Clement IX. was in the habit of making presents of Italian lace, at that period still prized in France, to Monsieur de Sorbière, with whom he had lived on terms of intimacy previous to his elevation. "He sends ruffles," cries the irritated Gaul, who looked for something more tangible, "to a man who never has a shirt."[218] NAPLES. When Davies, Barber Surgeon of London,[219] visited Naples in 1597, he writes, "Among the traffic of this city is lace of all sorts and garters." Fynes Moryson, his contemporary, declares "the Italians care not for foreign apparel, they have ruffles of Flanders linen wrought with Italian cut-work so much in use with us. They wear no lace in gold and silver, but black"; while Lassels says, all they care for is to keep a coach; their point de Venise and gold lace are all turned into horses and liveries.[220] PLATE XVIII. [Illustration: CUSHION MADE AT THE SCHOOL.--These coloured silk laces are reproductions of the sixteenth century. Size, 20 × 12 in.] PLATE XIX. [Illustration: ITALY.--Group of workers of the Brazza School, Torreano di Martignacco, Friuli, showing the different kinds of lacework done and pillows in use. Photos by Contessa di Brazza.] _To face page 70._ {71}Of this lace we find but scanty mention. In the tailor's bill of Sir Timothy Hutton, 1615, when a scholar at Cambridge, a charge is made for "four oz. and a half quarter and dram of Naples lace." And in the accounts of laces furnished for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, 1612, is noted "narrow black Naples lace, purled on both sides." The principal fabric of lace was in the Island of Ischia. Vecellio, in 1590, mentions the ladies' sleeves being trimmed with very fine thread lace.[221] Ischia lace may still be met with, and serves for trimming toilets, table-covers, curtains, etc., consisting generally of a square netting ground, with the pattern embroidered. Black silk lace also used to be made in Ischia. Much torchon lace, of well-designed patterns, was also made, similar in style to that given in Fig. 40. Though no longer fabricated in the island, the women at Naples still make a coarse lace, which they sell about the streets.[222] The _punto di Napoli_ is a bobbin lace, resembling the punto di Milano, but distinguished from it by its much rounder mesh and coarser make. Towards the middle of the last century, many of the Italian sculptors adopted an atrocious system, only to be rivalled in bad taste by those of the Lower Empire, that of dressing the individuals they modelled in the costume of the period, the colours of the dress represented in varied marbles. In the villa of Prince Valguarnera, near Palermo, were some years since many of these strange productions with rich laces of coffee-coloured point, admirably chiselled, it must be owned, in giallo antico, the long flowing ruffles and head-*tires of the ladies being reproduced in white alabaster.[223] {72}GENOA ("GENOVA LA SUPERBA").