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Lot Essay
SUBJECT
According to myth, Telemachus, the son of Ulysses set out in search of his father when he failed to return after the Trojan war. He was accompanied by the goddess Minerva who was disguised as his old mentor. Telemachus was, as his father had been earlier, shipwrecked on the island of the goddess Calypso, who fell in love with the youth. She convinced him to stay and tell her his previous adventures. Telemachus while on the island fell, however, in love with one of her nymphs, Eucharis, and provoked the goddess' wrath. His mentor rescued him by throwing them into the sea against his will, and a passing vessel saved him.
DESIGNERS
Jan van Orley (d. 1735) was one of the most important and talented tapestry designers of the early 18th Century in Brussels. He was an established painter by the time he joined the Brussels painter's guild in November 1709. Augustin Coppens (d. 1740), who collaborated on the set, was a highly skilled landscape painter who usually worked with history painters to produce tapestry designs and is recorded as cartoon painter as early as 1689. This series is believed to be the first set supplied in this collaboration to Jodocus de Vos and the Auwercx workshops before 1710.
It is interesting to note this series was based on a preliminary and not complete version of the liberal French archbishop and theologian Fraçois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque which was published in 1699. This incomplete version was banned by the French court and was only re-issued as a complete version in 1717, from which van Orley and Coppens designed a second tapestry series of this subject that was woven by the Leyniers workshops between 1724 and 1736 (D. Heinz, Europäische Tapisseriekunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1995, p. 222 and G. Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestry, Tielt, 1999, pp. 316 - 317).
COMPARABLE TAPESTRIES AND WEAVERS
D. Heinz (po. Cit, p. 212) indicates that Marcus or Jodocus de Vos supplied a set of eight tapestries of this series to Franz Adam von Schwarzenberg in 1712 (parts of it may still be in the Czech Republic), but the scene of this tapestry appears to have been omitted for that set. However, there are records of one of these sets also having been supplied to the Cernin family at castle Petrohrad and is listed in an inventory in 1733 (J. Blazkova, Wandteppiche, Prague, 1957, p. 54). Blazkova further points to an exact copy of that subject by Pierre Mercier of Berlin (not indicated if signed or attributed) and which is said to have been executed in 1715 (H. Göbel, Wandteppiche, Leipzig, 1934, part III, vol. II, fig. 42). Another tapestry of identical design but more narrow is in the Palacio de los Borbones del Escorial, Madrid (K. Brosens, A Contextual Study of Brussels Tapestry, 1670 - 1770, Brussels, 2004, fig. 27, p. 531, while another was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 15 November 2001, lot 237.
According to myth, Telemachus, the son of Ulysses set out in search of his father when he failed to return after the Trojan war. He was accompanied by the goddess Minerva who was disguised as his old mentor. Telemachus was, as his father had been earlier, shipwrecked on the island of the goddess Calypso, who fell in love with the youth. She convinced him to stay and tell her his previous adventures. Telemachus while on the island fell, however, in love with one of her nymphs, Eucharis, and provoked the goddess' wrath. His mentor rescued him by throwing them into the sea against his will, and a passing vessel saved him.
DESIGNERS
Jan van Orley (d. 1735) was one of the most important and talented tapestry designers of the early 18th Century in Brussels. He was an established painter by the time he joined the Brussels painter's guild in November 1709. Augustin Coppens (d. 1740), who collaborated on the set, was a highly skilled landscape painter who usually worked with history painters to produce tapestry designs and is recorded as cartoon painter as early as 1689. This series is believed to be the first set supplied in this collaboration to Jodocus de Vos and the Auwercx workshops before 1710.
It is interesting to note this series was based on a preliminary and not complete version of the liberal French archbishop and theologian Fraçois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque which was published in 1699. This incomplete version was banned by the French court and was only re-issued as a complete version in 1717, from which van Orley and Coppens designed a second tapestry series of this subject that was woven by the Leyniers workshops between 1724 and 1736 (D. Heinz, Europäische Tapisseriekunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1995, p. 222 and G. Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestry, Tielt, 1999, pp. 316 - 317).
COMPARABLE TAPESTRIES AND WEAVERS
D. Heinz (po. Cit, p. 212) indicates that Marcus or Jodocus de Vos supplied a set of eight tapestries of this series to Franz Adam von Schwarzenberg in 1712 (parts of it may still be in the Czech Republic), but the scene of this tapestry appears to have been omitted for that set. However, there are records of one of these sets also having been supplied to the Cernin family at castle Petrohrad and is listed in an inventory in 1733 (J. Blazkova, Wandteppiche, Prague, 1957, p. 54). Blazkova further points to an exact copy of that subject by Pierre Mercier of Berlin (not indicated if signed or attributed) and which is said to have been executed in 1715 (H. Göbel, Wandteppiche, Leipzig, 1934, part III, vol. II, fig. 42). Another tapestry of identical design but more narrow is in the Palacio de los Borbones del Escorial, Madrid (K. Brosens, A Contextual Study of Brussels Tapestry, 1670 - 1770, Brussels, 2004, fig. 27, p. 531, while another was sold anonymously, in these Rooms, 15 November 2001, lot 237.