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Lot Essay
This fascinating tapestry is part of a small group featuring an interesting twist on the imagery of 'feuilles de choux' tapestries, whereby human figures and townscapes are juxtaposed directly with dream-like thickets of foliage with fantastical beasts, thus combining the real and the imaginary in close proximity.
ATTRIBUTION
D. and P. Chevalier and P.-F. Bertrand attribute tapestries from this group to the workshops of the Marche district in France (Les Tapisseries d'Aubusson et de Felletin, Paris, 1988, pp. 24 - 27) on the basis of some early descriptions in inventories. Interesting comparisons can also be drawn to the more convincingly attributed Marche game-park tapestries illustrating specific hunts with large figures.
E. Standen on the other hand attributes this type of tapestry more loosely to Flanders or Holland (European Post-Medieval Tapestries and Related Hangings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, vol. I, cat. 26, pp. 185 - 186).
SUBJECT
The scene depicted to the background may be that of The Temptation of St. Anthony. Anthony the Great (251 - 356 AD), generally regarded as the founder of monasticism, distributed his property among the poor and retired into the Egyptian desert. While living his ascetic life, he had vivid demonic and erotic hallucinations.
COMPARABLE EXAMPLES
A similar tapestry omitting the narrative scene and including such animals as a giraffe and turkey is illustrated in Gray Bennett, A.: Five Centuries of Tapestry, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, 1992, cat. 35, p. 137, while another with a similar juxtaposition of a townscape with dense foliage inhabited by fantastical beasts including a unicorn and a hydra, is illustrated in Boccara, J.: Ames de Laine et de Soie, Saint-Rémy-en-l'Eau, 1988, p. 77.
ATTRIBUTION
D. and P. Chevalier and P.-F. Bertrand attribute tapestries from this group to the workshops of the Marche district in France (Les Tapisseries d'Aubusson et de Felletin, Paris, 1988, pp. 24 - 27) on the basis of some early descriptions in inventories. Interesting comparisons can also be drawn to the more convincingly attributed Marche game-park tapestries illustrating specific hunts with large figures.
E. Standen on the other hand attributes this type of tapestry more loosely to Flanders or Holland (European Post-Medieval Tapestries and Related Hangings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985, vol. I, cat. 26, pp. 185 - 186).
SUBJECT
The scene depicted to the background may be that of The Temptation of St. Anthony. Anthony the Great (251 - 356 AD), generally regarded as the founder of monasticism, distributed his property among the poor and retired into the Egyptian desert. While living his ascetic life, he had vivid demonic and erotic hallucinations.
COMPARABLE EXAMPLES
A similar tapestry omitting the narrative scene and including such animals as a giraffe and turkey is illustrated in Gray Bennett, A.: Five Centuries of Tapestry, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, 1992, cat. 35, p. 137, while another with a similar juxtaposition of a townscape with dense foliage inhabited by fantastical beasts including a unicorn and a hydra, is illustrated in Boccara, J.: Ames de Laine et de Soie, Saint-Rémy-en-l'Eau, 1988, p. 77.