Summary

Tapestry, wool and silk, 5 warps per cm, Jacob before Pharaoh from a set of five of The Story of Jacob, Southern Netherlands, c. 1550-1600. On the right Pharaoh sits enthroned on a raised dais surrounded by guards, whilst Jacob approaches from the left followed by two men, probably Joseph and one of his other sons, and two soldiers watch from the left. The throne is set on a marble pavement and a landscape extends into the distance on the left incorporating a small figure of a shepherd with his flocks and a castle on the horizon. The tapestry has borders on all four sides with bunches of fruit and flowers and small figures and scenes in between them, including figures of Fame at the lower corners, scenes with Diana and Apollo in the centre of the side borders, and in the upper and lower borders allegorical figures of Prudence holding a snake and a mirror either side of a scene showing Meleager with the head of the Caledonian Boar.

Full description

This is the fifth and final tapestry in the Jacob set at Powis, and shows Joseph presenting his father Jacob to Pharaoh as related in Genesis chapter 47. Joseph had told Jacob and all his brothers to come and live in Egypt so that he could protect them during the seven years of famine that he had predicted. Pharaoh allowed them to live as shepherds in Egypt, and told Joseph to appoint the best among them to be rulers over his cattle. Joseph then brought his father Jacob before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed him; "And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, how old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, the days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage" (Gen. 47:8-9). Jacob then blessed Pharaoh again and left, and Joseph established Jacob and his brethren in the best of the land of Egypt, and nourished them. A tapestry with the same design formerly in the Swedish Royal Collection has an inscription in a cartouche in the upper border which identifies the scene as follows: IOSEP ACCEPIT PATREM SVVM IACOB IN EGIPTVM GENESIS XXXXVI. Jacob and his twin brother Esau were born when their parents were entering old age, having been married for twenty years. Esau was the first twin to emerge, and was hairy all over; Jacob emerged second, holding on to his brother’s heel. Esau grew up to be a hunter, but Jacob was a quiet man. Jacob bought Esau’s birthright (the right to be considered the firstborn) for a mess of pottage, and with the help of their mother Rebecca he deceived their ageing and blind father into giving him the blessing that was meant for Esau by dressing himself in goats’ skins to imitate Esau’s hairy arms. Esau was angry and resolved to kill his brother, so Rebecca arranged for Jacob to be sent away in search of a wife to the land of her brother Laban. The first tapestry in the series at Powis shows Jacob meeting Rachel, the daughter of Laban, for the first time. After serving Laban for twenty years and being deceived by him many times, Jacob finally left secretly, taking his four wives and twelve sons with him; the second tapestry shows Laban catching up with Jacob, and also Jacob meeting his brother Esau again. The third tapestry shows the rape of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, by Shechem, an event which was followed by a bloody revenge meted out by Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi. Jacob’s second youngest son, Joseph, was to be the next patriarch and ruler of his brethren. As a young man Joseph was sold by his brothers into Egypt, and there he rose to a position of great power; the last two tapestries are set in Egypt, where finally Jacob and the rest of his sons joined Joseph. Jacob can be recognised in each tapestry as he wears a cloak decorated with stars, in reference to Genesis 26:4, where God appeared to Isaac and said “And I will make thy seed multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Jacob’s twelve sons were the originators of the twelve tribes of Israel. No makers’ marks are visible on any of the Jacob tapestries (although they may be present underneath the applied edging on some of the panels). John Böttiger suggested that a related series in a Swedish private collection may have been made in the Northern Netherlands (present-day Holland) by weavers who had emigrated from the tapestry-producing lands of the Southern Netherlands in the second half of the sixteenth century. However there is nothing to suggest that this is the case, and the set was almost certainly produced at one of the weaving centres in the Southern Netherlands (roughly present-day Belgium) such as Antwerp or Oudenaarde. Böttiger dated the Swedish series to the second half if the sixteenth century and the set at Powis can be dated to the same period. A set of five tapestries after the same designs was originally in the Swedish Royal Collection at the Castle of Kungsör. The set was sold in 1892 and by 1928 one of the tapestries had disappeared, and the other four were in three separate private collections in Sweden (Böttiger 1928, pp. 35-40). The subject of the first of the Swedish tapestries, ‘Jacob gathering his Wives before Fleeing the Land of Canaan’, does not appear in the Powis set, but the other three do: ‘Laban Searching for the Idols and the Meeting of Jacob and Esau’, ‘Jacob before Pharaoh’, and ‘The Meeting of Joseph and Jacob in Egypt’. The borders of the Swedish set have a similar overall structure to the Powis set with figures and scenes arranged between bunches of flowers, but some of the figures are different, the side borders are wider, and each tapestry has a cartouche in the upper border with a long inscription describing the scene. It is possible that the series as a whole included further scenes: the important events of Jacob’s early life, including Esau selling his birthright, and Jacob stealing Esau’s blessing, appear in many other sixteenth-century tapestry sets of the ‘Story of Jacob’. The tapestries cannot be definitely identified in the 1891 inventory of Powis, but in 1908 three from the set were in their current positions in the Duke’s Room (then ‘Her Ladyship’s Sitting Room’) described as “A King seated under a canopy on Audience” (‘Jacob before Pharaoh’), “The Meeting of Jacob and Esau” (‘The Meeting of Joseph and Jacob’), and “The capture of a city and its women” (‘The Rape of Dinah’) (Knight, Frank & Rutley 1908, pp. 52-53). A description of the Duke’s Room in 1917 indicates that the tapestries were originally at Lymore, and describes them in enthusiastic terms: “the rest of the wall space [in Lady Powis’s Sitting Room – formerly the Duke’s Room] is taken up by an oak chimneypiece, by two doorways, and by a set of three sixteenth century tapestries from Lymore, the ancient home of the Herberts of Chirbury. The manner of the doorways and wall hangings is excellently shown in the illustration […], and therefore needs no further description beyond saying that much of the charm of the tapestries arises from their colouring. They were in a cut and ravelled condition, but have been perfectly repaired and are but a little faded. The general tone is blue green, that being the colour of most of the trees and landscape. This harmonises perfectly with the full indigo of some of the clothing of the figures and the green grass of some of the foliage, but in the photography the latter stands out too distinctly as dark, while the former is too pale and imperceptible” (Avray Tipping 1917, p. 139). The 1930 Powis inventory records the three tapestries in the Duke’s Room with the same titles as in 1908, and values them collectively at £350, whilst two further tapestries described as “The Parting of Abraham and Lot” (£200) and “The Meeting of Jacob and Esau” (£150) were in the Gateway Room (Supplementary Inventory 1930, pp. 1, 3). (Helen Wyld, 2010)