But a very few people, at the present moment, have the faintest idea about the labour, the money, the length of time often bestowed of old upon embroideries which had been sketched as well as wrought by the hands of men, each in his own craft the ablest and most cunning of that day. In behalf of this our own land, we may gather evidences strewed all over the present Introduction: as a proof of the self-same doings elsewhere, may be set forth a remarkable passage given, in his life of Antonio Pollaiuolo, by Vasari, where he says: "For San Giovanni in Florence there were made certain very rich vestments after the design of this master, namely, two dalmatics, a chasuble, and a cope, all of gold-wove velvet with pile upon pile—di broccato riccio sopra riccio—each woven of one entire piece and without seam, the bordering and ornaments being stories from the life of St. John, embroidered with the most subtile mastery of that art by Paolo da Verona, a man most eminent of his calling, and of incomparable ingenuity: the figures are no less ably executed with the needle than they would have been if Antonio had painted them with the pencil; and for this we are largely indebted to the one master for his design, as well as to the other for his patience in embroidering it. This work took twenty-six years for its completion, being wholly in close stitch—questi ricami fatti con punto serrato—which, to say nothing of its durability, makes the work appear as if it were a real picture limned with the pencil; but the excellent method of which is now all but lost, the custom being in these days to make the stitches much wider—il punteggiare piu largo—whereby the work is rendered less durable and much less pleasing to the eye.[1] These vestments may yet be seen framed and glazed in presses around the sacristy of San Giovanni.[2] Antonio died A.D. 1498. The magnificent cope once belonging to Westminster Abbey, and now at Stonyhurst and exhibited here, A.D. 1862, is of one seamless piece of gorgeous gold tissue figured with bold wide-spreading foliage in crimson velvet, pile upon pile, and dotted with small gold spots; it came, it is likely, from the same loom that threw off these San Giovanni vestments, at Florence."
