Getting to what may be truly called art-velvets, we come to several specimens here. Some are raised or cut, the design being done in a pile standing well up by itself from out of a flat ground of silk, sometimes of the same, sometimes of another colour, and not unfrequently wrought in gold, as at pp. [18], [90], [107], [110], [263]. Then we have at No. [7795], p. 145, an example of that precious kind—velvet upon velvet—in which the ground is velvet, and again of velvet is the pattern itself, but raised one pile higher and well above the other, so as to show its form and shape distinctly. Last of all we here find samples, as in No. [8323], p. 192, how the design was done in various coloured velvet. Such was a favourite in England, and called motley; in his will, A.D. 1415, Henry Lord Scrope bequeathed two vestments, one, motley velvet rubeo de auro; the other, motley velvet nigro, rubeo et viridi, &c.[231]
[229] Archæologia, t. xxvi. pp. 337, 344.
[230] Hist. of St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, pp. 318, 329.
[231] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. 9, p. 274.
Venice does not seem to have been at any time, like Sicily and Lucca, smitten with the taste of imitating in her looms at home the patterns which she saw abroad upon textile fabrics, but appears to have borrowed from the Orientals only one kind of weaving cloth of gold: the yellow chasuble at Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, figured with beasts, cum bestiis crocei coloris,[232] is the solitary instance we know, upon which she wove, like the east, animals upon silks. She, however, set up for herself a new branch of textiles, and wrought for church use certain square webs of a crimson ground on which she figured, in gold, or on yellow silk, subjects taken from the New Testament, or the persons of saints and angels. These square pieces were as they yet are, employed, when sewed together in squares as frontals to altars, but when longwise much more generally as orphreys to chasubles, copes and other vestments. Of such stuffs must have been those large orphreys upon a dalmatic and tunicle, at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, A.D. 1295. [233]
Though not of so early a date as the thirteenth century, there are in this collection specimens of this Venetian web belonging to the sixteenth, which are very fine, No. [5900], p. 112, represents the resurrection of our Lord; so does No. [8976], p. 271, while No. [8978], p. 272, presents us with the coronation of the Virgin, and No. [8976], the Virgin and the Child, as also No. [1335], p. 71. Far below in worth are the same kind of webs wrought at Cologne, as will be noticed just now.
Any one that has ever looked upon the woodcuts done at Venice in the sixteenth century, such as illustrate, for instance, the Roman Pontifical, published by Giunta, the “Rosario della G. V. Maria,” by Varisco, and other such religious books from the Venetian press, will, at a glance, find on the webs before us from that state, the self-same style and manner in drawing, the same broad, nay, majestic fold and fall of drapery, and in the human form the same plumpness, and not unfrequently with the facial line almost straight; and there, but more especially about the hands and feet, a somewhat naturalistic shape; so near is the likeness in design that one is led to think that the men who cut the blocks for the printers also worked for the weavers of Venice, and sketched out the drawings for their looms.
By the fifteenth century Venice knew how to produce good damasks in silk and gold, and of an historiated kind: if we had nothing more than the specimen, No. [1311], p. 54, where St. Mary of Egypt is so well represented, it would be quite enough for her to claim for herself such a distinction. That like her neighbours, Venice wrought in velvet, there can be little or no doubt, and if she it was who made those deep piled stuffs, sometimes raised, sometimes pile upon pile, in which her painters loved to dress the personages, men especially, in their pictures, then, of a truth, Venetian velvets were beautiful. Of this, any one may satisfy himself by one visit to our National Gallery. There, in the “Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Paulo Veronese, A.D. 1573, the second of the wise men is clad in a robe all made of crimson velvet, cut or raised after a design quite in keeping with the style of the period.
No insignificant article of Venetian textile workmanship was her laces wrought in every variety—in gold, in silk, in thread. The portrait of a Doge usually shows us that dignitary clothed in his dress of state. His wide mantle, having such large golden buttons, is made of some rich dull silver cloth; and upon his head is that curiously Phrygian-shaped ducal cap bound round with broad gold lace diapered after some nice pattern, as we see in the bust portrait of Doge Loredano, painted by John Bellini, and now in our National Gallery. Not only was the gold in the thread particularly good, but the lace itself in great favour at our court during one time, where it used to be bought, not by yard measure, but by weight; a pounde and a half of gold of Venys was employed “aboutes the making of a lace and botons for the king’s mantell of the garter.” [234] “Frenge of Venys gold,” appears twice, pp. 136, 163, in the wardrobe accounts of Edward IV.
Laces in worsted or in linen thread wrought by the bobbin at Venice; but more especially her point laces, or such as were done with the needle, always had, as indeed they still have, a great reputation: sewed to table-covers, two specimens are found in this collection, described at p. [141].