International studio (50.1913)

Tapestries in American Museums

sweetheart married her on the spot, believing that
Scipio would spare the wife of an ally. But
Scipio, warned by the prisoner, Syphax, fearing
that she who had turned her first Numidian hus-
band from the Roman to the Carthaginian side
might turn the other also, upbraided Masinissa,
but gently, for having thus given way to the ardor
of his passion. Masinissa, rebuked and despond-
ent, then secretly sent poison to Sophonisba, with
the message that it was not in his power to protect
her longer. Preferring death to slavery, Sophon-

had a later band inserted at the bottom, evidently
to make them fit some higher wall. All contain
considerable gold thread. The late W. Bayard
Cutting had three tapestries from cartoons almost
the same, but without the additional band.
Two out of a set of four Renaissance tapestries
lent to the Boston Museum by Mr. Arthur Astor
Carey picture Abraham Receiving Rebecca (illustrat-
ed on page lxviii), and Rebecca at the Well. Three
Renaissance tapestries, lent by Mr. George von L.
Meyer, have been described as the Duke Refusing

isba at once ac-
cepted the sug-
gestion, and is
quoted as say-
ing thatMasin-
issa’s wedding
gift to his bride
was not unwel-
come, but she
would have
liked it better
not to have her
funeral and her
wedding come
on the same
day. After
which Masinis-
sa prospered
greatly under
the patronage
of Scipio, and
lived to a ripe
old age, king of
both eastern
and western
Numidia.
A p i ct ur-
esque but puz-
zling set of
three tapes-


STORY OF ST. JOSEPH

BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

W a te r, T itus
Receiving the
Keys of Jeru-
salem, a King
on His Throne,
and a fourth
seventeenth-
century one, as
the Death of
Priam. The
story of the
first is made
clear by the
Latin caption,
which translat-
ed reads: “The
duke, when the
people were
dying of thirst
and there was
not enough
water to sup-
ply all, himself
refuses to
drink.” The
secondis signed
with a mono-
gram made up
of two F’s, an S
and an H. Two

tries Autumn (illustrated on page lxviii), Sum-
mer and 11'h'raCr, lent by Mrs. John T. Morse, Jr., to
the Boston Museum, and purchased in France, as
the diary of Mrs. Morse’s father shows, at the
Louis Philippe sale in January, 1852, for 1,900
francs. The tapestries being 12 feet high, with a
combined width of 54 feet, it is easy to see that
the price was trivial. The tapestries are worth
fifty times that now. For the sale, they were
catalogued as “attributed to the Gobelins,” and I
regard that provenance as not improbable. At
any rate, they were woven in the seventeenth cen-
tury from sixteenth-century designs, and have all

beautiful Renaissance fragments lent by Mr. J.
Templeman Coolidge, suggest the texture and the
personages of the Story of David set in the Cluny
Museum. A late Renaissance tapestry lent by
Mr. James L. Breese, is No. 7 (entitled the Wolf)
in the quaint and fascinating series of Gombaut
and Mace, described and illustrated by M. Jules
Guiffrey in his little book on the set at the Saint
Lo Museum. These tapestries picture scenes of
peasant life, some of them a trifle risque, and are
based on Old French quatrains, several of which
are woven into each of the tapestries. Mr.
Breese’s tapestry is particularly important as an

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