The collection of tapestry belonging to the Crown of Spain is probably the finest in the world. As far back as the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the walls of the royal palace were hung with decorative textile cloths or _paños de Ras_, and among the officers in the household of their son, the youthful Prince Don Juan, we find included a keeper of the tapestry and _reposteros_. But it was not until the reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second that the royal collection was enriched with numerous sets of celebrated tapestries produced in Italy and Flanders--countries which were then subjected to the yoke of Spain. Frequent additions were also made throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both from abroad and subsequently (when the Brussels industry declined) from the Spanish factories of Santa Isabel and Santa Barbara. As early as the year 1600 a Spaniard wrote enthusiastically of "the rich and cunning tapestries belonging to His Majesty, to whom it would be easier to win a kingdom than to get them made anew."[49] At the present day it is impossible to estimate with any certainty the number of these tapestries, the greater part of which are locked away. Only on certain festivals, such as the days of Corpus Christi and the Candelaria (Purification), a few are unfolded and displayed in the upper galleries of the palace at Madrid. Their total number is believed to be not far short of one thousand pieces;[50] but Señor Tormo calculates that were they no more than five hundred, they would, if placed end to end, cover more than two miles of ground. [49] Licentiate Gaspar Gutierrez de los Ríos, _Noticia general para la estimación de las Artes y de la manera en que se conocen las liberales de las que son mecánicas y serviles_. [50] Riaño estimates them at this number. See his _Report on a collection of photographs from tapestries of the Royal Palace of Madrid_; London, 1875; and also _Tapices de la Corona de España_, with 135 plates in phototype, and text by Count Valencia de Don Juan; Madrid, Hauser and Menet, 1903.