A BRUSSELS BIBLICAL TAPESTRY

Details

A BRUSSELS BIBLICAL TAPESTRY
BY PETER VAN DER BORGHT, MID-18TH CENTURY

Woven in wools and silks, depicting the drowning of the Egyptians after the Crossing of the Red Sea with Moses, his hands outstretched to God, pointing with his staff towards the torrential waters, while the Israelites rest on the bank beside praying, in an extensive landscape with pitchers and salvers in the foreground, trees and rocky cliffs beyond, in a later trailing vine slip and blue outer border, woven with the Brussels town marks and signed P.v.d. Borcht., with handwritten label 4327 H.3.75m. B.4.24m., with printed label of L. Bernheimer Munchen No. 02130 1786, with lead seal stamped MUNCHEN LANDSBERG, minor restorations
145½in. x 166in. (370cm. x 422cm.)

Lot Essay

Peter van der Borght (1712-1763)

This tapestry forms part of a set of at least six tapestries from the life of Moses. A series, bequeathed to Vienna by Erzherzogin Elisabeth in 1741, is illustrated in L. Baldass, Die Wiener Gobelinssammlung, Vienna, 1920, vol. II, nos. 271-276. The cartoons for the series are likely to have been designed by a French artist

The scene depicted is taken from Exodus, Chapter 14, Verses 26 and 28 from the Old Testament. The Israelites are shown on the shores of the Red Sea. Moses commands the divided Sea to engulf the Pharaoh and his armies

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