Summary

Tapestry, wool and silk, 4½ warps per cm, Romulus favoured by the Augury from a set of five of the History of Romulus, probably Brussels, c. 1650-1680. In the left background Romulus stands on a rocky hillside with two companions, pointing up to a flock of twelve birds that flies overhead. Meanwhile in the foreground Remus also points to the sky, and reaches for his sword. Another soldier stands beside Remus and seems to reason with him, while two more stand to the right, holding a fasces and military standards, both looking at the sky. There are simple are borders on all four sides with flowers on a dark brown ground. The left hand border has been re-attached, and a vertical and horizontal cut perhaps following the shape of a door have been sewn up near the centre of the tapestry.

Full description

Romulus and Remus had been granted permission by their grandfather Numitor to found a new city on the Palatine Hill, but both brothers wanted to give their name to the city and to be its ruler. They resolved to decide who would rule by waiting for an augury, a sign from the Gods favouring one brother or the other. Remus was the first to receive a sign when he saw six birds in the sky, but Romulus then saw twelve birds. Each brother claimed victory, Remus as he had seen his birds first, Romulus because he had seen more birds. Although the various sources differ as to how it occurred, Romulus finally murdered his brother and became sole ruler of the city which he named Rome. The tapestry shows Romulus pointing to his twelve birds while Remus is about to draw his sword in anger. A soldier steps towards Remus, perhaps to prevent him drawing his sword, but perhaps to kill him – the various accounts differ as to exactly how Remus died. The design of the Coughton tapestry has a very similar composition to the same scene in ‘Burchard’s Romulus series’ (see below), but in reverse and with the figures redrawn. In contrast to some of the other designs in the ‘Romulus’ series, there is no known design by Rubens that this image can be linked to, even indirectly (McGrath 1997, vol. II, pp. 145-6). The five tapestries at Coughton all describe episodes from the early history of Rome and the life of Romulus, its founder. The main sources for the narrative are Livy’s ‘Ab Urbe Condita Libri’ and Plutarch’s Life of Romulus, but details of the story are related by many Roman writers. The designs of the Coughton tapestries are modified versions of a series that was linked to Rubens by Ludwig Burchard. Burchard also gathered together various tapestries that he felt belonged to this series, as no complete weaving survives. Subsequently Elizabeth McGrath has reviewed the designs, which she referred to as ‘Burchard’s Romulus series'. McGrath concluded that the designs have no direct link to Rubens (although some of them clearly show his influence), and also modified Burchard’s definition of the extent of the series, arriving at seven known designs: Mars and Rhea Silvia Romulus and Remus Suckled by the She Wolf The Youth of Romulus and Remus Romulus Favoured by the Augury The Rape of the Sabine Women The Reconciliation of Romans and Sabines The Apotheosis of Romulus Four of these subjects, ‘The Youth of Romulus and Remus’, ‘Romulus Favoured by the Augury’, ‘The Reconciliation of Romans and Sabines’ and ‘The Apotheosis of Romulus’, appear at Coughton Court, where we see modified versions of the designs. The fifth Coughton tapestry, which takes the place of ‘Romulus and Remus Suckled by the She Wolf’, is in fact an entirely different composition, based directly on a painting by Rubens of ‘The Finding of Romulus and Remus’ in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome. There is another example of this scene, but reversed in relation to the tapestry at Coughton, in the Swedish Royal Collection. ‘Burchard’s Romulus series’ is in its turn linked to a series of designs which has been the subject of protracted scholarly debate and controversy in the last 40 years, centring around the so-called ‘Cardiff Cartoons’, whose subjects also come from the early history of Rome. The four cartoons, full-scale models for tapestries executed in watercolour on paper, were acquired for the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 1979 as works by Rubens’s hand. This was based on their attribution to Rubens as early as 1650 in an inventory in Milan, and on three sketches also believed to be by Rubens, upon which the cartoons were based. Subsequently doubt was cast on the attribution of the Cardiff Cartoons and the most recent examination of their attribution, by McGrath, concludes that they are by another hand and only very indirectly linked to Rubens. The ‘Cardiff Cartoons’ series was sometimes combined with ‘Burchard’s Romulus series’ (and with other designs) by tapestry producers in the seventeenth century, and so the two series need to be considered together. Various different artists have been suggested as authors for the Cardiff Cartoons and the related Romulus series, most convincingly Jan Boeckhorst (1604-1668), a pupil of Rubens who is known to have finished some of the master’s paintings, and to have designed tapestries (Vlieghe 1990, pp. 109-117). Most recently Balis and McGrath have argued for Justus van Egmont (1601-1674), who worked in Rubens’s studio in the 1620s and later established himself as a designer of tapestries (McGrath 1997, pp. 128, 142, 148). The Coughton tapestries were woven after a different set of cartoons to the original ‘Romulus’ tapestries. Three of the designs, ‘The Finding of Romulus and Remus’, ‘The Reconciliation of Romans and Sabines’, and ‘Romulus Favoured by the Augury’, are reversed and the figures have all been redrawn, sometimes with significant modifications to the scenes. ‘The Apotheosis of Romulus’ is not reversed but the composition is very different, and ‘The Youth of Romulus and Remus’ is very similar to the earlier versions, and not reversed, but has some minor modifications. The reversal of some of the designs suggests that these ‘second generation’ cartoons may have been copied after tapestries rather than from the original cartoons. The ‘first generation’ weavings of both Romulus series all appear to have been produced in Brussels. The earliest probably date from the 1640s, as the four Cardiff Cartoons were in Milan by 1650. One of these weavings, recorded in Rome in the nineteenth century and now only partly extant, is signed by the mid-seventeenth-century Brussels entrepreneurs Daniel Eggermans – either the elder (d. c. 1643) or the younger (1604-1669) - and Hendrik van Assche. ‘First generation’ weavings of the designs were in two different Swedish private collections (Böttiger 1928, plates 60-65), and others survive the Swedish Royal Collection (Böttiger 1895-98, vol. III, p. 42); still others have surfaced on the art market during the twentieth century (see McGrath 1997, vol. II, pp. 129-32). The tapestries at Coughton belong to a later stage in the history of the designs, as they are woven after new cartoons. McGrath identifies four distinct weavings after the ‘second generation’ cartoons. One of these sets is signed by either Jan Raes I (1574-1651) or Jan Raes II (1602-1639), and another by Jan Raet (fl. 1629-1644), both of whom operated in Brussels. Both these sets have different borders to the set at Coughton (McGrath 1997, vol. II, pp. 133-4). The Coughton tapestries cannot be definitely attributed to a particular weaver or entrepreneur, but were probably made in Brussels. Although the two signed sets indicate that the second-generation cartoons were already in existence in the 1640s, on the basis of their borders the Coughton tapestries can be dated to c. 1650-1680. There is another weaving of ‘Romulus favoured by the Augury’, again woven after the second-generation cartoons and with borders of Solomonic columns similar to the set signed by Jan Raet, in the National Trust’s collection at Ightham Mote (no. 825687). (Helen Wyld, 2013)