Lot Essay
This tapestry depicts a scene from The Life of Moses from the Old Testament. The Israelites were discontent with life in the desert and complained about God and Moses. God sent a plague of poisonous snakes as a punishment in which many Israelites died. When the people repented Moses asked how he could relieve the people of the snakes. God told him to make an image of one and to put it on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten they should look at the image and would be cured. So Moses made a serpent of brass and put it on a T-shaped pole. The Israelites had found a cure for the plague.
This tapestry probably belongs to a group designed by Abraham van Diepenbeeck (d. 1675) for the weavers Michel or Filipp Wauters (d. 1679) (D.Heinz, Europäische Tapissesiekunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1995, p. 74). Nearly identical borders appear on a Story of Zenobia series at château Tarascon by Filipp Wauters ('Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Tapisserie', Exhibition Catalogue, 1996, pp. 68-70).
This tapestry probably belongs to a group designed by Abraham van Diepenbeeck (d. 1675) for the weavers Michel or Filipp Wauters (d. 1679) (D.Heinz, Europäische Tapissesiekunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1995, p. 74). Nearly identical borders appear on a Story of Zenobia series at château Tarascon by Filipp Wauters ('Chefs-d'oeuvre de la Tapisserie', Exhibition Catalogue, 1996, pp. 68-70).