International studio (50.1913)

Tapestries in American Museums

And now I come to a tapestry of inferior design
and weave, the reputation of which is built on the
fact that it passed through the San Donato sale of
Prince Demidoff in 1880, being one of a set of nine
that sold altogether for 46,000 francs, has had its
border praised by no less an authority than the
distinguished Eugene Muntz, and is signed on the
upper edge of the bottom border
iKVMANDER FECIT AN 1619
except that the KVM are combined into a mono-
gram. That Karel Van Mander, of Delft, who
had previously been in the employment of Frans
Spierinx, the Delft manufacturer of tapestries,
who wove the Spanish Armada set for James I of
England—was the maker of the tapestry, the/mV
proves. That he was also the designer of the
tapestry the i before the K indicates, and I believe
it is an abbreviation for the Latin invenit (de-
signed) and was thus used by a man whose main
occupation was weaving and not designing.
Karel Van Mander II, the Van Mander in ques-
tion, was the son of the painter, Karel Van
Mander I, who published in 1604 his famous
“Lives of the Painters.” The son was born in
1579 and died in 1623. Christian IV, of Den-
mark, when completing the castle of Frederiks-
borg, begun by his father, had ordered tapestries
of Spierinx; but being for some reason dissatisfied
with the progress of the work, he summoned
Karel Van Mander II, and commissioned him in
1616 to make twenty-four tapestries, on which he
advanced him 5,000 reichsthaler. Meanwhile
Van Mander had erected a tapestry factory of his
own, with borrowed money. The tapestries were
to picture the King’s Coronation on August 29,
1596; the cities of Calmar, Witsoe, the Fortress of
Elfsburg, the Islands of Oland, Travemtinde,
Justburg, the Sea Fight at Wexholm, etc. In 1619
Van Mander delivered eighteen of them. The tap-
estry that pictures the Coronation is now in a
Copenhagen church.
So far on Van Mander II, I have followed
Wurzbach’s Niederlandisches K'unstler-Lexicon.
I should like to add that Henri Hymans, who in
1884 published a French translation of the elder
Van Mander’s Lives of the Painters, speaks in
his introduction of a contract still existing in
Copenhagen, and published in Dutch in 1856, that
describes the “ twenty-six large tapestries after the
cartoons of Van Mander the Younger,” as pictur-
ing the episodes of the Danish Wars of Christian
IV against the Swedes. The nine San Donato
tapestries are described in the catalogue as on
“heroic subjects, signed, dated and executed from

1617 to 1619.” The one illustrated in the cata-
logue is also illustrated in L’Art for 1880 and in
Muntz’s T apis series, Broderies et Dentelles, with
the caption “Story of Alexander.” The one
bought by De Somzee at the San Donato sale and
exhibited by him at Brussels in 1880, is illustrated
in color in the catalogue of the Exposition and
described as the Burning of Troy. The same tap-
estry in the catalogue of the Somzee sale is de-
scribed as Alexander Setting Fire to the Palace of
Persepolis. The one acquired by the Chicago
Art Institute is described in the Institute Bulletin
as a Battle Between the Spaniards and the Moors.
The one lent by Miss Charlotte Hunnewell to the
Boston Tapestry Exhibition, 1893, was described
as David and Saul. I should not be surprised if
all turned out to be part of the set woven for
Christian IV, and all commemorated events of
the Danish-Swedish Wars.
One point worth bringing out about the exam-
ple at Chicago, is that probably only about half—
the right half—of the original tapestry is there.
This is shown not only by the unbalanced compo-
sition but also by the fact that the left border is
new—or mostly new—being woven around ancient
fragments inserted to add to the antique appear-
ance, as would be the case if a tapestry, too large
to dispose of readily, were cut in two to sell as
separate tapestries.
Besides the Scipio Assault on Cartagena, the
Cincinnati Art Museum has three other tapestries
that very agreeably adorn the main entrance hall.
One is a modern Gobelin, presented to Miss Alice
Roosevelt by the French Government on the occa-
sion of her marriage, and lent by her to the
Museum. The subject is The Manuscript, and
the tapestry is a copy of one of a set of five on
Literature, Science and Art, designed and woven
for the Bibliotheque Nationale. More interesting
is the Diana tapestry at the Cincinnati Museum,
signed with the Brussels mark in the bottom sel-
vage, and in the right selvage with a mark that I
cannot identify. The tapestry shows French feel-
ing and in coloration and weave suggests the
Artemisia and Diana tapestries woven in Paris in
the time of Henri IV. It certainly owes much to
the inspiration of the Diana tapestries woven at
Fontainebleau in the time of Flenri II, of which
there are two splendid examples in the Harry
Payne Whitney Collection. An interesting tapes-
try of fine coloration, but with an inferior border
heavily shadowed, is the fourth in the Cincinnati
Museum, the Late Renaissance Building of Solo-
mon’s Temple.

LXXIII