. Many of us like to imagine living in a historical period, whether it be medieval, Elizabethan, Regency and so on. The premise is always that we would live in a large house and have a plentiful wardrobe of fine clothes. Most of us of course come from long generations of subsistence living peasantry and life for our ancestors was far from those imagined lifestyles. However, that is part of the fascination in projected interpretations of the past. They are no more real than our projections of the future, but they do allow us to daydream, fantasise and perhaps place ourselves, if only for a moment, beyond the normal and unimaginative constraints of contemporary everyday life, just as it did for the Victorian with their dreams of chivalry, romance and contented peasantry.
Illustration: Norwegian tapestry design, 12th century.
The Victorian practical reinterpretation of the medieval is even more interesting and can be seen through some of the examples shown in this article. There are two original medieval tapestry designs, which might well be embroidered, but can still be loosely classed as tapestries for this article, as they were classed as such in the nineteenth century. One is Norwegian and from the twelfth century, the other German and from the thirteenth century. Both show not only a lack of perspective, but more interestingly, a lack of interest in perspective. It is often a left over prejudice from the eighteenth century to infer that the medieval period forgot the classical ideals of proportion, perspective and realism, and had to resort to childlike interpretations of the world around them. Their work was often seen as crude and barbaric, and the decorative and artistic work of the period as one which cried out for the classical reawakening of the renaissance. However, for those living in the medieval world, as opposed to the eighteenth century, they would have seen the interpretation of the world on tapestry for example, as merely a stylised reflection of the world around them. It was never meant that it should be perceived as a duplicate, a copy of the real world, which they would have seen as a pointless exercise, which indeed it is.
Looking at the nineteenth century Edward Burne-Jones tapestry interpretation of the medieval world, it is interesting to note that the artist was prepared to use all of the classically derived tricks of proportion, perspective and realism to portray the world of the medieval, and none of the stylised reflections of the world as seen by the medieval creative mind. In many ways the Burne-Jones interpretation shows us how hard it was for generations of the post-renaissance period to throw away the tools of classicism no matter how hard they may have wanted to shift the emphasis away from the classical to the medieval world. Many Victorians were quite strident in their loathing of what they saw as the interruption of the creative pathway of art and decoration from the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. Many critics wished to see the nineteenth century equivalent of art and decoration as being interpreted as a continuation from the fifteenth century, leaving out the intervening classically dominated centuries, which were often seen by the English in particular as a cultural invasion from Europe that bore no affinity with the indigenous craft and decorative styles of England. That large sections of medieval creativity were also part of the on-going succession of cultural and creative invasions from Europe predictably passed them by.
Illustration: German tapestry design, 13th century.
At any rate, it is interesting to see that although the Victorians tried to re-connect with a medieval past, the intervening centuries were too wide a chasm to really bridge effectively and certainly creatively. The Victorian interpretation of the medieval world was exactly that, an interpretation. While the Gothic Revival certainly has merit as a creative movement, its projection of the medieval world was largely a false one whether culturally or creatively. Generations of classical indoctrination had led to an increasingly sterile creative world and the idea of any other viewpoint but the classical was one that was a hurdle too far for most, although to be fair, not all.
As far as the practical interpretation of the medieval world was concerned, it wasn't until the dawn of the twentieth century that the classical ideals of proportion, perspective and realism could start to be truly abandoned on a large scale or at least uncoupled from the creative world. It could be said that with the introduction of various new perspectives in the world of fine art a reconnection with the practical medieval reflection of the world, could at last be attempted.
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