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/577



seen a few goats; and further on still, a building with pillars, very likely a well. This fancy piece is surrounded by a border figured with ornamentation, and though it be small and made to fit some panel in a room, is a good specimen of its time, and seems to have come from the same hands that designed and wrought the Diogenes pieces.

Tapestry; design, within a crimson border ornamented, in white, with scroll-work after a classic character, a large mythologic, perhaps Bacchanal subject. French, 17th century.

Upheld by pilasters and columns wreathed with branches of the vine, we see a wide entablature coloured crimson and blue, figured with tripods, vases, and other fanciful arabesque ornamentation, and amid these, heathen gods and goddesses, centaurs, birds, and groups of satyrs. Below, and between the pilasters and columns, a male figure is playing the double pipe, women are carrying fruits in dishes, another is dancing, and some high personages feasting at a table, with some men looking on. Lowermost of all is another scene, in which we have little naked boys, satyrs carrying grapes, and an ass laden with them, and other satyrs pouring into vases the red wine which they are getting from a fountain brim full of it. A border of a crimson ground figured in places with full-faced heads, and all over with small figures, the draperies of which are shaded in gold now quite black, and arabesques after a classic form, goes round the whole piece, which is fellow to another showing the labours of Hercules, in this collection. In the tapestry before us, all the subjects are so Bacchanalian that we must suppose that the designer meant to set forth the ways of the god of wine. Like the drawing in the Hercules piece, the drawing here is good; but the piece itself is in a somewhat bad condition.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, the labours of Hercules. Flemish, late 17th century. 21 feet 6 inches by 16 feet.

This large piece is divided into three broad horizontal bands; on the first of these, upon a dark blue ground, amid arabesques and monsters after classic models, are observable the infant Hercules strangling