grows pointed, and in the second half of the period the tongue becomes visible. The tail also shows a knot near its root (Fig. 273).
Fig. 273.
In examples taken from the second half of the fourteenth century and the fifteenth century the lion's body is no longer placed like a pillar, but lays its head back to the left so that the right fore-paw falls into an oblique upward line with the trunk. The toes are lengthened, appearing almost as fingers, and spread out from one another; the tail, adorned with flame-like bunches of hair, strikes outwards and loses the before-mentioned knot, which only remains visible in a forked tail (queue-fourché). The jaws grow deep and are widely opened, and the breast rises and expands under the lower jaw (Fig. 274).
Fig. 274.
Lions of peculiar virility and beauty appear upon a fourteenth-century banner which shows the arms of the family of Talbot, Earls of Shrewsbury: Gules, a lion rampant within a bordure engrailed or, quartered with the arms of Strange: Argent, two lions passant in pale gules, armed and langued azure. Fig. 275 gives the lower half of the banner which was published in colours in the Catalogue of the Heraldic Exhibition in London, 1894.
Fig. 275.—Arms of Strange and Talbot. (From a design for a banner.)
Fig. 276.
Fig. 276 is an Italian coat of arms of the fourteenth century, and shows a lion of almost exactly the same design, except the paws are
