Large Leaf Verdure with Animals
La Marche
Category
Tapestries
Date
circa 1530 - circa 1580
Materials
Tapestry, wool and silk, 4 warps per cm
Measurements
3.16 m (H); 2.90 m (W)
Place of origin
La Marche
Order this imageCollection
Montacute House, Somerset
NT 598127
Summary
Tapestry, wool and silk, 4-5 warps per cm, Large Leaf Verdure with Animals, La Marche, c. 1530-1580. The central part of the tapestry is filled by a dense forest of giant leaves arranged close together with little sense of perspective. A number of real and fantastical animals frolic among the trees including a griffin, a monkey, a unicorn, a hind, and numerous birds. Two trees grow out of the forest to either side, smaller plants grow in a grassy foreground field at the bottom, and at the top there is a distant landscape with mountains, hilltop villages and an open blue sky. There is a squirrel at the lower left corner. There are borders on all four sides with a band of fruit and leaves on a brown ground, irises growing from vases at the lower corners and decorative urns at the upper corners.
Full description
The tapestry represents a variation on the theme of the ‘large leaf’ verdure, which emerged in the 1520s and remained popular throughout the sixteenth century. While Flemish large leaf verdures often had a field entirely made up of giant leaves, with no sense of perspective of space, the present tapestry has a narrow ‘foreground’ at the bottom and a view to a distant landscape at the top, framing the depiction of a wild forest in the centre. These elements are typical of the verdures produced in the La Marche region. The popularity of large leaf verdures in the sixteenth century has been linked to a growing interest in the natural world and in botany, spurred in part by discoveries in the New World in the sixteenth century, and the exotic plants and animals to be seen there (Wingfield Digby and Hefford 1980, pp. 54-55; Cavallo 1993, pp. 586-93; 600-07; Brosens 2008, pp. 211-21). The designs of such tapestries are not purely scientific or representational however. The leaves and plants in the present tapestry are partly fanciful, and the forest is inhabited by a mixture of real and imaginary animals. While the forms of the leaves and plants reflects new developments if tapestry design from the 1520s, the animals are of a type found on earlier ‘millefleurs’ tapestries of the fifteenth century. There is evidence that verdure tapestries were being woven in the French towns of Aubusson and Felletin in the la Marche region from early in the sixteenth century. There are a number of references in French inventories to tapestries ‘à feuillages’ [with leaves] made in these centres, and some commissions are recorded, for example one to the merchant-producer Guillaume Gommy in 1538 for a verdure “à oiseaux, lion et licorne” [with birds, lion and unicorn] (Chevalier, Chevalier and Bertrand 1988, p. 26). A number of such tapestries survive or are recorded, and many of them have a similar spatial arrangement to the example at Montacute, and a similar range of exotic and fantastical beasts (see Pérathon 1896 for numerous examples, and Franses 2005 for illustrated examples). The borders on the Montacute tapestry are also typical of La Marche weavings. Although there are no other French examples in the National Trust’s collections there are a number of large leaf verdures made in the Southern Netherlands: a set of three and an individual piece at Hardwick Hall (nos. 1129595, 1129548), a small panel with a rare signature at Owletts (no. 1411231) and a similar single panel at Hardwick (1129458), and examples with animals and balustrades at Lyme Park (nos. 500306, 500372) and Dorneywood (no. 1508085). A related genre, with large flowers and plants all over a plain ground, is represented by a tapestry at Cotehele that also includes some heraldic elements (no. 348313). In an unpublished list of tapestries at Montacute made in 1963, the tapestry was listed hanging on the staircase. (Helen Wyld, 2013)
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Sir Percy Malcolm Stewart, 1st Bt. (1872-1951), 1960
Makers and roles
La Marche , workshop
References
Brosens, 2008: Koenraad Brosens, European Tapestries in the Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven and London 2008 Franses, 2005: Simon Franses, Giant Leaf Tapestries of the Renaissance: 1500-1600, exh. cat., S Franses, New York 2005 Chevalier, Chevalier and Bertrand, 1988: Dominique Chevalier, Pierre Chevalier and Pascal-François Bertrand, Les Tapisseries d'Aubusson et de Felletin 1457-1791, Paris 1988 Cavallo, 1993: Adolpho S Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1993 Wingfield Digby and Hefford, 1980: George Wingfield Digby and Wendy Hefford, Victoria and Albert Museum: The Tapestry Collection, Medieval and Renaissance, London 1980 Pérathon, 1894: Cyprien Pérathon, ‘Essai de catalogue descriptive des anciennes tapisseries d’Aubusson et de Felletin’, Bulletin de la Société archéologique et historique du Limousin, vol. XLI (1894) pp. 488-542