GOBELINS, CIRCA 1714-1736, PROBABLY AFTER ANTOINE DIEU

The offered lot belongs to a series that is first recorded in correspondence between the 5th Earl of Exeter and his upholsterer for Burghley House, Lincolnshire, discussing the purchase of tapestries from Jean Jans in 1680 and 1681. The original seven subjects were later expanded by a further fifteen panels, known as petite tenture, that were in part based on paintings paid for between 1704 and 1706 by such artists as Jean-Baptiste de Fontenay, Louis de Boulogne, Nicolas Bertin, Antoine Coypel and Charles de la Fosse. In the early years these tapestries appear to only have been woven for private patrons. Gobelins records the first official weaving for Louis XIV in 1714. The cartoons for the series are last mentioned in 1736 as ruined. It can thus be assumed that the series was woven between 1680 and 1736, while this particular tapestry belonging to the petite tenture would have been woven sometime between 1714 and 1736.

This particular subject is extremely close to a drawing by Antoine Dieu in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (E.A. Standen, 'Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Gobelins Tapestry Series', Metropolitan Museum Journal, 1988, p. 171, fig. 29) and suggests that he was the designer even if not mentioned in the official records of Gobelins.