softly in
alluring decadence into a mere tickling of the senses. And at this
time the productions of great tapestries stopped.

Before leaving the review of drawing or design, it is well to recall
that the fleeting fashions of the day usually set the models, not in
the manner of treatment which we have been considering broadly, but in
the subject of designs. For example, the tendency to religious and
morality subjects in the Gothic, the love for Greek gods and heroes in
the Renaissance, the glorification of kings and warriors at all times,
and the portrayal of royal pleasures in modern times. The months of
the year were woven in innumerable designs and formed an endless theme
for artists' ingenuity during and after the Renaissance.

BORDERS

It is but natural that, with the expansion in drawing, the freedom
given the pencil, imagination leaped outside the pictured scene and
worked fantastically on the border, and it is to the border that we
turn for many a mark of identification. The subject being a full one,
it has longer consideration in a separate chapter. First there is the
simple outlying tape, then the designed border. The early Gothic was
but a narrow line of flowers and berries; the later more sophisticated
Gothic enlarged and elaborated this same motive without introducing
another. The blossoms grew larger, the fruit fuller and the modest
cluster of berries was crowded by pears, apples and larger fruit,
until a general air of full luxury was given. The design was at first
kept neatly within bordering lines of tape, but later, overleaped them
with a flaunting leaf or mutinous flower.

Ribbons appeared early, then came fragmentary glimpses of dainty
columns which gave nice reasons for the erect upstanding of so heavy a
decoration. These all were Gothic, but what came after shows the
riotous imagination of the Renaissance. It seemed in that fruitful
time, space itself were not large enough to hold the designs within
the artist's brain. Certainly no corner of a tapestry could be left
unfilled, and not that alone, but filled with perfect pictures instead
of with a simple repeated scheme of decoration. It was in this rich
time of production that the borders of tapestries grew to exceeding
width, and were divided into squares, each square containing a scene.
These scenes were often of sufficient importance in composition to
serve as models for the centre of a tapestry, each one of them, which
thought gives a l