tiful hangings
it has produced. But after a study of the purely decorative hangings
of Gothic and Renaissance work, how forced and false seem the later
gods. The value of the tapestries is enormous, they are the work of
eminent men--but the heart turns away from them and revels again in
the Primitives and the Italians of the Cinque Cento.

Repining is of little avail. The mode changes and tastes must change
with it. If the gradual decadence after the Renaissance was
deplorable, it was well that a Rubens rose in vigour to set a new and
vital copy. To meet new needs, more tones of colour and yet more, were
required by the weaver, and thus came about the making of woven
pictures.

As one picture is worth many pages of description, it were well to
observe the examples given (plate facing page 79) of the superb set of
_Antony and Cleopatra_, a series of designs attributed to Rubens,
executed in Brussels by Gerard van den Strecken. This set is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CHAPTER VIII

ITALY

FIFTEENTH THROUGH SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The history of tapestry in Italy is the story of the great families,
their romances and achievements. These families were those which
furnished rulers of provinces--kings, almost--which supplied popes as
well, and folk who thought a powerful man's pleasurable duty was to
interest himself seriously in the arts.

With the fine arts all held within her hand, it was but logical that
Italy should herself begin to produce the tapestries she was importing
from the land of the barbarians as those beyond her northern borders
were arrogantly called. First among the records is found the name of
the Gonzaga family which called important Flemish weavers down to
Mantua, and there wove designs of Mantegna, in the highest day of
their factory's production, about 1450.

Duke Frederick of Urbino is one of the early Italian patrons of
tapestry whose name is made unforgettable in this connexion by the
product of the factory he established toward the end of the Fifteenth
Century, at his court in the little duchy which included only the
space reaching from the Apennines to the Adriatic and from Rimini to
Ancona. The chief work of this factory was the _History of Troy_ which
cost the generous and enthusiastic duke a hundred thousand dollars.

The great d'Este family was one to follow persistently the art,
possibly because it habited the northern part of the peninsula and was
therefo