which accepted it, just as it had been influenced in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries by metal-work motives, and, before
then, by the art of mosaic.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Spanish plateresque
embroideries (adopted and modified in Flanders and in France),
consisting of heavy gold and silver arabesques of mutilated vegetable
forms, superseded the graceful Renaissance of the classical
taste.[531] These Spanish embroideries forced their way by their
gorgeousness, in spite of their want of real beauty. They varied their
effects with pearls, corals, and precious stones[532] (plate 69).

Spain, though she was much despoiled during the Peninsular War by her
French invaders, yet still possesses some of the finest ecclesiastical
work in the sacristies of Seville, Granada, Burgos, Toledo, Segovia,
and Barcelona. Don Juan F. Riano[533] says that Toledo is a perfect
museum of the work of the sixteenth century.

Sicilian and Neapolitan ecclesiastical needlework showed the Spanish
taste of their masters, but not its perfection. The use of pearls,
coral, and beads[534] prevailed, and we may in general affix its date
and its origin to each specimen by the silver largely used in the two
kingdoms of Sicily and rarely elsewhere; also by the extreme
brilliancy or rather the gaudiness of its colouring.

English ecclesiastical work came suddenly to an end at the
Reformation. What was not destroyed is to be found in the possession
of the old Roman Catholic families who have religiously collected the
residue, preserved by concealment or by being overlooked; and in the
wardrobes of Continental sacristies.[535]

But the church decorations of France, Germany, Flanders, Spain, and
Italy have meantime, for the last 300 years, gone through all the
variations of lay styles, emanating from anything but ecclesiastical
motives. First, the Renaissance's semi-pagan (so-called) arabesques;
then the Spanish plateresque, which was a revolt against their own
bastard Moorish-Gothic; next, the "Louis Quatorze," followed by the
"Louis Quinze" and the "Louis Seize," light, frivolous, and elegant,
essentially social, and not serious.[536] Then a return to the
classical of the Empire; and finally, since the beginning of this
century, to a conglomerate, lawless imitation of forms and styles,
utterly meaningless and uninteresting, as well as wanting in
ecclesiastical dignity and decorum. We are glad to believe that we are
ourselves str