A BRUSSELS BAROQUE HISTORICAL TAPESTRY

Details

A BRUSSELS BAROQUE HISTORICAL TAPESTRY
SECOND QUARTER 17TH CENTURY

From the Stories of Scipio and depicting The Continence of Scipio, with Scipio returning to his fiancé the beautiful maiden he received as a prize of war after capturing the Spanish city of New Carthage while delivering a sermon on the moral probity of the Romans, to the right his attendants within a mountainous forestscape, the borders woven with oval cartouches enclosing pastoral scenes alternating with ribbon-entwined fruiting laurel wreaths, the angles woven with the figures of Jupiter, Venus and Cupid and allegorical figures emblematic of Abundance, the lower right selvedge with weaver's monogram of Franz van Maelsaeck, the lower selvedge signed F.V. MAELSAECK, the lower left selvedge with Brussels town mark (areas of repair and reweaving) -13ft. 7in. x 12ft. 8½in. (4m. 14cm. x 3m. 85cm.)

Lot Essay

Franz van Maelsaeck, recorded as working in Brussels during the first half of the 17th century.

The story of Scipio, the Roman general whose campaigns against the Carthaginians in North Africa brought the Second Punic War to a close, was populor during the Renaissance due to Petrarch's epic poem Africa. The most famous tapestry series of this subject was woven in Brussels in 1532 for François I to cartoons by Giulio Romano. This series was burnt in 1797 for the gold threads. Other versions were woven in Brussels and copied at the Gobelins (see Jules Romain L'Histoire de Scipion: tapisseries et dessins, Paris, 1978, pp. 5-15, 50-51). While the design of this version does not follow the Romano cartoon, other versions were being woven in Brussels in the early 17th century.