Woven Art: A Private Collection of Tapestries and Carpets

Provenance:

Duke of Berwick-Alba

Sold in Paris to Baron d'Erlanger, 1877

Acquired by the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, Belgium, 1968

Belgian Royal Museums of Art and History, long-term loan

De Wit, Mechelen, Belgium

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Note:

The original series was commissioned by Isabella Clara Eugenia (d. 1633), Governess of the Southern Netherlands and daughter of Philip II, King of Spain, from her court painter Peter Paul Rubens. Her set was finished in 1628 and remains to this day in the Descalzas Reales, a convent reserved for the highest ranks of Spanish aristocracy. The series was designed with the church in mind and the tapestries were destined for specific spaces, with The Eucharist Vanquishing the Heathen Sacrifices meant for the upper tier. Interestingly Rubens conceived an illusionary architecture that would replace the original interior of the church and that would create the illusion of angels hanging a tapestry within a tapestry.

The tapestries only appear to have been re-woven after 1650, probably copied from cartoons that were made of the tapestries in the convent, and commissioned by the van der Hecke workshop. Tapestries from this series can be found with Frans (d. 1675) and Jan Frans van der Hecke's signatures and must have been woven between 1650 and 1710. Larger sets survive today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, the Cathedral in Toledo and the Cathedral in Cologne.