The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia
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 1171318.4
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 7 warps per cm, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia from a set of four of the Story of Cadmus, English, c. 1670-1700. In the centre a priestess pour oil on a fire burning on an altar decorated with a flaming heart, and in the billowing cloud of smoke rising from Minerva, Cadmus's protectress, appears with two female companions. Cadmus and Harmonia approach the altar from the right wearing garlands in their hair and followed by Cupid who holds a torch and carries the train of Harmonia's dress. To the left two children with torches stand behind the priestess and in the left background there is a statue of Diana on a raised plinth. The scene is framed on the right by a columned building. 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
During his journey in search of his sister Europa, who had been abducted by Zeus, Cadmus came to the island of Samothrace. Here he met Harmonia, daughter of Elektra, and took her away as his wife. Their marriage was the first to be celebrated on earth to which the gods brought gifts, and this is alluded to by the presence of Minerva in the clouds in the tapestry. 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
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