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Lot Essay
Mille-fleurs tapestries were generally woven around 1500. The wide variations in quality, the relative short period in which they were produced and the number of pieces known, indicate that numerous workshops made this type of tapestries. These ateliers are believed mostly to have been in the Southern Netherlands.
The denseness of the flowers in this tapestry has most recently led to an attribution to Bruges of this type of mille-fleurs. A pair of tapestries with a more elaborate central cartouche depicting the History of Abraham, but a similar ground, bear the town mark of Bruges on the outer slip (G. Delmarcel and E. Duverger, Bruges et la Tapisserie, exhibition catalogue, Bruges, 1987, pp. 188-189, fig. 3/8 and 3/9). A further tapestry, more closely related to this tapestry with a landscape medallion within a wreath, can on the basis of its border, be related to the Abraham tapestries. It is therefore likely that this tapestry was also woven in Bruges.
Further mille-fleurs tapestries that have a similar ground and that are also attributed to Bruges are a tapestry of circa 1540-1545 with the arms of Giovio of Como in the Victoria and Albert Museum (C. Adelson, European Tapestry in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1994, fig. 50) and some fragments from a set woven for the council hall of the Franc in Bruges by Antoon Segon after designs by Lancelot Blondeel and Willem de Hollander or Joost van Beke in about 1530-1545 (Delmarcel and Duverger, op. cit, p. 184, fig. 3/4). A further related tapestry depicting six medallions on a similar ground is illustrated in H. Göbel, Tapestries of the Lowlands, New York, 1924, fig. 253.
A further tapestry fragment with identically-designed wreath and scene surmounted by an identical coat-of-arms, and therefore probably from the same tapestry or tapestry set, from the C.S. Wadsworth Trust, was sold Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 11 December 1948, lot 46.
The denseness of the flowers in this tapestry has most recently led to an attribution to Bruges of this type of mille-fleurs. A pair of tapestries with a more elaborate central cartouche depicting the History of Abraham, but a similar ground, bear the town mark of Bruges on the outer slip (G. Delmarcel and E. Duverger, Bruges et la Tapisserie, exhibition catalogue, Bruges, 1987, pp. 188-189, fig. 3/8 and 3/9). A further tapestry, more closely related to this tapestry with a landscape medallion within a wreath, can on the basis of its border, be related to the Abraham tapestries. It is therefore likely that this tapestry was also woven in Bruges.
Further mille-fleurs tapestries that have a similar ground and that are also attributed to Bruges are a tapestry of circa 1540-1545 with the arms of Giovio of Como in the Victoria and Albert Museum (C. Adelson, European Tapestry in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1994, fig. 50) and some fragments from a set woven for the council hall of the Franc in Bruges by Antoon Segon after designs by Lancelot Blondeel and Willem de Hollander or Joost van Beke in about 1530-1545 (Delmarcel and Duverger, op. cit, p. 184, fig. 3/4). A further related tapestry depicting six medallions on a similar ground is illustrated in H. Göbel, Tapestries of the Lowlands, New York, 1924, fig. 253.
A further tapestry fragment with identically-designed wreath and scene surmounted by an identical coat-of-arms, and therefore probably from the same tapestry or tapestry set, from the C.S. Wadsworth Trust, was sold Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 11 December 1948, lot 46.