The Building of Thebes
English
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1670 - circa 1690
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 7 warps per cm
Measurements
2.49 m (H); 4.32 m (W)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Chirk Castle, Wrexham
NT 1171318.2
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 7 warps per cm, The Building of Thebes from a set of four of the Story of Cadmus, English, c. 1670-1700. In the foreground Cadmus, dressed in armour and a red cloak, sits at the foot of a tree with his shield on the ground beside him and a drawing board on his knee, in discussion with his attendant who sits beside him wearing a blue tunic and holding a staff. The pair are directing the building activities of five men on the left hand side of the tapestry who measure blocks of stone and carry materials, with a large palace or temple under construction in the background. To the left of the tree where Cadmus sits a landscape stretches into the distance. In the upper border birds perch on swagged ribbons either side of a vase of flowers, and on the lower border there are swags of fruit with reclining female figures at each corner. The side borders include garlands of fruit and figures of Minerva.
Full description
After the abduction of his sister Europa by Jupiter (see 500317.1) Cadmus was sent in search of her by their father Agenor, and warned that he would be exiled if he failed to bring her back (see 500317.2). Cadmus searched in vain, as no-one can find the retreat of the Gods, and finally appealed to the Delphic oracle, asking where he could settle as he could not return home to the wrath of his father. The oracle replied that when he saw a heifer unmarked by toil he should follow it, and found a city where the cow laid down; the place would be named Boetia, and the city Thebes. After leaving the cave of the oracle Cadmus soon saw the heifer, and when she lay down on the grass he kissed the soil and looked around joyfully at the woods and mountains of his new home. Wishing to give thanks for his good fortune Cadmus sought a fresh spring of water to make a sacrifice, and accidentally disturbed a monstrous serpent which slaughtered all his men before Cadmus killed it. The killing of the serpent is the subject of another tapestry in the series that does not appear at Lyme. The Goddess Minerva then appeared to Cadmus and told him to sew the serpent’s teeth like seeds, and there sprung up an army of warlike men; they immediately fell upon one another until there were only five left, and these helped Cadmus to build Thebes. The tapestry shows Cadmus and his attendant (who also appears with Cadmus and his father in the previous tapestry in the series, 500317.2) consulting an architectural plan as they oversee the building of Thebes, and the five men at work represent the five surviving warriors that sprung from the serpent’s teeth. The four tapestries at Chirk are part of a larger series of designs telling the story of Prince Cadmus, the son of Agenor, King of Tyre in Phoenicia. Cadmus was the founder of the city of Thebes, and is credited with bringing the Phoenician alphabet to Greece; he was also the grandfather of Actaeon. He is mentioned in various Greek sources including the ‘Histories’ of Herodotus, but the main source for the tapestry series is Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. The subject of the first tapestry in the series is the abduction of Europa, Cadmus’s sister, by Jupiter disguised as a bull. Agenor then sent Cadmus in search of her. On his wanderings Cadmus came to the island of Samothrace where he took Harmonia as a wife; their marriage is the subject of the last tapestry. Cadmus appealed to the Delphic Oracle, who told him that when he saw a cow unmarked by toil he should follow it, and found a city where it lay down. This was to be the City of Thebes. The second and third tapestries show Cadmus defeating a dragon guarding a spring at the site of Thebes, and overseeing the building of the city. The tapestry borders include figures of Minerva, Cadmus's protectress, and at the top a lion's skin, which Cadmus wore as mail. Each of the four 'Cadmus' tapestries at Chirk bears on its outer galloon the mark of a red cross on a white shield, which was used at Mortlake and at other, smaller tapestry workshops in the London area after 1660. While the tapestries must therefore be English, a number of other surviving 'Cadmus' sets, and related tapestries with subjects from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', were in fact made in Antwerp, at the workshops of Michiel and Philip Wauters (Denucé 1931; Crick-Kuntziger 1935; Denucé 1936). During the 1930s there was some debate over the origin of the 'Cadmus' and related 'Metamorphoses' tapestries (Marillier 1940). In 1983 Wendy Hefford subjected the tapestries and the known documentary evidence to a detailed study, and concluded that the design series had originated in Antwerp with the Wauters firm, who produced them largely for the English market, and that English tapestry producers had subsequently copied the designs and produced their own versions, thus explaining the existence of examples with both English and Antwerp marks (Hefford 1983; see also Brosens 2008, pp. 199-206; Hefford 2010, pp. 275-282). Hefford noted that two sets of cartoons of the ‘Story of Cadmus’ appear in the posthumous inventory of Michiel Wauters in 1679, and showed that the surviving subjects in the ‘Cadmus’ sets at Lyme Park, Chirk Castle and elsewhere correspond closely to those listed in the correspondence of the Wauters firm (Hefford 1983, pp. 99-101). Hefford identified various physical differences between ‘Metamorphoses’ tapestries produced in Antwerp and the English versions: the former were woven with a slightly coarser weave, and included a red dye that tended to fade, whereas the English reds remained bright; and in the English versions the designs were usually woven in reverse. It is interesting to compare the English 'Cadmus' tapestries at Chirk with another set in the National Trust's collection at Lyme Park (no. 500317), whose designs are in the opposite direction and which has the warp count and the colouring typical of the Antwerp weavings. Hefford attributes the design of the ‘Cadmus’ tapestries to Daniel Janssens (1636-1682) an artist and tapestry designer from Mechelen in the Southern Netherlands, a town which specialised in producing designs for tapestry. Janssens is known to have provided a number of sets of tapestry designs to Antwerp weavers in the late seventeenth century, including for the Wauters firm who produced the ‘Cadmus’ series. Among his known designs are the ‘Seven Liberal Arts’ (a set survives at Cotehele House, inv. 348261), which are stylistically similar to the ‘Cadmus’ series and the other ‘Metamorphoses’ tapestries. The 'Cadmus' tapestries may be the set that was bought by Sir Thomas Myddelton, 2nd Baronet, on returning from his Grand Tour in 1672. A 'suite of fower hangings' was purchased for £49 12s 0d, the payment going to a Richard Myddelton – either Thomas's younger brother, or his uncle, a London merchant. (Myddelton papers, National Library of Wales: copy at Chork Castle). (Helen Wyld, 2012)
Provenance
Purchased by Sir Thomas Myddelton in 1672 "Suite of fower pieces of tappestrie hangings. £49 12 s 0d" -Chirk Castle Accounts. Previously amongst the chattels that, in 1978, were acquired along with Chirk Castle from Lt-Col Ririd Myddelton (1902–1988) by the National Land Fund and handed, on loan for 99 years, to the Secretary of State for Wales. In 1981 Chirk was transferred into the ownership of the National Trust. Acceptance in lieu, 1999.
Credit line
Chirk Castle, The Myddelton Collection (The National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
On lower galloon, towards right: Mark of a red cross on a white shield On a square of canvas sewn to the lower galloon, possibly contemporary with the tapestry: The number '2'
Makers and roles
English, workshop London, workshop attributed to Daniel Janssens (Mechelen 1636 - 1682), designer
References
Wendy Hefford, ‘The English Tapestries’, in Guy Delmarcel, Nicole de Reyniès and Wendy Hefford, The Toms Collection Tapestries of the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries, Zürich 2010, pp. 239-294 Koenraad Brosens, European Tapestries in the Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven 2008 Wendy Hefford, ‘The Chicago Pygmalion and the “English Metamorphoses”’, The Art Institute of Chicago: Museum Studies, 10 (1983), pp. 93-117 Marillier, 1940: Henry C Marillier, ‘The English Metamorphoses: a confirmation of origin’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 76, no. 443 (Feb. 1940), pp. 60-63 Jean Denucé, Antwerp art-tapestry and trade, Antwerp 1936 Crick-Kuntziger, 1935: Marthe Crick-Kuntziger, 'Contribution à l'histoire de la tapisserie anversoise: les marques et les tentures des Wauters', in Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art, 5, 1935, pp. 35-44 Jean Denucé, Inventories of the art-collections in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th centuries, Antwerp 1932 Jean Denucé, Art-export in 17th century Antwerp: the firm Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931 Marillier, 1930: Henry C Marillier, English Tapestries of the Eighteenth Century, London 1930