A LOUIS XIII PARIS MYTHOLOGICAL TAPESTRY

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A LOUIS XIII PARIS MYTHOLOGICAL TAPESTRY
MID-17TH CENTURY, AFTER SIMON VOUET

From the Story of Rinaldo and Armida and depicting the sleeping Rinaldo carried by Armida and her followers to a horse-drawn chariot, the borders woven with scrolling acanthus leaves and putti flanking cartouches enclosing mythological figures, the angles with bare-breasted angels in the upper corners and dueling satyrs in the lower corners (areas of reweaving, later guard borders)-12ft. 8in. x 16in. 9¾in. (3m. 80cm. x 5m. 4cm.)

Lot Essay

The source of this series was Torquato Tasso's Arcadian romance Gerusalemme Liberta of 1574. Simon Vouet (1590-1649) painted the gallery of the Paris townhouse of Claude de Bullion, the minister of Finance for Louis XIII, with scenes from this story. Vouet's painting from the Hotel de Bullion depicting Rinaldo carried away by Armida is illustrated in M. Fenaille, état Général des Tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins, 1903, vol. I, pg. 321. A related series of tapestries based on Vouet's designs for the Château de Wideville and depicting the Story of Theagenes and Chariclea, are now in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. (See A. Bennett, Five Centuries of Tapestries from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 1992, p. 224).