By the fifteenth century Venice knew how to produce good damasks in silk and gold, and of an historiated kind: if we had nothing more than the specimen, No. 1311, p. 54, where St. Mary of Egypt is so well represented, it would be quite enough for her to claim for herself such a distinction. That like her neighbours, Venice wrought in velvet, there can be little or no doubt, and if she it was who made those deep piled stuffs, sometimes raised, sometimes pile upon pile, in which her painters loved to dress the personages, men especially, in their pictures, then, of a truth, Venetian velvets were 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, A.D. 1573, the second of the wise men is clad in a robe all made of crimson velvet, cut or raised after a design quite in keeping with the style of the period. No insignificant article of Venetian textile workmanship was her laces wrought in every variety--in gold, in silk, in thread. The portrait of a Doge usually shows us that dignitary clothed in his dress of state. His wide mantle, having such large golden buttons, is made of some rich dull silver cloth; and upon his head is that curiously Phrygian-shaped ducal cap bound round with broad gold lace diapered after some nice pattern, as we see in the bust portrait of Doge Loredano, painted by John Bellini, and now in our National Gallery. Not only was the gold in the thread particularly good, but the lace itself in great favour at our court during one time, where it used to be bought, not by yard measure, but by weight; a pounde and a half of gold of Venys was employed “aboutes the making of a lace and botons for the king’s mantell of the garter.”[234] “Frenge of Venys gold,” appears twice, pp. 136, 163, in the wardrobe accounts of Edward IV. 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 indeed they still have, a great reputation: sewed to table-covers, two specimens are found in this collection, described at p. 141. Venetian linens, for fine towelling and napery in general, at one time were in favourite use in France during a part of the fifteenth century. In the “Ducs de Bourgogne,” by Le Comte de Laborde,[235] more than once we meet with such an entry, as “une pièce de nappes, ouvraige de Venise,” &c. [232] Oliver, p. 313. [233] Ed. Dugdale, p. 321. [234] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 8. [235] T. ii. Preuves, p. 107.