That treasure-house in Madrid which belongs to the royal family contains a set which bears the same ear-marks as the Blumenthal tapestries. It is the set called The Loves of Vertumnus and Pomona. (Plates facing pages [72], [73], [74] and [75].) Here is the same manner of dress, the same virility, the same fulness of decoration. Yet the Mercury is drawn with finer art.
The delight in perfected detail belonging to the Italian school of artists resulted in an arrangement of grotesques. Who knows that the goldsmith’s trade was not responsible for these tiny fantastics, as so many artists began as apprentices to workers in gold and silver? This evidence of talented invention must be observed, for it set the fashion for many a later tapestry, notably the Grotesque Months of the Seventeenth Century. Mingled with verdure and fruit, it is seen in work of the Eighteenth Century. But in its original expression is it the most talented. There we find that intellectual plan of design, that building of a perfect whole from a subtle combination of absolutely irreconcilable and even fabulous objects. Yet all is done with such beguiling art that both mind and eye are piqued and pleased with the impossible blending of realism and imagination.
Bacchiacca drew a filigree of attenuated fancies, threw them on a ground of single delicate colour, and sent them for weave to the celebrated masters, John Rost and Nicholas Karcher. (Plates facing pages [84] and [85].) These men at that time (1550) had set their Flemish looms in Italy.
![[See larger image]](#8958526208864448133_tapestry046.jpg.id-7906159109712105553.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED
Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid
