A Bruges Allegorical Tapestry from the Series The Seven Liberal Arts

Attributed to Carlos Janssen, after the design by Cornelis Schut, Third Quarter 17th Century

woven in wool and silk, depicting ‘The Apotheosis of the Seven Liberal Arts’, with allegories of all seven arts united, including the female figure representing Astronomy reclining in the foreground with a celestial globe, a maiden seated at a piano accompanied by a flute-playing putto representing Music, beyond as allegories of Dialectic figures teaching children to read and write, and to the upper right the standing figure of Mercury gesturing as if about to give a speech, representing Rhetoric, all in an architectural setting evoking a temple of knowledge with a triumphal arch for the arts, within elaborate scrolling borders with putti and flower-filled vases, centered at the top with a scrollwork cartouche bearing the Latin inscription ‘ARTES DEPRIMIT BELLVM AQVIBVS SVSTINETVR’.
12 feet 2 inches x 17 feet.

Property from a Private Family Trust

This lot is located in Chicago.

Provenance:

Private Collection

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008

Note:

This intriguing tapestry is part of a series of eight panels depicting The Seven Liberal Arts. The Liberal Arts were a pillar of classical education and the series accordingly consisted of tapestries depicting: Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. The present, eighth tapestry formed the Apotheosis, combining the seven Liberal Arts. The panel bears the motto ‘Artes deprimit Bellum a quibus sustinetur’, meaning ‘war is supported while also being oppressed by the arts’, thereby proclaiming that wisdom and the arts bring peace, order and prosperity.

The basis for attribution to the Antwerp artist Cornelis Schut (1597-1655), a pupil of Peter Paul Rubens, is a series of eight signed etchings depicting the compositions of the tapestries, as well as the painted cartoons surviving for the three panels depicting Music, Astrology and Geometry, preserved in the collection of the Rubens House Museum. A complete set of the tapestries is at the Gruuthusemuseum in Bruges, Belgium (see Guy Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestry, Tiel & London, 1999, pp. 299-303)

A Bruges Allegorical Tapestry from the Series The Seven Liberal Arts