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Lot Essay
This drawing is related to the third tapestry of a series of eight illustrating the Story of Joshua. A set of the tapestries, woven after the designs of Pieter Coecke, is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The series is datable before 1538, the year King Francis I commissioned a set of this subject. Another set was acquired by Emperor Charles V in 1544 from Jean Dermoyen, who was probably the crafstman in charge of the execution. The drawings were made a few years before, circa 1535.
Three other drawings relating to these tapestries are in the Fondation Custodia, Paris (K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries, Paris, 1992, no. 55, pl. 37), in the Louvre (F. Lugt, Maîtres des anciens Pays-Bas nés avant 1550, Paris, 1968, no. 210, pl. 99), and with Didier Aaron & Cie in 1978. The three drawings, although larger than the present one, show a similar shaky handling of the pen and compositions cluttered with figures. All drawings relate thematically to the tapestries, but none is a direct study. In the case of this drawing even though the composition was reversed in the process of transfer to the tapestry, the same elements are present in both compositions but in a different order: the foreground figure carrying stones, the priests transporting the Ark, the city in the background. The fire raging in the middle ground of the tapestry is absent in the drawing. The large tree cutting the composition of the persent drawing in two is not in the corresponding tapestry but does occur in the fourth scene, The capture of the city of Ai, to which the drawing in the Louvre relates.
Three other drawings relating to these tapestries are in the Fondation Custodia, Paris (K.G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries, Paris, 1992, no. 55, pl. 37), in the Louvre (F. Lugt, Maîtres des anciens Pays-Bas nés avant 1550, Paris, 1968, no. 210, pl. 99), and with Didier Aaron & Cie in 1978. The three drawings, although larger than the present one, show a similar shaky handling of the pen and compositions cluttered with figures. All drawings relate thematically to the tapestries, but none is a direct study. In the case of this drawing even though the composition was reversed in the process of transfer to the tapestry, the same elements are present in both compositions but in a different order: the foreground figure carrying stones, the priests transporting the Ark, the city in the background. The fire raging in the middle ground of the tapestry is absent in the drawing. The large tree cutting the composition of the persent drawing in two is not in the corresponding tapestry but does occur in the fourth scene, The capture of the city of Ai, to which the drawing in the Louvre relates.