student and the lover of decorative art. Mr. Blumenthal has graciously
placed them on exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. Fortunate they who can absorb their beauty.

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.

[Illustration: TAPESTRIES FOR HEAD AND SIDE OF BED

Renaissance designs. Royal Collection of Madrid]

[Illustration: THE STORY OF REBECCA

Brussels Tapestry. Sixteenth Century. Collection of Arthur Astor
Carey, Esq., Boston]

And so it came that the Renaissance swept all before it in the world
of tapestry. More than that, with the increase of culture and of
wealth, with the increased mingling of the peoples of Europe after the
raid of Charles V into Italy, the demand for tapestries enormously
increased. They were wanted for furnishing of homes, they were wanted
as gifts--to brides, to monarchs, to ambassadors. And they were wanted
for splendid decoration in public festivals. They had passed beyond
the stage of