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Lot Essay
This tapestry forms part of a Louis XIV series of Beauvais tapestries that depict the Metamorphoses after Ovid. Beauvais wove two differing series by the same title in the late 17th/early 18th century, only distinguished in the texts as having small or large figures and costing from 2,200 livres and up to 6,000 livres, respectively. The offered lot belong to the more costly version, which was designed by René-Antoine Houasse, a pupil of Charles Le Brun, who is known to have supplied further tapestry series to Gobelins and twenty-one paintings to the Grand Trianon.
A tapestry of identical subject was sold at Cornette de Saint-Cyr, Paris, 11 February 1991, lot 89, and one including the nymph Dawn in the trees above the two protagonists, but lacking borders and reduced in size, from the Mayorcas Collection, sold at Christie's London, 12 February 1999, lot 484.
(B. Jestaz, 'The Beauvais Manufactory in 1690', Acts of the Tapestry Symposium, San Francisco, 1979, pp. 187 - 207)
A tapestry of identical subject was sold at Cornette de Saint-Cyr, Paris, 11 February 1991, lot 89, and one including the nymph Dawn in the trees above the two protagonists, but lacking borders and reduced in size, from the Mayorcas Collection, sold at Christie's London, 12 February 1999, lot 484.
(B. Jestaz, 'The Beauvais Manufactory in 1690', Acts of the Tapestry Symposium, San Francisco, 1979, pp. 187 - 207)