By the fifteenth century Venice knew how to produce good damasks in silk and gold: if we had nothing more than the specimen, no. 1311, where St. Mary of Egypt is so well represented, it would be quite enough for her to claim for herself such a distinction. Nor can there be much doubt that Venice wrought in velvet; and if those rich stuffs were made there, sometimes raised, sometimes pile upon pile, in which her painters loved to dress the personages, men especially, in their pictures, then Venetian velvets were certainly beautiful. Of this any one may satisfy himself by one visit to our National gallery. There, in the “Adoration of the magi” painted by Paulo Veronese, the second of the wise men is clad in a robe of crimson velvet, cut or raised after a design in keeping with the style of the period. No insignificant article of Venetian textile workmanship were her laces wrought in every variety; in gold, in silk, in thread. The portrait of a Doge usually shows him clothed in his dress of state. His wide mantle, with large golden buttons, is made of some rich dull silver cloth; and on his head is the Phrygian-shaped ducal cap bound round with broad gold lace diapered, as we see in the bust portrait of Loredano, painted by John Bellini, in the National gallery. Not only was the gold in the thread particularly good but the lace itself in great favour at the English court at one time; bought, not by yard measure but by weight, “a pounde and a half of gold of Venys” was employed “aboute the making of a lace and botons for the king’s mantell of the garter.” This was for Henry the seventh. “Frenge of Venys gold” appears twice in the wardrobe accounts of Edward the fourth. Laces in worsted or in linen thread wrought by the bobbin at Venice, but more especially her point laces or such as were done with the needle, always had, as they still have, a great reputation. Venetian linens, for fine towelling and napery in general, were in favourite use in France during a part of the fifteenth century. In the ‘Ducs de Bourgogne’ by Laborde, more than once we meet with such an entry as “une pièce de nappes, ouvraige de Venise.” [Illustration: Silk damask--Florentine: fifteenth century.] Florence, about the middle of the fourteenth century, obtained a place in the foremost rank amid the weavers of northern Italy. Specimens of her earliest handicraft are rare; there are two at South Kensington. One of these, no. 8563, shows the excellence of her work in secular silks. Other pieces witness to the delicacy of her design at a later time, the sixteenth century. The orphrey-webs of Florence are equally conspicuous for drawing and skill in weaving, and in beauty come up to those made at Venice, far surpassing anything of the kind ever wrought at Cologne.