ABSTRACT
The major French festivals of the latter half of the sixteenth centuty took the form of a series of “magnificences” lasting over many days, a different entertainment being provided on each day. Most of these were the traditional pastimes and exercises of chivalry, tournaments, barriers, running at the quintain, running at the ring, and so on, often performed, as was also not new, in exotic masquerade costumes, or associated with romantic plots. These were varied by mythological shows and spectacles set to music which gradually developed, as the century proceeded, into ballets de cour. One set of such magnificences was very like another; the same exercises in the same kind of disguises were repeated again and again; so were the themes of the mythological shows. The Valois Tapestries, though based on French designs referring to festivals of different dates, show us a representative set of French magnificences. There is the “Tournament” (II) in a setting of romantic allegory; the “Quintain” (VI) in masquerade dress; the “combat à la barri ère” (VII); there is a water combat in fancy-dress (I) and a land combat in fancy-dress (VIII) reflecting the dramatising of the carrousel into these more elaborate forms; there is a water f ête (III) with those singing sirens and deities of the sea which formed such a constant theme in the mythological entertainments; there is a dance and a rock with ballet-dancers on it (IV) reflecting the rise of ballet de cour out of this type of show. To pass in front of the Valois Tapestries is to have been present at a series of magnificences at the French court.
