Landscape with Hercules
probably Oudenaarde
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1575 - circa 1600
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 4 warps per cm
Measurements
2870 x 3100 mm
Order this imageCollection
Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire
NT 343395
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 4 warps per cm, Landscape with Hercules and Courtiers, Southern Netherlands, probably Oudenaarde, c. 1575 – 1600. A landscape tapestry with small figures. In the centre a man stands with his back to us holding a club and preparing to strike a large dragon. To the left a bearded man emerges from behind a tree and to the right two courtly figures look on. In the background groups of small figures picnic, play instruments and stroll about in the landscape, and in the distance there is an enclosed garden and a palace. The borders are composed of yellow strapwork enclosing bunches of fruit and flowers and small figures, including pairs of lovers at the lower corners, a man in armour with a sword and shield in each side border, and figures of Justice, holding a sword and a pair of scales, at the upper corners. The tapestry has been cut in two vertically and re-joined. Tapestry hangs on Velcro® on a wooden batten and has a curtain rail with dark green curtains in front approx. 10cm from the face of the tapestry when pulled across but touching when drawn back. The tapestry hangs above the floor by approx. 5-10cms. At the vertical join approx. 5-10cms of design is missing e.g. the hand of the ‘bearded’ man on the left side. In addition there are two horizontal cuts in the top part of the side borders with missing sections of design ( for example Justice’s sword is incomplete) which in conjunction with the loss of the top and bottom dark brown inner mainfield frame lines suggests that the original height of the piece was an additional 10-20cms. There are no galloons. Described in old guide book as depicting the visit of Queen Elizabeth I visit to Kenilworth Castle. See condition section for further notes on patch repairs.
Full description
The tapestry has been known as ‘The Visit of Elizabeth I to Kenilworth Castle’ since at least the early twentieth century. This fanciful title is based on the coincidence of certain elements in the tapestry with parts of the festivities that marked Elizabeth I’s famous visit to Kenilworth Castle (which is only eight miles from Baddesley Clinton) in 1575. According to written accounts of the visit, the Queen was met by a man dressed as Hercules with a club and keys, which corresponds to the figure of Hercules in the centre of the tapestry, and one evening was accosted by a "Hombre Savage" who uprooted an oak tree, which is suggested by the man on the left of the tapestry holding a tree with some of the roots showing. The pair of courtiers in the right foreground could be interpreted as Elizabeth herself and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen's host at Kenilworth. The festivities at Kenilworth were also marked by music and dancing, as practised by the many small figures in the background. The tapestry must therefore have appealed to the historical imagination of one of the occupants of Baddesley Clinton, possibly a member of the ‘Quartet’ who lived there at the end of the nineteenth century and whose antiquarian activities included the creation of a number of spurious Elizabethan portraits. Despite the suggestive figures of Hercules, the wild man, and the courtly couple, the tapestry in fact belongs to a type produced at Oudenaarde and other Flemish weaving centres at the end of the sixteenth century, for the market rather than to specific commissions (see de Meûter and Vanwelden 1999, pp. 143-7). These tapestries often included wild beasts (and sometimes fantastical beast like dragons), and parties of noblemen and women hunting or engaged in pastoral pursuits such as music-making. There is rarely a defined narrative content to these tapestries; the decorative potential of the subject matter is paramount. The setting is usually either a landscape or a garden or a combination of the two, sometimes with palaces or other buildings in the background; figures and motifs are found repeated in more than one tapestry, and are often taken from prints. The central figure of Hercules about to slay a dragon in the present tapestry is taken, in reverse, from a print by Cornelis Cort after Frans Floris of ‘Hercules Killing the Dragon Ladon’ of 1563. The motifs in the tapestry at Baddesley Clinton have been combined somewhat haphazardly: the central figure of Hercules has no logical relationship to the courtly couple to the right who look on quite unconcernedly. The tapestry has been at Baddesley Clinton since at least 1932, when it appears in a Country Life photograph of the Great Parlour. The photograph shows three tapestries, the ‘Landscape with Hercules and Courtiers’ on the left, and two others now at Packwood House, ‘Coronation of Marcus Aurelius’ (inv. 557892) and the ‘Three Muses’ (inv. 557901). (Helen Wyld, 2011)
Provenance
At Baddesley Clinton since at least 1932; bought from Thomas Weaving Ferrers with the house by the National Land Fund in 1979 and transferred to the National Trust.
Credit line
Baddesley Clinton, The Ferrers Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
probably Oudenaarde, workshop
References
de Meûter et al., 1999: Ingrid de Meûter, Martine Vanwelden et al., Tapisseries d'Audenarde du XVle au XVllle Siècle, Tielt 1999