enri's wife, the terrible
Catherine de Medici, on which her vicious eyes rested in forming her
horrid plots; but Henri had ambitions of his own, small ambitions
beside those which had to do with jealousy of Charles Quint. He let
the factory of Francis I languish, but carried on the art under his
own name and fame.

To give his infant industry a home he looked about Paris and decided
upon the Hopital de la Trinite, an institution where asylum was found
for the orphans of the city who seem, in the light of the general
brutality of the time, to have been even in more need of a home than
the parentless child of modern civilisation. A part of the scheme was
to employ in the works such children as were sufficiently mature and
clever to work and to learn at least the auxiliary details of a craft
that is also an art.

In this way the sixty or so of the orphans of La Trinite were given a
means of earning a livelihood. Among them was one whose name became
renowned. This was Maurice du Bourg, whose tapestries surpassed all
others of his time in this factory--an important factory, as being one
of the group that later was merged into the Gobelins.

It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind
that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things
Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his
school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but
in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world
found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinite
that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an
underscoring. This set was composed of fifteen pieces illustrating in
sweeping design and gorgeous colouring the _History of Mausolus and
Artemisia_. Intense local and personal interest was given to the set
by making an open secret of the fact that by Artemisia, the Queen of
Halicarnassus, was meant the widowed Queen of France, Catherine de
Medici, who adored posing as the most famous of widows and adding
ancient glory to her living importance. To this _History_ French
writers accord the important place of inspirer of a distinctively
French Renaissance.

The weaver being Maurice du Bourg, the chief of the factory of La
Trinite, the artists were Henri Lerambert and Antoine Carron, but the
set has been many times copied in various factories, and Artemisia has
symbolised in turn two other widowed queens of France