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/578



the two serpents; in the middle, a female holding two ropes, and about her little boys carrying tall reeds, which at top expand into a cup full of fire, as she stands upright upon a pedestal over a door-way, in the tympanum of which, within a round hollow, is the bust of a man having a wine-jug on one side, and a dish filled with fire on the other; still further to the right, there is, within an oval, a child reading at a three-legged desk, and seated on the bending bough of a tree, at the foot of which is a book, and a comic mask. On the second band, the ground of which is light blue, within the doorway, coloured green, stands Hercules cross-legged, bearing in his right hand his club, and with the left upholding the lion-skin mantle. To the right, Hercules is seen wrestling; next, Hercules fighting the Nemean lion with his club; and then the hero shooting with his bow and arrows the Stymphalian birds, half human in their shape: to the left, Hercules is beheld strangling with his own hands the Nemean lion; then he is seen with this dead beast upon his shoulders as he carries it to Eurystheus; and lastly, he is shown loaded with a blue globe, marked with the signs of the zodiac, upon his back. On the third band, which is crimson, we find Hercules, leading by a chain the many-headed Cerberus from the lower world, having along with him Athena, who is seen with clasped hands, and Theseus, who is clad in armour with a reversed dart in his hand; in front lies a dead man. The middle of this band is filled in with architectural scroll-work, upon which are seated two half-bust winged figures, one male, the other female, and hanging between them a shield figured with the rape of Europa. After this central piece we come to the scene on the journey into exile of Hercules and his wife Deianira: the centaur Nessus is carrying the lady in his arms over the river Evenus, and while doing so insults her, whereupon Hercules lets fly an arrow, on hearing his wife's screams, and shoots Nessus to the heart. The whole is enclosed within a border of a crimson ground, figured with arabesques and heads of a classic character. The third band has a hermes or terminal post at each end; and, curiously enough, in the top band, and resting on the foliations, are four nests of the pelican, billing its breast and feeding its young ones with its blood; besides this we see in places two lions rampant, and regularly langued gules, being caressed by a sort of harpy: all of which would lead us to think that in the bird and the animals we have the armorial charge upon the shield, and its supporters, of the noble, but now unknown, owner for whom this piece of tapestry was originally wrought. Its fellow-piece, figured not so much with the triumphs as the festive joys of Bacchus, is in this collection.