7927 to 7930.
Four Pieces of Tapestry; ground, light blue; design, flowers. French, present century. Presented by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor Napoleon III.
Beauvais, which produced these beautiful specimens, has long been
famous for the works of the loom; and the present lovely figures of such
well-drawn, nicely-coloured flowers are worthy of that city's reputation.
594.
Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Esther about to venture into the presence of Ahasuerus. From the Soulages Collection. Flemish, first half of the 16th century. Height 13 feet, breadth 11 feet 6 inches.
The history, as here shown us, of a most eventful achievement, is
at top distributed into four groups, each made up of figures rather
small in stature; and at bottom, into other five clusters, in which all
the personages assume a proportion little short of life-size.
Beginning with those higher compartments on the piece, we find in the two at the left-hand side the commencement of this Scriptural record. The mighty Ahasuerus is presented to us in the second of those two groups there, as seated amid trees, and robed as would have been a sovereign prince during the first half of the sixteenth century. All about his head and neck the Persian king wears, wrapped in loose folds, a linen cloth, over which he has a large scarlet hat with an ornament for a crown, made up of small silver shield-shaped plates, marked with wedge-like stripes of a light blue colour, or heraldically, argent, five piles azure meeting at the base; over his shoulders falls an unspotted ermine cape jagged all about its edge so as to look as if meant for a nebulée border. Upon the left breast of this sort of mantle is sewed a little crimson shield-shaped badge marked in white seemingly with the letter A, not having, however, the stroke through it, but above, the sign of contraction dashed. He wears a blue tabard, is girt with a sword, and holds in his left hand a tall wand, that golden sceptre
