g, the Gothic lettering, the panelling, and a narrow border
of such design as suggests rose-windows or other lace-like carving.
Here is noticeable, too, the sumptuous brocades in figures far too
large for the human form to wear, figures which diminished greatly a
very few decades later.

The Institute of Art, Chicago, possesses an interesting piece of the
period showing another treatment of a similar subject. (Plate facing
page 48.) In this the columns are omitted, the planes are increased,
and there is an entire absence of the triptych or altar-piece style of
drawing which we associate with the primitive artists in painting.

We have seen in this slight review that Paris was in a fair way to
cover the castle walls and floors of noble lords with her high loom
and _sarrazinois_ products, when the English occupation ruined the
prosperity of the weaver's guild. Arras supplied the enormous demand
for tapestries through Europe, and made a lasting fame. But this
little city, too, had to go down before the hard conditions of the
Conqueror. Louis XI, in 1477, possessed himself of the town after the
death of the last-famed Burgundian duke, Charles the Bold, and under
his eccentric persecutions the guild of weavers scattered. He saw too
late his mistake. But other towns benefited by it, towns whither the
tapissiers fled with their art.

There had also been much trouble between the last Duke of Burgundy and
his Flemish cities. His extravagances and expeditions led him to make
extraordinary demands upon one town and another for funds, and even to
make war upon them, as at Liege, the battles of which conflict were
perpetuated in tapestries. Let us trust that no Liegois weaver was
forced to the humiliation of weaving this set.

This disposition to work to his own ultimate undoing was encouraged in
the duke, wherever possible, by the crafty Louis XI, who had his own
reasons for wishing the downfall of so powerful a neighbour. And thus
it came that Arras, the great tapestry centre, was at first weakened,
then destroyed by the capture of the town by Louis XI immediately
after the tragic death of the duke in 1477.

Thus everything was favourable to the Brussels factories, which began
to produce those marvels of workmanship that force from the world the
sincerest admiration. It is frankly asserted that toward the end of
the century, or more accurately, during the reigns of Charles VIII and
Louis XII (1483-1515), tapestry attained a d