Lot 19: AN ANTWERP 'GROTESQUES' TAPESTRY

Circa 1580, attributed to the workshop of Joost van Herzeele, after a design by Cornelis Floris Woven in wools and silks, depicting an architectural setting with three arcades showing landscapes, flanked and divided by Putti, Satyrs and foliate grotesques, on a red ground, within a simulated egg-and-dart border, minor repairs and areas of reweaving, the upper border rewoven 7 ft. 11 in. (242 cm.) x 9 ft. 9 in. (297 cm.) NOTES DESIGN This magnificent 'grotesque' tapestry is based on a drawing by Cornelis Floris (d. 1575) that is dated 1557. Floris lays out the general structure, but also the details for the supporting herm figures and satyrs as well as the pergola and the lion masks and even the sculptures in the niches to the sides of the central opening. The drawing was later engraved (see illustration), a copy of which is in the BibliothŠque Royale Albert I (Cabinet des Estampes, ) as part of a collection of sixteen prints. ATTRIBUTION AND DATE The design by Floris dictates that this tapestry was not executed before 1557. However, further comparisons reveal a weaving date slightly later than that. This tapestry can be compared to a grotesque tapestry in the Rijksmuseum that has a yellow ground and that illustrates to the center a scene from The Story of Nebuchadnezzar (A.M.L.E. Mulder-Erkelens, Wandtapijten 2, Renaissance, Manierisme en Barok, Amsterdam, 1971, fig. 15). This further example with a similar egg-and-dart inner border as the tapestry offered here, bears the mark 'B A' for Brabant Antwerp and is signed with the weaver's monogram of Joost van Herzeele (d. 1589). The same character of grotesques within an identical egg-and-dart border is also on a tapestry depicting The Festivities of Balthazar which is at chƒteau d'Azay-le-Rideau (J. Coural, Le XVIe SiŠcle Europ‚en, Tapisseries, Paris Mobilier National, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1965, cat. 32). Herzeele is known to have emigrated from Brussels to Antwerp in 1580, where he established a sizeable workshop. He kept an ambiguous connection to Brussels and signed a petition in 1586 with the title 'master in the tapestry-making craft of Brussels' even though the Brussels tapestry guild very strongly tried to distance itself from tapestry manufacturers that worked outside the city (G. Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestry, Tielt, 1999, p. 177). Shortly thereafter he is known to have emigrated to Hamburg where he died in 1589. It is thus almost certain that this tapestry was woven between 1580 and before 1589 while Herzeele was in Antwerp. COMPARABLE EXAMPLES Very similar grotesques, with allegorical figures for the months in the central arch, were woven by Cornelis de Ronde and Jan van der Vyst in Brussels in the 1560s and are now in Vienna (L. Baldass, Die Wiener Gobelinssammlung, Vienna, 1920, cats. 119 - 130). Interestingly, that series was in the past also attributed to Herzeele, while the grotesques are loosely based on engraving by Cornelis Bos. The precursor to all of these tapestries is, however, a series depicting Triumphs of the Gods after designs by Giovanni Francesco Penni and Giovanni da Udine of 1517 - 1520. It was probably first woven for Leo X while the earliest surviving example is that which was probably woven by the Dermoyen workshop in circa 1540 for Henry VIII and which is today at Windsor Castle (T. Campbell, Tapestry in the Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2002, cat. 26, pp. 246 - 252).