FRANCE, PROBABLY LA MARCHE, EARLY XVI CENTURY [Sidenote: _Wool._ H. 4 _ft._ 5 _in._ W. 9 _ft._ 5 _in._ ] MILLEFLEURS WITH ANIMALS: _Millefleurs with animals on a blue ground. At the top a narrow strip of conventionalized hilly landscape._ [Sidenote: Lent by _Dikran K. Kelekian_.] Many tapestries of this type were woven in France at the end of the XVth and beginning of the XVIth century. They are one of the most successful types of tapestry decoration, the quaint animals in this piece being especially charming, and one of the most generally useful kinds of wall decoration, so that the demand for them was large and continuous. As a result, the style was produced almost without modification for over a hundred years. Only the bit of landscape at the top indicates that this was woven in the beginning of the XVIth century and not in the middle of the XVth. [Sidenote: 13] FRANCE, LATE XV CENTURY [Sidenote: _Wool._ H. 9 _ft._ 6 _in._ W. 9 _ft._ ] PASTORAL SCENE: _Two ladies have strolled into the country with their lords, who are on the way to the hunt, one with a falcon and the other with a spear and dog. On the way they have stopped to talk to a group of peasants who are tending their flocks and to play with their children. One young peasant girl is gathering a basket of grapes._ Such peasant scenes as this were much in demand during the XVth century. A piece very similar both in general spirit and in detailed drawing and facial types is in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. In this two lords are watching a large group of woodcutters. [Sidenote: Formerly in the De Zolte Collection.] The piece is an excellent illustration of the clarity of French design. Each figure stands out almost entirely detached against the background. Yet, nevertheless, the naturalness of the grouping is not sacrificed. The piece conveys extraordinarily the impression of a real scene, a common daily occurrence among people that we might reasonably expect to know, at which we are allowed to be present in spite of the intervening four hundred years. [Sidenote: Lent by _Duveen Brothers_.] Some of the tricks of drawing and the types portrayed are so very similar to those in some of the stained-glass windows of St. Etienne du Mont and of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois the cartoons must be by members of the same school, one of the groups of l'Ile de France, and may quite possibly be by the same man. [Sidenote: 14-16] FLANDERS, FIRST QUARTER XVI CENTURY [Sidenote: _Wool and Silk._ No. 14: H. 11 _ft._ 6 _in._ W. 14 _ft._ 2 _in._ ] [Sidenote: No. 15: H. 10 _ft._ 9 _in._ W. 7 _ft._ 3½ _in._ No. 16: H. 11 _ft._ W. 10 _ft._ 5 _in._ ]