Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/248

 236 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE Still more striking, though, than the shapes of clothes, even among the working classes, was the variety of their colour. Stone-cutters and carpenters worked in costumes consisting of red coat with blue trousers and caps, or in yellow coats with red trousers and caps ; others, again, are represented in light blue and green mixed with yellow and red. The merchants behind their counters also wore the same bright colours. A peasant, bringing his pig to market, wears a red hat, green coat, and brown trousers. A truckman, wheeling a hogshead before him, appears in a red coat lined with green, red cap, blue hose, and bronze riding-boots. The village dandies seemed to delight in producing ridiculous effects by the multitude of colours they wore at the same time. One side of their costume would be of one colour, while the other was composed of all the shades of the rainbow divided into different figures ; others would appear in reel from head to foot. Embroidery was also much used. In the year 1464 Bernhard Eohrbach, from Frankfort, had the sleeves of his coat so richly embroidered that they had eleven ounces of silver on them. Art in those days was a faithful portrayal of life in all its varieties and absurdities, its virtues and its vices, the caprices and the tyranny of its fashions, its wealth and luxury, its misery and its squalor. Each class and condition of humanity is in turn presented to our vision. Take, for instance, the hideous rabble in Martin Schongauer's ' Carrying of the Cross,' who are driving the Saviour to His death. They are clad in the clothes which chance or charity has given them. One has an overcoat without sleeves, and his legs are naked ; another has trousers, but his feet are bare, and his