To these were later added seven bed canopies of Gothic design. The subjects of the tapestries are as follows: (1) David surprises Bathsheba in her bath and falls in love with her beauty. For the sake of modesty, however, the artist has represented Bathsheba fully clothed, washing her hands at a small fountain. (2) The Marriage of David and Bathsheba. David, from being a smooth-faced boy, has become a bearded man. (3) The prophet Nathan reproaches David with his evil ways. The remaining seven tapestries apparently represent some sylvan festival in which courtiers make offerings of fruit and flowers to ladies. The playing-cards are worth noticing. CHAPTER IV TAPESTRIES OF THE GOTHIC-RENAISSANCE TRANSITION The fifteenth century saw Gothic tapestries carried to their highest point of perfection. Bruges had become a centre of pictorial art next only to Italy. Memling, the Van Eycks, and Bernard Van Orley were giving life, freedom, and originality to the old stilted Gothic forms in painting, and it was to them that the art of tapestry weaving owed its greatest debt. But to the Flemish weavers themselves no small part of the artistic merit of the Gothic tapestries is to be ascribed. The master-weaver was an artist, not a craftsman. To him the designer left many details of design; he was at liberty to alter cartoons that could not be satisfactorily translated into tapestry, to choose colourings, even to introduce new figures into the picture. In the fifteenth century the _tapissiers_ were still conscientious, refusing to hurry their work to the detriment of its quality. Artist and _tapissier_ alike, now perfect masters of the art, spent their time perfecting the methods that had made the name of Flemish tapestry in the preceding century. The tapestries described in the following pages belong to this period, just before the spirit of the Italian Renaissance completely banished the old native forms of art from the north of Europe. The first cartoons of Raphael were still to come to the Flemish workshops, but already men were talking of the wonders of Italy, and certain signs of transition are strongly marked in the tapestries with which we are dealing. In many the Gothic architecture of the background has given way to Renaissance, and the sky-line has been lowered. Or sometimes while the background remains under the Gothic inspiration, the treatment of the figures, more especially of the robes, shows the Renaissance influence. The chief characteristics that distinguish these tapestries from the earlier Gothic are the greater freedom in the attitudes of the figures, the perfection of detail, and the absence of exaggeration, particularly in the patterns of fabrics and of dress ornaments. GROUP 4. _The Story of St. John the Baptist_