In the sixteenth century, when private luxury and pomp were taking the place of the earlier religious feelings and beliefs which had so greatly fostered the decorative arts, bindings as costly as those of the _Altar-textus_ of the great Cathedral and Abbey churches were again made at the command of wealthy patrons. Thus, for example, Cardinal Grimani had his famous _Breviary_[299] bound in crimson velvet, the greater part of which is concealed by the most elaborate mounts, clasps, corner-pieces and borders of solid gold, of the most exquisite workmanship, decorated with a medallion portrait head of the Cardinal himself. So also the very similar _Horae_ of Albert of Brandenburg[300] is decorated with clasps and other mounts of pure gold; and an immense number of other sumptuous bindings, rich with embossed and chased gold, studded with precious gems, were made to enshrine the costly manuscripts of Giulio Clovio and other famous miniaturists of the sixteenth century period of decadence. _Bindings of needlework._ At the close of the fifteenth century or rather earlier, the custom became popular of having _Horae_ and other manuscripts owned by wealthy secular personages bound in velvet, richly decorated with embroidery in gold and silver thread and silk mixed with a great number of seed pearls. The arms, badges and initials of the owner are the commonest designs for these embroideries. Some of the German examples of this class of binding are especially elaborate and magnificent; but on the whole this method of decoration is not at all suited for covering books. _Works on bindings._ With regard to books on the subject of early bindings; it is much to be regretted that existing works, of which there are a great many, especially in French, all begin just about the period when bindings of the greatest interest and the truest artistic value were no longer made. Plenty has been written about the costly bindings in which Grolier, Maioli, and other wealthy book-buyers had their purchases encased, but no work exists on the bindings of the mediaeval period, when, frequently, the covers of a manuscript were as much a labour of love as the illuminated pages within. The sixteenth century binders, who worked for Grolier and other rich patrons of art, lived at the verge of a commercial epoch, and though their works are often very pretty and technically of high merit, yet they cannot be compared, as true works of art, with the bindings of the period before printing was invented. _Small cost of MSS._