A Bed-Quilt; ground, green silk; design, in the middle the goddess Flora, around her large flowers and branches, amid which are birds (doves?), and hares climbing up the boughs, all in floss-silk of very showy colours, with a deep border of flowers, worked upon dark net. Italian, 18th century. 8 feet 3 inches by 6 feet.
Such coverlets were, as they still are, used for throwing over beds in the day-time. The flowers, both on the silk and the netting, are so embroidered as to show the same, like East Indian needlework, on both sides. The love for lively colour, not to say garishness, was such as to lead the hand that wrought this piece to render the branches of some of the parts parti-coloured in white and crimson. Other specimens of embroidered net may be seen at Nos. [623], [624], [4462].
PART THE SECOND.
Tapestry.
1296.
Pieces of Tapestry Hanging, figured with poetic pastoral scenes. Flemish, perhaps wrought at Audenaerde, in the first half of the 16th century. 29 feet 4 inches by 11 feet.
Soon after the early part of the 16th century, there sprang up throughout Europe a liking for pastoral literature as seen in Virgil’s eclogues: poets sung their dreams of the bliss to be found in rustic life, in which sports and pastimes, amid well-dressed revelry and music, with nought of toil or drudgery belonging to it, formed the yearly round; and in summer tide, nobles and their ladies loved to rove the woods and fields, and play at gentle shepherdism. How such frolics were carried out we learn from the tapestry before us, which, in many of its features, is near akin to those low reliefs of the same subject that adorn the walls in the court-yard of the curious and elaborately ornamented Hotel de Bourgtheroud, at Rouen.
At the left-hand side, lying on a flowery bank, is a gentleman shepherd, whose broad-toed shoes and thick cloth leggings, fastened round the knees and about the ancles, are rather conspicuous. On the brim of his large round white hat is a sort of square ticket, coloured. From his waist hangs a white satchel, bearing outside various appliances, such as countrymen want. Over him stands, with a tall spud in her hands, a youthful lady dressed in a scarlet robe, and wearing her satchel by her side, a thin gauze cap, not a hat, is on her head, and with her hand upraised she seems to be giving emphasis to what she says to her friend upon the ground.
In the middle of this piece is a group, consisting of four characters, all of whom are playing at some game of forfeits. A young lady clad in blue satin, with the usual rustic pouch slung at her side, is sitting on the flowery grass, with her hands on the shoulders of a youth at her feet, and hiding his face in her lap. Standing over him and about to strike his open palm is another youth in a blue tunic turned up with red, and holding a spud. Behind the blindfolded youth stands a young lady, whose flaxen locks fall from under a broad-brimmed crimson hat, upon her shoulders over her splendid robe, the crimson ground of which is nearly hidden by the broad diapering of gold most admirably shown upon it.