down, over a brick arch leans a lady, to whom a gaily-dressed man is offering money or a trinket, which he has just drawn forth from his open gipcière hanging at his girdle. Below sits a lady arrayed in a white robe, the skirts of which she has drawn and folded back upon her lap to show her scarlet petticoat. She is listening to a huntsman pranked out with a belt strung with little bells; falling from his girdle hangs in front a buglehorn, and his left hand holds the leash of his dog with a fine collar on. Over this spruce youth is an unmistakable real field labourer with a Flemish botte, or wooden cradle, filled with chumps and sticks, upon his back; and before him walk two dogs, one of which carries a pack or cloth over his shoulders. Still higher up is a wind-*mill, toward which a man bearing a sack is walking.
In both these pieces, which are fellows, and wrought for the hangings of the same chamber, the drawing of the figures, with the accessories of dress, silks, and even field-flowers, is admirable, and the grouping well managed: altogether, they are valuable links in the chain for the study and illustration of the ancient art of tapestry.
1297.
Piece of Tapestry Hanging; ground, green sprinkled with flowers, and sentence-bearing scrolls; design, steps in a religious life, figured in five compartments. West German, late 15th century. 12 feet by 2 feet 10 inches.
1. A young well-born maiden, with a narrow wreath about her unveiled
head, and dressed in pink, is saying her prayers kneeling on the
flowery green ground, with these words traced on the scrolls twined
gracefully above her,—"Das wir Maria kindt in trew mage werden
so . . . t ich myn gnade . . . n af erden;" "Let us become like to
Mary's child, (so) we shall deserve mercy on earth."
2. Seated on a chair, with a book upon his lap, is an ecclesiastic, in a white habit and black scapular. To this priest the same young lady is making confession of her sins; and the scrolls about this group say,—"Vicht di sunde mit ernst sonder spot so findestic Godez trew gnadt;" "Fight against sin with earnestness and without feigning; you will find the true mercy of God."—"Her myn sunde vil ich ach dagen uff das mir Gots trew moge behagen;" "Lord, I will mourn over my sin, in order that the truth of God may comfort me."
