A BRUSSELS BAROQUE GAME PARK TAPESTRY

Details

A BRUSSELS BAROQUE GAME PARK TAPESTRY
SECOND QUARTER 16TH CENTURY

From the Four Seasons and depicting Autumn with a courtly couple within an elaborate classical garden setting with arcaded balustrades and courtyards within a riverscape with various water birds and animals all within a dense forest, the borders woven with allegorical figures, alternating with cartouches enclosing harvest scenes and signs of the Zodiac (Leo, Sagitarius and Scorpio) all encorporated into elaborately blossoming fruiting sprays within classical vessels, garlands and palaquins with Brussels town mark and Jan Mattens' weaver's monogram in the selvage-11ft. 4in. x 10ft. 6½in. (3m.47cm. x 3m. 21cm.)

Provenance

Sold in these Rooms, 22 November 1983, lot 233.

Lot Essay

Jan Mattens, recorded as working in Brussels during the second quarter of the 16th century, died 1631

A Brussels game park tapestry by Jan Mattens with virtually identical borders is in the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid and illustrated in the Catálogo de Tapices del Patrimonio Nacional, 1986, vol. II, p. 244.

A Brussels tapestry by Jakob Gôubels and Jan Raes with identical border is illustrated in H. Gôbel, n.d. fig. 277 and another in Tapestries of the Lowlands with closely related border is illustrated in H. Gôbel, ibid., fig. 74.