h we have no notice till the tenth century,
shares many of the rules which hitherto had applied only to
embroideries. It was intended to give colour and interest to those
parts of a building which otherwise were cold and lifeless. _Flatness_
in the composition, and the avoidance of pictorial effects (especially
any perspectives) show that it was intended for conventional
decoration, rather than as a rival to mural painting. There is no
doubt that it generally superseded textile hangings, because it
supplied the want of colour for the large traceried windows just
coming into architectural design, toning down the crudeness of the
masses of light, and tinting the walls and pavements on which it was
cast.

When coloured glass came into general use, embroidered hangings mostly
disappeared. Whatever may have been the cause, there is no doubt of
the coincidence.

[Illustration: Pl. 68.
An embroidered Panel, designed by Pollaiolo, and worked by Paulo
da Verona. In the Church of St. Giovanni at Florence (fifteenth
century).]

The applied embroideries of the north of Germany were evidently
inspired by the newly-discovered art of glass-painting, and
resemble its designs, both in the compositions of figures and heraldic
subjects. Of this we may remember examples in the Scandinavian
Exhibition at South Kensington in 1881.[529]

All the most beautiful and picturesque needlework that we possess of
the true ecclesiastical Gothic type, and which belongs to the perfect
flowering of the art, is of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
just before the spirit of the Renaissance crept northward over Europe,
preceding the Reformation and its iconoclastic effacements. This
remark especially applies to England.[530] The art of representing
Scriptural subjects in flat stitches, as medallions accompanied by
beautiful foliage, and heraldic designs, is illustrated to us by the
palls belonging to several London companies--and by those belonging to
churches, especially that of the church at Dunstable, in which court
ladies, knights, and saints form a most artistic border--the costumes
being of the date of Henry VII. (see p. 378, _post_).

The perfection of the embroideries of Flanders of that period has
never been exceeded, and it continues still to produce the most
splendidly executed compositions in gold and silken needlework, of
every variety of stitches. The Flemish work and its peculiar mode of
laying golden groun