Summary

Tapestry, wool and silk, 4 warps per cm, The Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin, La Marche, c. 1600-1640. A wide horizontal panel divided into two scenes. On the left is the birth of the Virgin, set in an interior with a tiled floor. In the foreground a group of women bathe the infant in a stone basin, while on the right others wring out and dry towels before an open fire on below an elaborate chimneypiece. To the left another woman approaches carrying more rolled up towels in a basket, and in the left foreground there is a chair with a towel hanging on its seat and an unusually-shaped cat sitting underneath it. In the background Saint Anne lies in bed in an alcove with figures to either side of her. In the left background two women approach from a doorway and to the right of the bed there is a window with a view to a landscape and a chair and table in front of it. The tapestry is divided down the centre by a column with vine leaves winding around it, and to the right is a separate scene of the Assumption. In the centre is the Virgin, crowned and wearing red and blue robes, encircled by an almond-shaped burst of light, or mandorla, and standing on a crescent moon. Emanating upwards from the mandorla is a triangular cloud. Within this, directly above the Virgin, is the small figure of God the Father welcoming her into heaven, with a half-moon with a face seen in profile, to his left, and a large golden sun to the right. On the far right is a smaller circular cloud containing a single five-pointed star. Beneath the clouds and to either side of the Virgin is a landscape, with a fenced garden on the left and a fountain and a small building to the right, surrounded by plants and trees. A mirror stands on the ground below the Virgin, overlapping the lower border. There are borders on all four sides with flowers, urns, cornucopia and scrolling patterns, and cherubs’ heads in each corner, on a dark brown ground, with a bead-and-reel pattern at the inner and outer edges. The tapestry has a blue galloon outside the border woven with a number of names along the lower edge.

Full description

The tapestry shows two key moments in the life of the Virgin Mary: her Nativity and her Assumption (ascent to heaven). The birth or Nativity of the Virgin does not appear in the New Testament, but was described in Jacopo de Voragine’s ‘Golden Legend’, a late thirteenth-century compilation of lives of saints, legends of the Virgin and other Christian narratives. Mary’s mother Anne was barren, but after her pious husband Joachim made offerings at the temple he received a prophecy that the elderly couple would have a child. The scene of the Virgin’s birth is usually represented in a chamber, as in the tapestry at Lytes Cary, which is often richly appointed as Joachim was a wealthy man. The representation of the bathing of the infant, which appears prominently in the foreground of the tapestry, has its origins in Byzantine iconography. In the background Anne lies in bed, with Joachim and a female attendant beside her. The figures approaching on the left background are friends bringing gifts for the new baby (Hall 1996, pp. 220-1; Réau 1955-9, vol. 2, part II, pp. 162-3). While the depiction of the Nativity of the Virgin follows a standard format, the iconography of the Assumption, on the right hand side, is more unusual. Like her Nativity the Assumption of the Virgin is not described in the New Testament but appears in apocryphal texts, and is described in Voragine’s ‘Golden Legend’. According to Voragine’s text the Apostles waited at the Virgin’s tomb after her death, and on the third day Christ appeared to them with Saint Michael, who brought with him the Virgin’s soul. They then witnessed her being borne aloft by a great company of angels. Although the empty building on the right probably represents the Virgin’s tomb, neither angels nor apostles are present in the tapestry, although they often are in scenes of the Assumption. Instead attention is focussed on the figure of the Virgin herself. She is encircled in the customary Mandorla, or almond shaped burst of light, and wears red and blue robes, the red symbolising love and blue as the colour of heaven. Her crown alludes to her position as queen of heaven, and she has a blazing halo around her head. Many of the elements in the ‘Assumption’ scene derive from a passage in the Song of Songs, describing a Shulamite maiden who in Medieval typology was associated with Mary. The sun and moon refer to the phrase ‘Beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun’, while the star on the right is the ‘Star of the Sea’, to which the Shulamite Maiden was compared, and with which Mary was associated as a sign of hope, and The mirror standing by the Virgin’s feet is the so-called ‘speculum sine macula’ or flawless mirror, referring to the Virgin’s purity. The fenced garden on the left recalls the ‘hortus conclusus’ or ‘enclosed garden’, and frequently appears in the iconography of the Virgin; the two fountains represent the ‘fons hortorum’, the ‘fountain in my garden’, and the tower the ‘Turris David’ or ‘David’s Tower’. The white and red flowers growing to the right are probably intended to represent the lily and the rose, symbols of purity and martyrdom respectively, but also referred to in the Song of Songs, as is the palm tree which grows by the fountain. All these symbols of purity and chastity are associated with the Immaculate Conception – the conception of Mary in Anne’s womb which, according to Medieval doctrine, had to be free from sin in order for Christ’s birth to be pure. The crescent moon, which appears beneath the Virgin’s feet, was also an ancient symbol of chastity, but its association with Mary and the Immaculate Conception has its origin in the Apocalypse, which described a woman dressed in sunlight, her feet on a crescent moon and her head crowned by twelve stars. Mary is frequently represented with the twelve stars, the crescent moon and the burst of light around her in scenes of the Assumption (Hall 1996, pp. 34-5, 326-7; Réau, vol. 2, part II, pp. 73-80, 616-21). The collected symbols referring to the Immaculate Conception serve to link the Assumption to the neighbouring scene of the Nativity of the Virgin. On the basis of its style, colouring, and materials, as well as the border design and the subject matter itself, the tapestry can be attributed to one of the tapestry producing towns of the La Marche region in central France, Aubusson or Felletin. A broad date of c. 1600-1640 is probable. The towns of Aubusson and Felletin produced large numbers of tapestries with religious subjects for churches, cathedrals and other ecclesiastical settings. The work of Cyprien Pérathon, who tirelessly gathered information on the La Marche workshops in the nineteenth century, revealed large numbers of such tapestries either still extant, or recorded in seventeenth-century inventories, contracts and descriptions. The tapestry was almost certainly intended for an ecclesiastical context, and may have been commissioned as a gift to a church or religious establishment, probably one that was dedicated to the Virgin. The cult of the Virgin was particularly strong in France, and there was a long tradition of displaying tapestry series with scenes from the life of the Virgin in the choirs of churches. The long narrow format of the tapestry would be consistent with a position in a church choir. A series of eight names is woven into the lower galloon of the tapestry, each consisting of a surname and initials. The names get closer together as they progress from left to right, as though the weavers realised they were running out of space. Two of the names have the same surname, ‘Demasnav’ (possibly intended as ‘Demasnay’) but the others are unrelated. It was customary in the La Marche region and elsewhere in Europe for the name of the manufacturer or the weaving centre to be written on the lower galloon, however in this case the large number of names (and the fact that none of them is recorded in the records of the seventeenth century tapestry industry in Aubusson or Felletin) suggests that they serve a different function. It is possible that the tapestry was a votive, given to a church and intended as a supplication to the Virgin, and that the names are those of the donors. A handful of other examples of French tapestries with this particular function are known or recorded, some of which were woven with inscriptions either asking for a particular favour or blessing, or simply recording the name or names of the donors. Two tapestries of the ‘Life of Saint Vincent-Ferrier’ given to the Cathedral of Vannes in 1615 include a portrait of the donor, Jacques Martin de Belleassise, Bishop of Vannes, and an inscription recording his gift (Chevalier, Chevalier and Bertrand 1988, pp. 42-3). A set of eight tapestries of the ‘Life of the Virgin’, commissioned by the bishop of Mende and woven in Aubusson in 1706 included the bishop’s initials in the lower borders, his arms in the upper borders and the arms of the city of Mende in the side borders (Pérathon 1894, pp. 526-7). A tapestry of the ‘Vision of Constantine’ given to the church of Récollets d’Aubusson in 1776 was woven with the name of its donor, who was later buried in the church (Pérathon 1894, p. 499). A number of religious tapestries made in the La Marche region for local churches are recorded, many of them with scenes from the Life of Christ or the Virgin. Stylistically similar tapestries include a similar wide horizontal panel with two scenes from the life of Saint Peter, formerly in the Chevalier collection and datable to the second quarter of the seventeenth century. It has a narrow bead-and-reel border very similar to the inner and outer edges of the border on the Lytes Carey tapestry, and a blue galloon, but no inscriptions (Chevalier, Chevalier and Bertrand 1988, p. 41). According to a note written by Henry Marillier (Marillier Tapestry Subject Index, Victoria and Albert Museum) probably in the 1930s, the tapestry was then in the Chapel at Rufford Abbey. The bulk of the collection at Rufford Abbey was sold at auction in 1938 and the sales included a number of tapestries, however none of the catalogues consulted included a lot identifiable with the Lytes Cary ‘Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin’ (Christie’s, 11-22 October 1938; Christie’s, 17 November 1938; Christie’s, 18 November 1938). It is not known when or how Walter Jenner acquired the tapestry for Lytes Cary, but it must have been at some point between c. 1930 and his death in 1948. (Helen Wyld, 2013)