The Continence of Scipio
Brussels
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1660 - circa 1680
Materials
Tapestry, wool, silk, silver and gilt metal wrapped thread, 8 warps per cm
Measurements
3200 x 4160 mm
Place of origin
Brussels
Order this imageCollection
Lyme, Cheshire
NT 500312
Summary
Tapestry, wool, silk, silver and gilt metal wrapped thread, 8 warps per cm, The Continence of Scipio, Brussels, c. 1660 – 1680. To the left Scipio sits enthroned on a raised dais before the mouth of a tent wearing a laurel wreath and armour, gesturing with his left hand to a young man kneeling before him and with his right to a young woman standing in the foreground wearing a blue dress and a richly embroidered shawl. The young woman is guarded by two soldiers and more soldiers surround Scipio, some wearing lions’ skins, some carrying fasces, and one of them holding a plumed helmet above the general’s head. Before Scipio the young Celtiberian chieftain Allucius kneels, and directly behind him is a crowd of civilians led by a middle-aged couple proffering a silver urn. In the foreground is a child gazing at another urn, and two small dogs. The tapestry has no borders but a later wool repp galloon has been applied around three sides.
Full description
Publius Cornelius Scipio (235 – 185 BC) was born into one of the great Roman families, became a general at a young age and was the hero of the Second Punic War, defeating Hannibal in 202 BC and gaining the nickname ‘Africanus’. The history of these military campaigns is told by Livy and Polybius, and Scipiowas widely admired in his own time and throughout the early modern period for his skill as a general and military tactician. ‘The Continence of Scipio’ refers to an event early on in his campaign in Hispania. Following the capture of Carthago Nova Scipio’s troops captured a beautiful maiden and brought her to him as a prize. Questioning her Scipio discovered that she was betrothed to a chieftain of the Celtiberians named Allucius; he asked that Allucius be brought before him and returned the maiden to him unharmed, saying that all he wanted in return was for Allucius to be a friend to Rome. Allucius was overcome with gratitude, as were the girl’s parents, who insisted on paying Scipio a rich ransom; Scipio agreed to accept the ransom but then presented it to Allucius as a wedding gift. Livy recounts that Allucius went away with his bride and soon returned to Scipio with an army of 1400 loyal soldiers (Livy, ‘Ab Urbe Condita’, book 26, chapter 50). The tapestry shows Scipio seated on a raised dais outside his tent, the maiden held by soldiers to the left, and Allucius kneeling before him to the right, the couple behind him with a silver urn representing the maiden’s parents. ‘The Continence of Scipio’ is a seventeenth-century reweaving of an early sixteenth-century design from the ‘Deeds and Triumphs of Scipio’, one of the most celebrated tapestry series of the Renaissance. The huge, twenty-two piece series was first woven between 1532 and 1535 for François I, King of France, and had a total area of around 566 square metres. François I’s set was destroyed in 1797 but its appearance is recorded in early descriptions, preparatory drawings, and later reweavings of the designs. The series was in fact formed of two separate groups of designs; the first, the ‘Deeds’, comprised twelve pieces representing the battles of Scipio against Carthage in his African campaign, and the second, the ‘Triumphs’, represented the triumphal entries of Scipio into Rome. The ‘Continence of Scipio’ belongs to the first group. Although the circumstances surrounding the commission of the ‘Deeds and Triumphs of Scipio’ tapestries are mysterious, the designs have convincingly been attributed to Giulio Romano (1499-1546) with assistance from Gianfrancesco Penni (1488/1496-1528) who probably elaborated modelli provided by Giulio (Jestaz and Bacou 1978, pp. 5-7; Forti-Grazzini in Mantua 1989, pp. 467-473; Campbell 2002, pp. 341-349). The conception of the series has been dated either to c. 1521-3, or to 1528. The designs proved immensely popular and were to have a far-reaching influence on European tapestry design. The large number of reweavings of the designs is a testament to this. Various partial sets were produced in Brussels in the 1540s-1550s, and later in the years around 1600 (Campbell 2002; Delmarcel 2010, p. 97). From the 1660s the designs were once more woven in Brussels, and a series was also woven at the Gobelins in the 1680s-90s. The tapestry at Lyme belongs to a late phase in the history of the designs, and was woven in Brussels in the third quarter of the seventeenth century when a consortium of the foremost tapestry entrepreneurs in Brussels, including Jan van Leefdael and his son Willem, Geraert van der Strecken, Hendrik I Reydams and his son Hendrik II, and Everaert III Leyniers, collaborated to produce ‘Scipio’ tapestries based on the sixteenth-century designs, and probably using cartoons produced in the 1540s. The largest recorded set produced at this time was a series of 39 pieces, including entrefenêtres and overdoors, made by Jan van Leefdael, Geraerd van der Strecken and Hendrik I Reydams for Don Luis Francisco de Benavides Carrillo de Toledo, Marquis of Caracena, Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands from 1659 to 1664. This set is now split between various different collections, and one of the surviving panels bears the date 1660 (Delmarcel 2010, pp. 96-107). Delmarcel has suggested that this prestigious commission may have inspired other patrons, and the late seventeenth-century purchasers of the Brussels set included Charles IV of Lorraine and Charles Emmanuel III, Prince of Savoy. The remains of ‘Scipio’ sets from this period survive in the Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome; the Palazzo Labia, Venice; the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; and the Château de Tarascon, France (Forti-Grazzini 1994, vol. I, pp. 206-208; Delmarcel 2010, p. 97). All the recorded Brussels ‘Scipio’ tapestries of this period are woven with a fine weave of 8-9 warps per cm and with a large proportion of silver and gilt metal wrapped thread, as is the panel at Lyme. Many of the surviving panels are signed and it is possible to date them, on the basis of the known dates of activity of the weavers involved, to between c. 1660 and 1680. The various re-weavings of the designs during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to some variation between the different versions. The earliest surviving series, bought by Mary of Hungary in 1544 and now in the Spanish National Collection, may have been woven from the original cartoons used for François I’s set (Junquera de Vega and Herrero Carretero 1986, series 26). The Lyme ‘Continence of Scipio’ follows the 1544 version fairly closely, as does another of the late seventeenth-century weavings of the subject, in the Collection Toms. Curiously, a third late seventeenth-century version of the ‘Continence of Scipio’ now in the Palazzo del Quirinale differs markedly from the Lyme and Toms versions although it was produced by the same consortium of weavers, and is in fact derived from a variant of the cartoons known as the ‘Albon’ series produced in around 1540 (Forti-Grazzini 1994, pp. 211-2). The ‘Albon’ series was also the basis of a set of new cartoons made for the Gobelins workshop under Louis XIV. The tapestry may be identifiable with a panel described in the 1929 inventory of Lyme in the Morning Room, as ‘A Mortlake tapestry (probably during the Directorship of Sackville Crow) A scene depicting one of the Triumphs of Caesar after the designs by Mantegna’ and given the high valuation of £2,000 (Biffard, Robertson & Lucy 1929, p. 32). (Helen Wyld, 2010)
Provenance
Original to the house. Accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the National Trust, 2014.
Makers and roles
Brussels , workshop possibly Willem van Leefdael (1632 - 1688), workshop possibly Everaert III Leyniers (Brussels, 1597 – 1680), workshop possibly Hendrik I Reydams (Brussels, fl. 1629 – d.1669), workshop possibly Hendrik II Reydams (Brussels, fl. 1669 – d.1719), workshop possibly Geraert van der Strecken (Brussels, fl. 1647 – d. 1677), workshop Giulio Romano (Rome c.1499 - Mantua 1546), designer Gianfrancesco Penni (Florence 1488/1496 – Naples 1528), designer possibly Jan van Leefdael (1603 - 1668) , workshop
References
Delmarcel, 2010: Guy Delmarcel, ‘The Flemish Tapestries’, in Guy Delmarcel, Nicole de Reyniès and Wendy Hefford, The Toms Collection Tapestries of the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries, Zürich 2010, pp. 25-157 Campbell, 2002: Thomas Campbell (ed.), Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002 Forti-Grazzini, 1994: Nello Forti-Grazzini, Gli Arazzi (Il patrimonio artistico del Quirinale), 2 vols., Rome 1994 Giulio Romano, exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale and Palazzo Te, Mantua 1989 Junquera de Vega and Gallegos, 1986: Paulina Junquera de Vega and Carmen Díaz Gallegos, Catalogo de Tapices del Patrimonio nacional, volumen II: siglo XVII, Madrid 1986 Bertrand Jestaz and Roseline Bacou, Jules Romain: L’Histoire de Scipion. Tapisseries et Dessins, exh. cat. Grand Palais, Paris 1978 Messrs. Biffard, Robertson & Lucy, Inventory and Valuation of Structural Enrichments, Tenants Fixtures and Fittings, Tapestries, Oil Paintings, Silver, Sheffield Plate and Plated Goods, [...]. The Property of the Honourable Richard Legh, London 1929