Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 35 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,438 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 280 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,229 items Explore
  • 209 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,732 items Explore
  • 5,089 items Explore
  • 9 items Explore
  • 167 items Explore
  • 13,004 items Explore
  • 13,621 items Explore
  • 4,810 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,007 items Explore
  • 4,759 items Explore
  • 15 items Explore
  • 422 items Explore
  • 252 items
  • 100 items Explore
  • 19,964 items Explore
  • 34 items Explore
  • 1,924 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,072 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 456 items Explore
  • 917 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,263 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 793 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
  • 7 items
  • 121 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 976 items Explore
  • 812 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 107 items
  • 37,206 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,870 items Explore
  • 1,530 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,413 items Explore
  • 9,684 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,778 items Explore
  • 7,359 items Explore
  • 4,583 items Explore
  • 1,893 items Explore
  • 1,194 items Explore
  • 22,724 items Explore
  • 3,663 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,350 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 352 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,093 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,146 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,955 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 310 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,909 items Explore
  • 1,582 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,137 items Explore
  • 1,320 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 847 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 132 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 281 items
  • 313 items
  • 685 items Explore
  • 346 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,545 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,394 items Explore
  • 40,347 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,702 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 777 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 23,159 items Explore
  • 917 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,636 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,337 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,309 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 454 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 284 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 271 items Explore
  • 11,294 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,035 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 8,298 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,970 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,884 items Explore
  • 185 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 269 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,055 items
  • 3,522 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,743 items Explore
  • 93 items
  • 18,936 items Explore
  • 3,136 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,982 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,540 items Explore
  • 38 items
  • 13,281 items Explore
  • 3,461 items Explore
  • 5,689 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 49,735 items Explore
  • 646 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,701 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 438 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 204 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,667 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,520 items Explore
  • 912 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 314 items
  • 686 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 4 items
  • 2,286 items Explore
  • 1,662 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,876 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 81 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,083 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,670 items Explore
  • 23,377 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 179 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 84 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,570 items Explore
  • 3,582 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,798 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 42 items
  • 6,910 items Explore
  • 4,841 items Explore
  • 256 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,975 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,897 items Explore
  • 193 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 466 items Explore
  • 6,118 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,860 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,935 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,132 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,502 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 24 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,257 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 70 items
  • 17 items
  • 154 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 460 items
  • 4 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,553 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 9,496 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,789 items Explore
  • 1,162 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,561 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 7,857 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,950 items Explore
  • 1,401 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,169 items Explore
  • 14,874 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 15 items
  • 5,686 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,215 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 4 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 666 items Explore
  • 8,372 items Explore
  • 75 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,606 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,702 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 3,704 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 733 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,136 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 228 items Explore
  • 79,972 items Explore
  • 3,135 items Explore
  • 2,874 items Explore
  • 25 items
  • 5,345 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,513 items Explore
  • 4,930 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
  • 12,447 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,710 items Explore
  • 214 items
  • 17,037 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 626 items Explore
  • 1,597 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 375 items
  • 2 items
  • 326 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

Wall hanging: Penelope flanked by Perseverance and Patience

Category

Textiles

Date

c. 1573

Materials

Silk, cloth of gold and silver; linen backing

Measurements

278 cm (height); 350 cm (length)

Order this image

Collection

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

NT 1129593.1

Caption

During the 16th century, the nobility and gentry commonly used embroidered wall hangings and tapestries to decorate their houses. The elaborate hanging shown here is one of the largest and most significant to survive from the Elizabethan period, and was commissioned by Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury for her house at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. It is one of a set of five showing biblical and mythical female figures – Lucretia, Zenobia, Artemisia, Cleopatra and, in this case, Penelope, wife of the classical hero Ulysses, who spent ten years away at the Trojan war. She is celebrated at the centre of this embroidery, and personifications of the virtues of patience and perseverance are shown at either side. The embroidery includes the countess’s coat of arms alongside that of her fourth husband George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury (c.1522– 90). The couple’s marriage ended acrimoniously, and the hangings became the subject of legal disputes between husband and wife in 1585 and 1586. This was resolved in the countess’s favour, and they appear in an inventory of her goods at her new home – Hardwick Hall – in 1601.

Summary

An embroidered appliqué wall hanging showing the central figure of Penelope standing in a large portal with personifications of her qualities of Perseverance and Patience in smaller portals at each side. They stand within a larger classically inspired setting featuring a foreground of tapering pilasters, a fluted column with an ionic capital at each side and an entablature running along the top. It is one of a set of five hangings commissioned by Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (1527-1608), to furnish her home at Chatsworth in the 1670s following her fourth marriage to George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury (1528-90). They are represented by an intertwined GE at the top of each column and GES for George and Elizabeth Shrewsbury in the centre of the entablature. Above each of the smaller portals in an oval medallion decorated with two white and two blue heraldic roses and featuring the arms of Talbot impaling Hardwick on the left and the Talbot badge of a Talbot hound on the right. The set of five hangings was taken to Hardwick in the late 1580s and 1590s and used to furnish the recently completed New Hall built by the Countess between 1597 and 1601. They are recorded in the Withdrawing Chamber in the 1601 inventory. The hanging is constructed of high value brightly coloured silk fabrics including velvet, satin, tissue and lampas, cloth of silver and gold and is embellished with applied couched decoration of gold and silver filé and silk floss threads, braids and bobbin lace, cords, spangles and purl, all applied to a plain weave linen lining that covers the whole of the reverse.

Full description

This embroidered wall hanging of Penelope, the faithful wife of the Classical hero, Ulysses, is one of the largest and most splendid embroideries surviving from the Elizabethan age. It is from a set of five showing historical and mythical female figures, which also included Lucretia, Zenobia, Arthemesia and Cleopatra. They were probably inspired by female characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women, published in his complete works in 1532 and were intended to show the virtues of their owner, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury. The group of Noble Women selected by the Countess are all defined by their relationship to their husbands as either wives or widows and in the same way, she constructs her own identity in her textiles though prominent use of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s arms and initials, conjoined with her own. During Penelope’s ten-year wait for her husband to return from the Trojan War, she kept suitors waiting by promising to make a choice once she had completed her weaving but deferred her decision by unpicking each night what she had woven during the day. Standing proudly as the crowned ruler of Ithaca at the moment of Ulysses’s return, Penelope’s hand rests on a finished roll of fabric while the other is raised to admonish her suitors. Her patience and perseverance are personified as female figures at her side. Luxurious textiles were a significant part of the furnishing of a sixteenth-century household, used for comfort, decoration and to indicate wealth and the Countess used fine textiles in the form of hangings, table carpets, bed sets and cushions to create a display of opulence and wealth in her homes. This hanging is made using appliqué, a technique where fabric is cut and layered together to create a design, here using the most expensive silk, velvet and cloth of gold, embellished with gold and silver thread. Many of the fabrics came from ecclesiastical vestments removed from churches in the mid-16th century following the changes to religious worship introduced during the English Reformation and, in this case, then recycled as domestic furnishings.

Marks and inscriptions

Penelope/Perseverance/Paciens

References

Levey, 2007: Santina M. Levey The embroideries at Hardwick Hall: a catalogue. [London]: National Trust, 2007. White 2005: Gillian White, “Pictures of the Vertues”: A Set of Wall-Hangings at Hardwick Hall, Renaissance Journal, vol. 2, no.3, 2005 Slocombe 2016: Slocombe, Emma., ‘The Embroidery and Needlework of Bess of Hardwick’ in Adshead, David., Taylor, David.A.H.B., (eds.), Hardwick Hall : A Great Old Castle of Romance. New Haven: Yale University Press (2016), 110-132.

View more details