The Shipwreck at Malta from a set of four Acts of the Apostles
Philippe Wauters (fl.1671 - 1679)
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1670 - circa 1690
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk
Measurements
2.42 m (H); 4.10 m (W)
Place of origin
Antwerp
Order this imageCollection
Great Chalfield, Wiltshire
NT 539496
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, The Shipwreck at Malta from a set of four Acts of the Apostles, Philip Wauters, Antwerp, c. 1670-1690. Paul stands by a bundle of sticks with a viper attached to his arm, while a group of men and a small boy watch in alarm. In the background on the right is the sea with a ship breaking up on distant rocks. In the side borders there are putti carrying garlands, and festoons of fruit and flowers hang from the upper edge over the main field. The tapestry is woven with no lower border. There are brown galloons around all four sides. The warp count of this tapestry is 7 warps/cm.
Full description
The subject of the tapestry is taken from chapters 27 and 28 of the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul was transported as a prisoner from Jerusalem to Rome on board a ship, but in a storm it was wrecked and the prisoners landed on the island of Malta. The barbarians of the island offered little help to the shipwrecked victims, and so Paul gathered sticks to make a fire. A viper came out of the pile and fastened on his arm, but he shook it off into the fires and was unharmed. When the barbarians saw this they said that he was a god. The four tapestries at Great Chalfield Manor come from a larger series of the Acts of the Apostles, the subjects drawn from the New Testament book of that name. The series was designed and made in Antwerp in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Henry Marillier has identified a total of ten subjects in the series: 'Christians Bringing Gifts to the Apostles', 'The Beautiful Gate' (or ‘The Healing of the Lame Man’), 'Saint Paul Escaping from Damascus', 'Saint Philip Baptising the Eunach', 'The Conversion of Saint Paul', 'The Shipwreck at Malta', 'Saint Paul Delivered from Prison by the Angel', 'Christ's Charge to Peter', 'Paul Preaching at Athens' and 'The Sacrifice at Lystra' (Marillier 1930, pp. 4-6). The 'Acts of the Apostles' series was clearly inspired by the celebrated series of the same subject designed by Raphael for Pope Leo X in 1515-16 (see Evans 2010). Raphael's 'Acts' were probably the most famous tapestry designs in the world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were still extremely popular in the 1670s, with numerous workshops in the Southern Netherlands, France and England weaving versions of the designs. The present series was probably conceived to capitalise on the popularity of Raphael's 'Acts', and whilst some of the scenes are entirely new, others re-use Raphael's designs with little alteration. The designer of the series is identified in a letter of 1676 as Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596-1675), an Antwerp artist who worked extensively as a tapestry designer for Philip Wauters, who produced the 'Acts' tapestries, and his brother Michiel (Denucé 1931, p. 199). Van Diepenbeeck's preparatory drawing for 'Christians Bringing Gifts to the Apostles' is in the British Museum (Steadman 1974, pp. 48, 63). One of the tapestries at Great Chalfield Manor, ‘Christians Bringing Gifts’, bears in its right hand galloon the 'PW' monogram of the Antwerp tapestry entrepreneur Philip Wauters (fl. 1660-1679). Many other weavings of the designs include the same mark including tapestries at Westminster Abbey, Boughton House and Parham Park, as well as further examples listed by Marillier. The correspondence of the Wauters and firm mentions sets of eight 'Acts of the Apostles' tapestries in 1674, 1675, 1676 and 1682 (Denucé 1931, pp. 189, 195, 196, 199, 211), and a set of eight cartoons for the series was listed in Michiel Wauters's will in 1679 (Denucé 1932, p. 302; Crick-Kuntziger 1935, p. 36). The designs were also copied, in reverse, by the Oudenaarde tapissier Abel Reggelbrugghe (1624-1694), and a set probably made by him is in the National Trust’s collection at Speke Hall (no. 1197404). (Helen Wyld, 2013)
Provenance
Bought by Robert Fuller from his cousin Allen Stevens between 1939 and 1945; inherited by Robert Fuller’s daughter Mary Elizabeth Fuller OBE (1916-1996); given by her to the National Trust along with part of the contents of the house in 1974
Makers and roles
Philippe Wauters (fl.1671 - 1679), workshop Abraham van Diepenbeeck ('s-Hertogenbosch 1596 - Antwerp 1675) , designer
References
Marillier, 1930: Henry C Marillier, English Tapestries of the Eighteenth Century, London 1930 Denucé, 1931: Jean Denucé, Kunstuitvoer in de 17e eeuw te Antwerpen: de firma Forchoudt, Antwerp 1931 Denucé, 1932: Jean Denucé, De Antwerpsche “Konstkamers”: inventarissen van kunstverzamelingen te Antwerpen in de 16e en 17e eeuwen, Antwerp 1932 Crick-Kuntziger, 1935: Marthe Crick-Kuntziger, 'Contribution à l'histoire de la tapisserie anversoise: les marques et les tentures des Wauters', in Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art, 5, 1935, pp. 35-44 Denucé, 1936: Jean Denucé, Antwerpsche tapijtkunst en handel, Antwerp 1936 Wingfield Digby, 1959: George Wingfield Digby, ‘Tapestries by the Wauters Family for the English Market’, in Het Herfsttij van de Vlaamse Tapijtkunst, Brussels 1959, pp. 227-244 Steadman, 1982: D W Steadman, Abraham van Diepenbeeck: seventeenth century Flemish painter (PhD, Princeton University, 1973), Ann Arbor 1982 Hefford, 1992: Wendy Hefford, 'Ralph Montagu's Tapestries', in Tessa Murdoch (ed.), Boughton House, the English Versailles, London 1992 Evans 2010: Evans et al (ed.), Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, London 2010