LATE 16TH CENTURY

Details

A FLEMISH HISTORICAL TAPESTRY
Late 16th Century
Woven in wools and silks, depicting a tournament with two jousters in armour on horseback to the centre surrounded by further competitors, the background with a central building with maidens below a fleur-de-lys canopy surrounded by a columned walkway and a hilly landscape beyond, within a border with a water landscape to the bottom, two vertical landscapes to each side, the right including a phoenix rising from the ashes, and a skycape to the top flanked by the moon and the sun, each corner with a personification of an element and within a blue outer slip, with fragmentary weaver's mark to the middle right of the blue outer slip, areas of reweaving and patching, reduced in width to the right and in height to the top of the main field
124 in. x 154 in. (315 cm. x 392 cm.)

Provenance

Professeur A. Gilbert, sold Drouot, Paris, 1 January 1927, lot 422.

Lot Essay

In the sale in 1927 this tapestry was associated with a second scene depicting a group of men playing a ballgame within a wooden enclosure and with further figures watching the game.

A tapestry depicting Dido and Aeneas with nearly identical borders is in the Spanish Royal Collection (P. Junquera de Vega and C. Diaz Gallegos, Catalogo de Tapices del Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 1986, vol. II, p. 175, cat. 63 II).

Please see lot 238 for a full discussion of the borders.

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