Lot Essay
This tapestry forms part of a set of six panels illustrating the story of Hero and Leander. Leander a youth of Abydos, a town on the Asian shore of the Hellespont, according to legend, used to swim across the waters at night to Sestos on the opposite side to meet his lover Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite. To guide him in darkenss, she held up a torch. One stormy night he drowned and she, in dispair, threw herself into the sea.
The designs were supplied to the Mortlake manufactury, then without commercial rivals within Europe by Francis Cleyn (1623-1658) as his first works in the late 30s or early 40s. The designs continued to be used throughout the 17th Century by Mortlake, and were afterwards reproduced in Lambeth. On 7 May 1670 Sir Sackville Crow, previously the head of Mortlake but who was forced to resign when the King withdrew his financial support, wrote to the Countess of Rutland, the aunt of the then owner Lady Harvey: ...I think fitt to account to you that there are but four designes more in England worth the making, viz. Hero and Leander, Vulcan and Venus, the Horses, and Ceasar's Triumphs...
The finest series is in the royal collection, Stockhholm, given by Count John Axelstierna to King Charles Gustavus of Sweden in 1656, from which this subject is illustrated in W.G. Thomson, A History of Tapestry, Wakefield, 1973, opposite p. 294. A further tapestry of the same subject, then in the collection of Mr. Dighton, is illustrated in H.C. Marillier, English Tapestries of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1930, plate 18a.
The designs were supplied to the Mortlake manufactury, then without commercial rivals within Europe by Francis Cleyn (1623-1658) as his first works in the late 30s or early 40s. The designs continued to be used throughout the 17th Century by Mortlake, and were afterwards reproduced in Lambeth. On 7 May 1670 Sir Sackville Crow, previously the head of Mortlake but who was forced to resign when the King withdrew his financial support, wrote to the Countess of Rutland, the aunt of the then owner Lady Harvey: ...I think fitt to account to you that there are but four designes more in England worth the making, viz. Hero and Leander, Vulcan and Venus, the Horses, and Ceasar's Triumphs...
The finest series is in the royal collection, Stockhholm, given by Count John Axelstierna to King Charles Gustavus of Sweden in 1656, from which this subject is illustrated in W.G. Thomson, A History of Tapestry, Wakefield, 1973, opposite p. 294. A further tapestry of the same subject, then in the collection of Mr. Dighton, is illustrated in H.C. Marillier, English Tapestries of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1930, plate 18a.