lining to the habitat of man, and
flashes of colour for his pageants.

Under Louis XIV the pictures came thick and fast, as we have seen, but
in deep-toned, simple colour-scheme. Now, with the De Cottes as
directors at the Gobelins, and with a new reign begun, more pictures
were called for.

The splendid _History of the King_ of Louis XIV could not be
forgotten; the history of his successor must be similarly represented,
and what could this be but a series of woven paintings. The flower of
the time was an exquisitely complicated decoration on a small scale.
The larger expression was not spontaneous.

Louis XV, poor boy, was not old enough to have had many events outside
the nursery, so it took imagination--perhaps that of the elegant
profligate, Duke d'Antin--to suggest an occasion of appropriate
splendour and significance. The official reception of the Turkish
ambassador in 1721 was the subject chosen, and under the direction of
Charles Parrocel became a superb work, full of court magnificence of
the day and a valuable portrayal to us of the boyhood of the king.

The same type of big picture was continued in the series of _Hunts of
Louis XV_, lovely forest scenes wherein much unsportsmanlike elegance
displays itself in the persons of noble courtiers. The Duc d'Antin
favoured these and they were reproduced until 1745.

It is probable that the Bible fell into neglect in those days, too
heavy a volume for pointed, perfumed fingers accustomed to no books at
all. Bossuet, Voltaire, were they not obliged to set to the sonorous
music of their voices the reforming and satirical attacks on manners
and morals of the aristocrats at a time when books lay all unread? But
at the Gobelins ateliers the Bible, wiped clean of dust, was much
consulted for inspiration in cartoons. Charles Coypel dipped into the
Old Testament, and Jouvenet into the New, with the result of several
suites of tapestries of great elegance--all of which might much better
have been painted on canvas and framed.

Charles Coypel, the talented member of a talented family of painters,
also made popular the heroine _Armide_, who seemed almost to come of
the Bible, since Tasso had set her in his Christian _Jerusalem
Delivered_. The seductive palace and entrancing gardens where Renaud
was kept a prisoner, gave opportunity for fine drawing in this set.

[Illustration: HUNTS OF LOUIS XV

Gobelins, G. Audran after Cartoon by Oudry]

[Illustration: ESTH