Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/552



man born blind, who has just come back from washing in the pool of Siloam, and is answering his neighbours who had hitherto known him as the blind beggar. In front stands an important personage in a tunic of cloth of gold shot light blue, over which he wears a shorter one of fine crimson diapered in gold, having a broad jewelled hem; of a rich gold stuff is his lofty turban. In his left hand he holds a long wand, ending in an arrow-shaped head. At the feet of this high functionary kneels the poor man blessed with sight, while he is taking from him a something like a square glass bottle, and holds his coarse hat in his hand. Near but above him stands a lady wearing a most curious head-dress, which is blue, with two red wings bristling at its sides. The rest of her array is exactly like, in shape and stuffs, to the magnificent apparel of the first portly male figure, so as to lead us to believe that she must be his wife, himself being one of the Jewish chief priests. Talking with her is another Jew splendidly dressed, and bearing a wand in one hand; and behind her we see a man wearing ear-rings, and a woman belonging to the lower class—probably the cured man's father and mother. Not far away from the priest, and at his back, are soldiers with lances, and one with a halbert, before whom stands a well-dressed, mantled and hooded Pharisee, with a rolled-up volume in his hand, and looking with a somewhat haughty scowl upon the man kneeling on the ground. Above the walls are seen the domes of several large buildings, of which one looks as if it were the temple of Jerusalem; and all about the battlements are people gazing down upon the scene beneath them.

So Flemish is the Gothic style of architecture on the gates, around which are mock inscriptions, and on the walls of the city, that we find at once that the tapestry must have been designed and wrought in Flanders. Though the shapes of the dresses be for the most part quite imaginary, still the diapering on the gorgeous cloths of gold is after the style then in vogue and well rendered.

1481.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Neptune stilling the wind-storm raised at Juno's request by Æolus against the Trojan fleet on the Sicilian coast. Flemish, 17th century.

Evidently the designer of this tapestry meant to illustrate Virgil at the beginning of his first book of the Æneid. To the left hand is seen