Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 33 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 3,541 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 14 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,858 items Explore
  • 211 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,754 items Explore
  • 5,063 items Explore
  • 62 items Explore
  • 165 items Explore
  • 13,067 items Explore
  • 13,620 items Explore
  • 4,802 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,002 items Explore
  • 4,756 items Explore
  • 438 items Explore
  • 266 items
  • 104 items Explore
  • 19,975 items Explore
  • 36 items Explore
  • 1,912 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,166 items Explore
  • 455 items Explore
  • 920 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,385 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 792 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 319 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 44 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 9 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 926 items Explore
  • 724 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 38,047 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,880 items Explore
  • 1,533 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,750 items Explore
  • 9,682 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,781 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 7,364 items Explore
  • 4,922 items Explore
  • 2,005 items Explore
  • 1,195 items Explore
  • 23,811 items Explore
  • 3,660 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 106 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,330 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 374 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,087 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,519 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,954 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 108 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,932 items Explore
  • 1,529 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,289 items Explore
  • 1,340 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 848 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 122 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 252 items
  • 313 items
  • 687 items Explore
  • 343 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,535 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,394 items Explore
  • 40,356 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,876 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 776 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 23,967 items Explore
  • 916 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,648 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,336 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,309 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 455 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 287 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 276 items Explore
  • 481 items
  • 11,295 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,020 items Explore
  • 8,302 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,971 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,886 items Explore
  • 182 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 270 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,122 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,543 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,738 items Explore
  • 95 items
  • 18,934 items Explore
  • 3,137 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,979 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,448 items Explore
  • 35 items
  • 13,321 items Explore
  • 3,460 items Explore
  • 5,645 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 51,852 items Explore
  • 41 items
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,949 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 445 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 217 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,766 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,536 items Explore
  • 913 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 318 items
  • 509 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 2,289 items Explore
  • 1,664 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,877 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 80 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,102 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,670 items Explore
  • 23,753 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 177 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 92 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,586 items Explore
  • 3,612 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,534 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 30 items
  • 6,911 items Explore
  • 4,842 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,818 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,899 items Explore
  • 191 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 421 items Explore
  • 6,110 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,833 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,943 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,134 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,516 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,291 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 75 items
  • 17 items
  • 155 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 458 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,614 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 2 items
  • 9,671 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,807 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,170 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,565 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 6,727 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,949 items Explore
  • 1,418 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,176 items Explore
  • 14,885 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 16 items
  • 5,684 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,191 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 688 items Explore
  • 8,391 items Explore
  • 58 items
  • 1 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,741 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,715 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,694 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 1,123 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,139 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 229 items Explore
  • 80,412 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,139 items Explore
  • 2,871 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 5,352 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,516 items Explore
  • 4,931 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,176 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 13,209 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,710 items Explore
  • 217 items
  • 17,042 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 1,592 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 389 items
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 354 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

A King and Queen sending Away Two Boys, and two Women being Separated

Oudenaarde

Category

Tapestries

Date

circa 1575 - circa 1580

Materials

Tapestry, wool and silk, 5 warps per cm

Measurements

1.83 m (H); 4.45 m (W)

Place of origin

Oudenaarde

Order this image

Collection

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

NT 1129465.4

Summary

Tapestry, wool and silk, 5 warps per cm, A King and Queen sending Away Two Boys, and two Women being Separated from a set of six Old Testament Subjects, Oudenaarde, c. 1575-1580. A long narrow tapestry with a coat of arms in the centre and a narrative scene on either side. On the left a king and a queen, both wearing crowns, usher two small boys towards a man who approaches, half crouching, from the left hand side. One of the boys rides a hobby horse, and the queen is followed by three female maidservants, one of whom carries the train of her dress. On the right a woman is manhandled by two men, one dressed as a soldier, and throws out her arms as they drag her away from a second woman, who is either turning to or being pulled away by a bearded man in a blue tunic. A small group of figures watches from the left, partly hidden by the coat of arms. The tapestry has a narrow border with a pattern of alternating fleurs-de-lys and flowers in lozenges, and a wide light yellow galloon. The initials 'CH' are woven in light blue into the lower galloon below the coat of arms. The left hand scene with two boys being sent away, and the figures behind the coat of arms in the centre, are identical to figures found in another tapestry in the set, no. 1129465.3.

Full description

The six 'Old Testament' tapestries in the Drawing Room at Hardwick contain nine separate narrative scenes, one of which appears on two different tapestries. The subject of the tapestries is unclear, and it is probable that they come from two different series, as the two smallest panels have a different tonality and the galloons and borders are dark blue rather than light yellow. Ingrid de Meûter suggested that these differences were due to the two smaller panels being protected from the light of the window (de Meûter 1998) but this would not fully explain the differences in colour, and moreover the two smaller tapestries have a different provenance to the rest of the set (see below). The costumes and portrayal of the figures suggest an Old Testament subject, and the two smaller scenes resemble events from the stories of David and Solomon. The two smaller tapestries may be related to a seventh small panel that now hangs on the High Great Chamber Landing (1129451). This tapestry largely repeats the design of no. 1129465.1 in the Drawing Room set, but with the figures slightly closer together and a new group on the left hand side. It is now missing its border so its original size is not known. The long narrow dimensions of the tapestries indicate that they were intended to hang above panelling on the upper walls of a room, as they do at Hardwick. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a vogue for tapestries of this sort. Examples include a series made for the Town Hall of Tallinn in Estonia (Mankin 2004) and two tapestries of the 'Story of David' made by François Spiering in Delft at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Hartkamp-Jonxis and Smit 2004, pp. 226-8), possibly for a similar public setting. Tapestries of similar dimensions were also often woven to hang in the choirs of churches. Potential examples include a French tapestry in the National Trust's collection at Lytes Carey Manor of the 'Life of the Virgin' (254753), and two tapestries with 'Eucharist' scenes in the Rijksmuseum (Hartkamp-Jonxis and Smit 2004, pp. 195-200). The tapestries have a narrow border with a repeating pattern of fleurs-de-lys and flowers in small lozenges. Ingrid de Meûter has noted that this kind of decoration often appears at the inner and outer edge of wider borders, and has shown that it was used exclusively at Oudenaarde (de Meûter 1998). The manufacture of the tapestries is Oudenaarde is further suggested by their association with the 'Gideon' tapestries in the Long Gallery at Hardwick, which bear a known Oudenaarde mark (no. 1129447; see Wyld 2012). De Meûter dates the 'Old Testament' tapestries to the last quarter of the sixteenth century (de Meûter 1998). However since the four larger tapestries were probably made for Christopher Hatton at the same time as the 'Gideon' set, which is dated 1578 (see below), they can in fact be dated to c. 1575-1580. The four larger tapestries are woven with the arms of Sir Christopher Hatton (c. 1540-1591) in the centre of the main field, surrounded by an elaborate frame of strap-work. Hatton's initials 'CH' are woven into the lower galloon beneath the arms. The arms and initials take exactly the same form as those found on the 'Gideon' tapestries in the Long Gallery at Hardwick, and like the 'Gideons', here too the arms have been overlaid with those of the Countess of Shrewsbury ('Bess of Hardwick'), wither with painted woollen patches or by painting directly onto the tapestry. The purchase of the 'Gideon' tapestries in 1592 from Christopher Hatton's nephew, Sir William Hatton, is recorded in detail in Bess's accounts: but whereas there are only thirteen Gideon tapestries, it is stated that she purchased seventeen tapestries. This almost certainly included the four larger tapestries in the 'Old Testament' set as well, whose subject was not mentioned as they were far smaller and less important. The quality and colouring of the four larger 'Old Testament' tapestries is very similar to the 'Gideon' set, suggesting that they were commissioned by Christopher Hatton at around the same time. It can be shown fairly conclusively that the 'Gideon' tapestries were commissioned by Hatton for the Long Gallery at Holdenby Hall, which was under construction in the 1570s (Wyld forthcoming), and it is very probably that the 'Old Testament' tapestries were intended for another room in the same house. The varying sizes of the four tapestries suggest that they were commissioned to fit a particular room. Although probably commissioned for Holdenby the tapestries fit very well into the space above the panelling in the Drawing Room at Hardwick, indicating that the panelling was installed after the purchase of the tapestries in 1592. The purchase of the two smaller tapestries with dark blue galloons is not recorded. It seems likely that they were acquired to enlarge Hatton's set so that it would fill all four walls of the Drawing Room at Hardwick. By 1601 there were six tapestries in the Drawing Room, or 'My Lady's Withdrawing Chamber' as it was then known: "six peeces of tapestrie hanginges with personages and my Ladies Armes in them, waynscott under the hainginges rownde about, the hanginges Sixe foote deep" (Levey and Thornton 2001, p. 53). For the next 400 years the tapestries appear not to have moved. The next mention of the set comes in 1944, when Duchess Evelyn noted that "The tapestry (Sir Christopher Hatton) was covered with portraits of the Sixth Duke's friends, which I moved" (Devonshire 1945). A year later she noted of the Drawing Room that "Sir Christopher Hatton's tapestry (payment for which is in the account books) is still there" (Devonshire, 1945). In a section on 'The Preservation of Tapestries and other Textiles and Furniture', appended to her 1945 notes, Duchess Evelyn made the intriguing observation that many of the tapestries at Hardwick had had the faces tinted with paint, and she wondered whether this had been done in the factory, since she had been told that there was once a law forbidding it. She went on to note that: "The tapestry round the Drawing Room – bought from Sir Christopher Hatton's nephew – has certainly had something put on the faces, which has turned them quite dark grey. I once tried to wash a face in some fragment of Brussels tapestry and found the surface became sticky but would not yield to soap. I did not dare use spirit which would probably have moved it." (Devonshire, 1945). Since Duchess Evelyn's observations, Sophie Schneebalg-Perelman has shown that paint was extensively used on the surface of tapestries at production stage during the sixteenth century (Schneebalg-Perelman 1961). (Helen Wyld, 2011)

Provenance

Made for Sir Christopher Hatton, c. 1575-80, and presumably hung at Holdenby Hall; on Hatton’s death in 1591 inherited by his nephew Sir William Newport (later Hatton); July 1592 purchased by Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury for Hardwick Hall; thence by descent to Andrew, 11th Duke of Devonshire (1920-2004); acquired through the National Land Fund in 1956 and transferred to the National Trust in 1959.

Credit line

Hardwick Hall, The Devonshire Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1959)

Makers and roles

Oudenaarde, workshop

References

Wyld 2012: Helen Wyld, 'The Gideon Tapestries at Hardwick Hall', West 86th, vol. 19, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 2012), pp. 231-254 Hartkamp-Jonxis and Smit, 2004: Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis and Hille Smit, European Tapestries in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 2004 Mankin, 2004: Urve Mankin, Tallinn Town Council’s Tapestries in the Tallinn City Museum, Tallinn 2004 Levey and Thornton 2001: Santina Levey and Peter Thornton, Of Houshold Stuff: The 1601 Inventories of Bess of Hardwick, London, The National Trust, 2001 De Meûter, 1998: Ingrid de Meûter, ‘Flemish Tapestries of the 16th and 17th Centuries in Great Britain and their Connection with Oudenaarde’, Bulletin de liaison du Centre International d’Étude des Textiles Anciens [CIETA], 75 (1998), pp. 97-109 de Meûter et al., 1999: Ingrid de Meûter, Martine Vanwelden et al., Tapisseries d'Audenarde du XVle au XVllle Siècle, Tielt 1999 Devonshire, 1945: Evelyn, Duchess of Devonshire, Notes on the 6th Duke’s Handbook, written for her daughter-in-law Mary Cecil, 1945 (Unpublished manuscript, Hardwick Hall) Devonshire, 1946: Evelyn, Duchess of Devonshire, Notes on Hardwick following the route of the 1601 inventory, 1946 (Unpublished manuscript, Hardwick Hall) Schneebalg-Perelman, 1961: Sophie Schneebalg-Perelman, ‘”Le retouchage” dans la tapisserie bruxelloise ou les origins de l’édit impériale de 1544’, Annales de la Société royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles, 50 (1961), pp. 191-202

View more details