robably originated
in hangings for the wall; but have been treated as decorative forms,
both by the Indians and the Greeks, for wearing apparel. The peplos of
Minerva was bordered with fighting gods and giants, and the Empress
Theodora's dress in the Ravenna mosaic repeats exactly the same
motive. (See Fig. 4, and Pl. 6.)

There are two other examples of such Greek patterns. The mantle of
Demeter on a Greek vase in the British Museum, of the best period (Pl.
16), is embroidered with flying genii and victorious chariots; and the
embroidered mantle lately found in a Crimean tomb, is of precisely the
same style of design, and the one illustrates the other. These
instances are so exceptional, that it is curious that here, as in the
case of the peplos, in each case there should happen to be a
duplicate. (Plates 16 and 17, No. 1.)

In Babylonian, Assyrian, and Chaldean art we constantly find animal
forms in patterns. The lion and the hare, birds and insects, are the
commonest; and there are some instances of human figures reduced to a
pattern in these sculptured representations of textiles. (Plate 2.)

There are curiously woven little human figures finished with the
needle on the sleeve of an Egyptian dress in the British Museum, from
Saccarah (Pl. 18), and, of course, when such a design is small, it
ceases to be very objectionable. On the whole, however, naturalistic
designs for embroideries are more safely confined to floral
decorations, excepting always flat tapestries for walls, which,
representing pictures, may be as naturalistic as their purpose and
style will admit.

Animal forms are often reduced to patterns by repetition in Indian
and Persian embroidery.[105] The drawing is naturalistic, but the
colouring is fanciful. We may see any day, on Persian rugs, scarlet
lions pursuing and capturing blue or yellow hares. The flatness and
want of all shadows tends to the conventional. Lions, bulls, cats,
beetles, and serpents abound especially in Egyptian design; insects,
reptiles, and fish in Asiatic patterns, where animals are sometimes
made to walk in pairs, with their heads and tails twisted into a
pattern.

Though landscapes are so rarely worked that the subject is, perhaps,
hardly worthy of notice, yet such mistaken specimens of ingenuity have
occurred. An altar frontal was exhibited at Zurich, in 1883,
containing some really exquisitely worked landscapes, which were quite
out of place, both as art and as decorati