Verdure with wild animals
Flemish
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1570 - circa 1600
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 4-5 warps per cm
Measurements
2520 x 2720 mm
Order this imageCollection
Packwood House, Warwickshire
NT 557862
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 4-5 warps per cm, Landscape with Wild Animals, Flemish, c. 1570-1600. A verdure tapestry with a variety of fantastical beasts throughout the landscape. The foreground is filled with leaves and vines amidst which a large yellow lion leaps, mouth open, about to pounce upon a hind which turns and runs off. There is a small armadillo at the bottom left corner and large birds at either side. The central plane of the tapestry is an open landscape in which deer, goats, unicorns, asses and other animals in stylised leaping poses are superimposed, and on the left two deer-like animals, one of which is covered with spots, drink from a river. Behind these animals to the right are three small human figures, all apparently female, one carrying a bow and another a spear. In the upper part of the tapestry trees recede towards the horizon, where more fantastical animals fill the distant landscape. The border is composed of leaves and fruit amidst yellow strapwork, with allegorical female figures and birds and a blue twisted ribbon running along the inner edge. The tapestry appears to have been cut down as the lower and right hand borders have been cut and re-joined. There are a number of repairs which have changed colour, most notably in the lion’s neck and in the lower border.
Full description
Surviving inventory records show that landscapes and verdures were among the most popular forms of tapestry during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see Delmarcel 1999, p 139), but they have received relatively little attention from art historians. Towards the end of the sixteenth century spatially defined landscapes such as the present tapestry began to replace the two-dimensional leafy grounds of the ‘verdure’ tapestries popular earlier on. The animals that fill the landscape in the present tapestry are of a type that appear in tapestries from the early sixteenth century, and wild beast frequently appeared in much earlier tapestries. There has been some speculation about the possible allegorical meaning of the beasts that inhabit sixteenth-century verdure tapestries, and in some cases hunt scenes or fighting animals may be intended to carry a religious or moral message (Cavallo 1993 pp. 586-593). The most famous example is a set of forty-four tapestries in Wawel Castle, Cracow and woven in Brussels in the 1560s where the animals carry Christian symbolism (Szabłowski 1972, pp. 191-286). No such symbolism seems to be intended in the present tapestry however. The figures may convey some narrative content but they are too small for this to be very developed. It was common for small figures to be inserted into landscape tapestries such as this one, sometimes evocative of a general hunting theme, but sometimes with mythological narratives loosely attached to them. The huntresses in the present tapestry are evocative of Diana and her nymphs. A similar example is a tapestry showing the ‘Rape of Proserpina’ being enacted in a landscape full of wild beasts, seen through an arcade (Wingfield Digby and Hefford 1980, cat. 51. p. 57). The animals and the small figures are similar to those in the present tapestry, but the overall dimensions of the panel are smaller, giving the figures greater importance. The landscape in this tapestry is similar to a number of so-called ‘hunting park’ tapestries woven in Oudenaarde at the end of the sixteenth century, although the hunting park tapestries usually have larger figures (see for example de Meûter 1999, p. 146). The border is also similar to those found on many Oudenaarde tapestries. However similar tapestries were also woven in centres such as Enghien and Grammont (see for example Delmarcel 1999, pp. 172-73) and it is often difficult to make attributions on stylistic grounds alone. Graham Baron Ash’s scrapbook (no. 557381) contains a photograph of a verdure tapestry with a design identical to the present example, but almost 1½ times as wide, the landscape extending to the right to include amongst other animals a wolf, a leopard, a monkey and a llama-like creature. Baron Ash notes in his scrapbook that the tapestry was then at Quenby Hall in Leicestershire, and that it was one of a set of four. (Helen Wyld, 2009)
Provenance
Bought by Graham Baron Ash in Preston, c. 1930s; given by him to the National Trust in 1941
Credit line
Packwood House, The Graham Baron Ash Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Flemish, workshop
References
Packwood House 1931-38: Graham Baron Ash's Scrapbook c. 1931-1938 (557381) , Photograph with the handwritten note: " "A Hunting Scene" Brussels circa 1570 bought at Preston." A photograph of a related tapestry wit hthe handwritten note: "an exactly similar though larger panel originally one of a set of four at Gunby Leicester" Szabłowski 1972: Jerzy Szabłowski, The Flemish Tapestries at Wawel Castle in Cracow, Antwerp 1972, pp. 191-286 Wingfield Digby and Hefford, 1980: George Wingfield Digby and Wendy Hefford, Victoria and Albert Museum: The Tapestry Collection, Medieval and Renaissance, London 1980, p. 57 Cavallo, 1993: Adolpho S Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1993, pp. 586-593 Delmarcel, 1999: Guy Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestry, Tielt 1999, pp. 139, 172-173 de Meûter et al., 1999: Ingrid de Meûter, Martine Vanwelden et al., Tapisseries d'Audenarde du XVle au XVllle Siècle, Tielt 1999, p. 146 Brosens, 2008: Koenraad Brosens, European Tapestries in the Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven and London 2008