de to God, he ordered for the church an altar-piece or dainty
gilded Gothic carving to frame the painted panels of careful
execution. When Jean de Rome executed a cartoon, he treated it in much
the same way; built up an airy Gothic structure and filled the spaces
with pretty pictures. The so-called Mazarin tapestry of Mr. Morgan's
shows this treatment at its best. Unhappily, the atelier of Jean de
Rome or Jan von Room is too sketchily portrayed in the book of the
past; its records are faint and elusive. We only hear now and then an
interested allusion, a suggestion that this or that beautiful specimen
of work has come from his atelier.

Cartoons at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century were not all
divided into their different scenes by Gothic column and arch. In much
of the fine work there was no division except a natural one, for the
picture began to develop the modern scheme of treating but one scene
in one picture. Although this might be filled with many groups, yet
all formed a harmonious whole. The practice then fell into disuse of
repeating the same individual many times in one picture.

A good example of the change and improvement in drawing which assisted
in making Brussels' supremacy and in bringing Gothic art to
perfection, is the fine hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
(Plate facing page 57.) It depicts with beautiful naivete and much
realism the discomfiture of Pharaoh and his army floundering in the
Red Sea, while the serene and elegant children of Israel contemplate
their distress with well-bred calm from the flowery banks of an
orderly park.

[Illustration: ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT

Flemish Tapestry, about 1500. Collection of Alfred W. Hoyt, Esq.]

[Illustration: CROSSING THE RED SEA

Brussels Tapestry, about 1500. Boston Museum of Fine Arts]

This tapestry illustrates so many of the important features of work
during the first period of Brussels' supremacy that it is to be
lingered over, dissected and tasted like a dessert of nuts and wine.
Should one speak first of the cartoon or of the weave, of the artist
or of the craftsmen? If it is to be the tapissier, then to him all
credit, for in this and similar work he has reached a care in
execution and a talent in translation that are inspired. Such quantity
of detail, so many human faces with their varying expressions, could
only be woven by the most adroit tapissier.

The drawing shows, first, one scene of many groups but a sole