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Records mostly in clerical Latin, speak of these as curtains for doorways, dossers for covering seats, and the backs of benches, and baldachins, as well as carpets for use on the floor. Subjects were ecclesiastic, as the favourite Apocalypse; or classic, like that of the Quedlimburg hanging which fantastically represents the marriage of Mercury and Philology.
The fragrance arising from the carefully-cultivated flower-beds was delightful; the kiosks and baldachins were so charming! "Paradise must be like this," thought Mohammed, and he breathed the fragrant air with delight.
There were chariots, boats, beds, tables, caskets, and thrones gold or covered with gold plate, also inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl and colored wood so ornamentally that artists must have worked tens of years at them. There were weapons, shields and quivers glittering with jewels. There were pitchers, plates, and spoons of pure gold, costly robes, and baldachins.
Even then, perhaps, the grotto, a couple of miles from the town, where Virgil was said to have meditated, was shown to strangers, like the 'Scuola di Virgilio' at Naples. Como claimed both the Plinys for its own, and at the end of the fifteenth century erected statues in their honour, sitting under graceful baldachins on the facade of the cathedral.
We find vermilion altar cloths, curtains of emerald silk, a cope of velvet, crimson and violet with orpheys of cloth of gold, another of rose damask, satin dalmatics for the deacons, baldachins figured with hawks and falcons of Cyprus gold. We find plate, hammered chalices and ciboria crusted with uncut jewels. There are reliquaries, among them a silver head of Saint Honoré.
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