With the fine arts all held within her hand, it was but logical that Italy should herself begin to produce the tapestries she was importing from the land of the barbarians as those beyond her northern borders were arrogantly called. First among the records is found the name of the Gonzaga family which called important Flemish weavers down to Mantua, and there wove designs of Mantegna, in the highest day of their factory's production, about 1450. Duke Frederick of Urbino is one of the early Italian patrons of tapestry whose name is made unforgettable in this connexion by the product of the factory he established toward the end of the Fifteenth Century, at his court in the little duchy which included only the space reaching from the Apennines to the Adriatic and from Rimini to Ancona. The chief work of this factory was the _History of Troy_ which cost the generous and enthusiastic duke a hundred thousand dollars. The great d'Este family was one to follow persistently the art, possibly because it habited the northern part of the peninsula and was therefore nearer Flanders, but more probably because the great Duke of Ferrara was animated by that superb pride of race that chafes at rivalry; this, added to a wish to encourage art, and the lust of possession which characterised the great men of that day. It was the middle of the Sixteenth Century that Ercole II, the head of the d'Este family, revived at Ferrara the factory of his family which had suffered from the wars. The master-weavers were brought from Flanders, not only to produce tapestries almost unequalled for technical perfection, but to instruct local weavers. These two important weavers were Nicholas and John Karcher or Carcher as it is sometimes spelled, names of great renown--for a weaver might be almost as well known and as highly esteemed as the artist of the cartoons in those days when artisan's labour had not been despised by even the great Leonardo. The foremost artist of the Ferrara works was chosen from that city, Battista Dosso, but also active as designer was the Fleming, Lucas Cornelisz. In Dosso's work is seen that exquisite and dainty touch that characterises the artists of Northern Italy in their most perfect period, before voluptuous masses and heavy scroll-like curves prevailed even in the drawing of the human figure. [Illustration: THE ANNUNCIATION Italian Tapestry. Fifteenth Century. Collection of Martin A. Ryerson, Esq., Chicago]