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Lot Essay
This tapestry, depicting Summer from the series The Seasons of Lucas, was probably designed by a Flemish artist of the school of Bernaert van Orley in about 1535. It belongs to a series that consists of four panels and must have been designed by the same hand or workshop as The Months of Lucas, later frequently woven at the Royal Gobelins Tapestry Manufacture. The source for them were twelve Brussels tapestries that belonged to Louis XIV, woven circa 1535 and destroyed in 1797. Although this series is not mentioned by M. Fenaille specifically, the colouring and technique relates to the works executed in Paris in the 17th Century. It is possible that this is the set described as Les Mois de L'Année in M. Fenaille, Etat General des Tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins, Paris, 1923, p. 301, but of which no specific tapestries are known. The version in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (E. A. Standen, European Post-Medieval Tapestries and Related Hangings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, p. 324) extends slightly to the right, has a varying border and depicts Ceres in a cloud in the middle above the two men holding the scythes. The border of that tapestry is more typical of the borders of tapestries executed in the late 17th Century in Paris, while the border on this tapestry relates more closely to those executed in the mid-17th Century. It is therefore likely that this tapestry was woven in the faubourg Saint-Germain atelier of Raphaël de la Planche.
The two figures of the reapers, particularly the one seen from the back, as well as the cart, with the rider and the lady with the large hat sitting on the cart, are very closely related to those in July of the mid-16th Century series Medallion Months, now in the Art Institute of Chicago (H. Göbel, Tapestries of the Lowlands, New York, 1924, cat. 146).
A further version of Summer from this series is in the Cleveland Museum of Art, while a set woven with metal-threads was in the collection of King Louis-Philippe. A further set, previously in the collection of The Viscount Wimborne, Canford Manor, Dorset and later in the Brookline Trust Company, was sold at Christie's New York, 26 April 1990, lots 6-9, this subject being lot 8.
The two figures of the reapers, particularly the one seen from the back, as well as the cart, with the rider and the lady with the large hat sitting on the cart, are very closely related to those in July of the mid-16th Century series Medallion Months, now in the Art Institute of Chicago (H. Göbel, Tapestries of the Lowlands, New York, 1924, cat. 146).
A further version of Summer from this series is in the Cleveland Museum of Art, while a set woven with metal-threads was in the collection of King Louis-Philippe. A further set, previously in the collection of The Viscount Wimborne, Canford Manor, Dorset and later in the Brookline Trust Company, was sold at Christie's New York, 26 April 1990, lots 6-9, this subject being lot 8.