d,
with a great bear and griffin, and 400 'pencils' with the 'ragged
staff' in silver." This mode lasted some time; for in 1538, Barbara
Mason bequeathed to a church a "vestment of green silk beaten with
gold." Probably this beaten gold was really very thick gold-leaf laid
on the silk or linen ground, as we see still in some Sicilian and Arab
tissues. The embroidered banners taken from Charles le Temeraire, at
Grandson, are finished with broad borders of gilded inscriptions, such
as might be called beaten gold work.[212]

But besides this thick gold-leaf, there was another mode of enriching
embroideries. Laminae of gold were cut into shapes, and finished the
work by accentuating the design in Eastern embroideries; They are
found also in Greek tombs, and in the Middle Ages they varied from the
little golden spangle to many other forms--circular rings, stars,
crescents, moons, leaves, and solid pendant wedges of gold, all which
approached the art of the goldsmith.

[Illustration: Fig. 19.
Spangles.]

Enamel was soon added to the enrichment of these golden spangles,
plates, or discs, which were enlarged to receive a design.[213] Of
this style of embellishment we know none so striking as the saddle in
the Museum at Munich, said to have been taken from a Turkish general
in the fifteenth century. This is Italian of the finest cinque-cento
style: blue velvet, covered with beautiful gold embroidery, and
every vacant space filled with spangles of endless forms, and of
precious goldsmiths' and enamellers' work. The Persian stirrups
attached to it are of a totally different style of enamelling and
jewellery, and speak for themselves, and for the school they came
from.[214]

[Illustration: Pl. 33.
Window Hanging, by Gentil Bellini, from a Portrait of Mahomet II.,
property of Sir H. Layard.]

Dr. Rock describes part of a chasuble wrought by Isabella of Spain and
her maids of honour, in which the flowing design is worked out in
small moulded spangles of gold and silver, set so as to overlap each
other and give the effect of scales.

To a late period, gold and silver embroideries, enriched with
spangles, have been lavished on the head-dresses and stomachers of the
peasantry throughout the north of Europe and Switzerland.[215]

Pearls and gems, either threaded like beads, or in golden settings,
are to be studied in the early pictures of the German and French
schools; and the Anglo-Saxons excelled in such