It is more important for our subject to know what are the usual decorative shapes to be found upon old oak furniture, than to lose ourselves in the effort to trace them to their original source. The Gothic inspiration which had placed series of pointed arches and window tracery upon our thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth century chests came at length to an end, and very tentatively in England the Renaissance style of classical ornament took its place. The first important work of Italian workmen in architecture was set in hand by Wolsey at Hampton Court in 1515. The influence of these men, and of the great artists, Torrigiano, who came to England in 1512, and has left the traces of his genius in Henry VII.'s Chapel, and Holbein, 1526 - 1543, who as a decorative artist is to be reckoned an Italian, will account for all the most florid and graceful carving and inlay of scroll-work, with elegant leafage and figures, such as may be seen, for instance, upon the panelling of the room from Exeter in the Victoria and Albert Museum.2 All that is suave and flowing may be set down to Italian teaching.

English workmen must have learnt much from the foreigners, of whom they were so jealous, and have turned their lesson to account when Henry VIII.'s quarrel with the Pope, the subsequent change of religion, and the impoverishment of England at Henry's death, helped to drive Italians away. That it was not easy to change from Gothic to classical ornament, the halting design of Gardiner's hybrid chantry in Winchester Cathedral gives a plain indication. If we look at an Italian cassone, such as that very ornate one, No. 3625, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, we find that the mouldings of its lid are worked with the acanthus leaf, such as it is found on the corbel-shaped brackets of English cabinets, bedsteads, and chimney pieces. On the edge of the lid is a form of the reed and flute, with the dart included, somewhat similar to that on a string-course of Kirby Hall, Northants, and more elaborate than one which runs over the windows of Apethorpe in the same county. The front of the chest has a bold scroll-and-leaf pattern, with masks at the ends, and will remind us of the panelling of the Exeter room in the same museum.

The cushioned plinth of the chest has radiating voluted shapes, more beautiful than, but still resembling, the usual gadroons of the legs and frames of English long tables and the legs of beds. Its corners are treated with the acanthus exactly as that is found to vary the end of the cabinet drawers or the framing of a table. Finally, between the massive supporting lions which form the feet is a central ornament, composed of S-shaped curves on each side of a satyr mask. These same S-curves, with often a mask between them, form the top of the back in scores of English solid-backed oak chairs. There is in the museum a Venetian chair elaborately carved, and of the peculiar general shape which confined itself to Italy, fortunately for our comfort not commending itself to England. In this the S-curves are a prominent object. There is in the same place another Venetian chair (No. 1538), with spiral-turned legs and stretchers and straight back, the type of which did, later on, for its simple utility, become very prevalent in England when Cromwell was Protector. This is upholstered on seat and back with Venetian brocade, the ornament of which is these same S-curves as they appear upon hundreds of panels of English oak.

The figures, male and female, on many English beds and chimney pieces, with terminal 1. shapes below, are also Italian in origin, but perhaps we derive some of them through Flemish and German channels. At any rate, in most of our English work they have a grotesque portliness which is scarcely classical.

1 Date of his coming to England.

2 Plate xv.

Plate XV. Oak Panelling From Exeter 1600 Circa.

xv. Oak Panelling, from Exeter. 1600 circa. V. & A. M.