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/586



twining about them overshadow the spot. In the distance stand several camels burdened; but behind him, some of his men, having unloaded one or two of those beasts, are opening certain gaily ornamented trunks, and looking out, no doubt, the bracelets and earrings to be afterwards given to Rebecca. In the background are fine large buildings, fortifications, a castle, and a palace-like erection conspicuous for its tall tower and cupola, besides the walls of a little town.

The piece is framed with a very elaborately designed broad border, containing accessories which show a strong leaning towards the ornamentation that grew out of the classicism that burst forth at the end of the fifteenth century all over Europe.

On the lower band, standing one at each side of a short pedestal, or rather low dado, are, back to back, two bearded grotesques, each of which is made up of a human head and face having three goats' horns growing out of the forehead, and of a wyvern's body, holding aloft in one of its claws a tall tapering torch. Further on comes a series of spaces peopled with emblematic personages, and separated from one another by two little naked winged boys standing on a highly elaborate zocle, and with the left hand swinging by a cord, at each end of which hang from a ring, and done up in bunches, fruits and flowers. In the first space is "Prudentia," bearing in her right hand a long-handled convex mirror, in her left, a human skull; in the second space, upon a sort of throne, sits "Sollicitudo," upholding in her right hand an oblong square time-piece, while on her left, with her elbow propped up by one arm of her chair, she leans her head as if buried in deep thought; in the third space sits "Animi-(Probitas)" with both her arms outstretched, as if reprovingly; in the fourth space we have "Ceres," the heathen goddess of corn: crowned with a wreath of the centaurea flowers, she carries ears of wheat in her right hand, in her left, a round flat loaf of bread; in the fifth space, "Liberalitas," who, from the emblems in her hands, must have been meant to personify not generosity but freedom, for in her right hand she shows us a hawk's jesses, with the bells and their bewits, and on her left wrist, or, as it should be phrased, the "fist," the hawk itself without jesses, bells, lunes, or tyrrits on—in fact quite free.

At the left side of the upright portion of the border, stands first, within an architectural niche, "Circumspectio," or Wariness, who, while she gathers up with her right hand her flowing garments from hindering her footsteps, with her left, holds an anchor upright, and carries on her wrist a hawk with two heads, one looking behind, the other before, fit token of keen-sightedness, which, from a knowledge of the past, strives to learn wisdom for the future. Higher up "Adjuratio" is standing, with her