Fragment with Rabbits and a Hawk
Flemish
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1500 - circa 1530
Materials
Tapestry, wool, 4-5 warps per cm
Measurements
620 x 640 mm
Place of origin
Belgium
Order this imageCollection
Cotehele, Cornwall
NT 348365
Summary
Tapestry, wool, 4-5 warps per cm, Fragment with Rabbits and a Hawk, Southern Netherlands, c. 1500-1530. A roughly square fragment of tapestry with ragged edges representing a naïve hilly landscape. In the foreground at the bottom are the wings and back of a hawk,and above this a tree grows in the centre of the tapestry. To the left is a group of houses with a church tower, and there are more houses to the right cut off by the ragged edge of the tapestry. Three rabbits are to be seen elsewhere in the tapestry, one emerging from a rabbit hole on the left, one near another rabbit hole on the right, and the third sitting up by the tree in the centre. At the bottom right is part of a large leafy shape. The tapestry has no borders or lining.
Full description
This fragment is clearly part of a much larger tapestry. A small strip of brown at the top of the fragment may be part of its original upper border. The landscape with small houses on the horizon resembles the upper part of numerous pastoral and hunting tapestries produced in the Southern Netherlands in the early sixteenth century. Such tapestries usually included larger figures and animals in the foreground, for example a series of four ‘Hunting Parks’ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and two further hunting tapestries in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow (Cavallo 1994, cat. no. 49). (Helen Wyld, 2010)
Provenance
Left at Cotehele when the property was accepted in lieu of tax from Kenelm, 6th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe (1873-1965) and transferred to the National Trust in 1947; amongst the contents accepted in lieu of estate duty by H M treasury and transferred to the National Trust in 1974.
Credit line
Cotehele House, The Edgcumbe Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Flemish, workshop
References
Cavallo, 1993: Adolpho S Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1993