International studio (52.1914)

The Brooklyn Tapestry Exhibition

and splendidly preserved and the border is exceed-
ingly attractive. Of all the forty tapestries after
designs of Van Schoor that I have seen, almost all
with personages painted from the same models,
this is the finest.
But the most important and interesting tapes-
try in the Dome Room was the Trojan War, one
picturing Andromache’s Lament, with the story of
the two scenes told in a Latin couplet below, and
in a French quatrain above, both in Gothic letters.
There are three pieces from the same Trojan War
series in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South
Kensington, and the original small colour sketches
(petits patrons) are preserved in the Louvre. In
the upper half of the tapestry Hector, with a

picturing the story of ‘‘Judith and Holophernes.”
The average height is 13 feet 6 inches, and the
sum of the combined widths is 120 feet. The orig-
inal of the story is found in the Apocryphal Book
of Judith. On it Thomas Bailey Aldrich based his
poem, “Judith and Holophernes,” which he after-
wards dramatized under the title of “Judith of
Bethulia,” for Miss Nance O’Neil. The story of
the individual tapestries is told in Latin captions
woven into the top border of each. For two hun-
dred and fifty years these eight tapestries, woven
in Brussels by E. Leyniers and H. Rydams, each
of whom signed four, were the property of the
Barberini family of Rome, until purchased and
brought to America with one hundred and twenty-


FOUR TAPESTRIES OF THE JUDITH-HOLOPHERNES SET

resolute, even obstinate, look on his face, is put-
ting on his armour, ready to go forth to battle, in
spite of the entreaties of his wife, Andromache,
who had dreamed the night before that he was
killed, and kneels before him with her two chil-
dren, weeping and begging him to stay at home
that day. Behind her stands Helen, whose fatal
beauty caused the Trojan War, and beside Helen
are Polixena and Hecuba, the aged wife of Priam,
with an especially magnificent head-dress.
In the lower half of the tapestry Priam, the
King, with voluminous grey beard and rich gar-
ments, calls back and detains Hector, who is
already mounted on his charger.
Half of the Main Room was occupied by one
single set of tapestries, eight in number, dating
from the first half of the seventeenth century, and

seven other tapestries from the same collection, by
the late Charles M. Ffoulke. Six of the Judith
tapestries are shown in our view of the Main
Room, on the right.
On the opposite wall were hung tapestries illus-
trating the glories of several different periods:
Titus Receiving the Keys of Jerusalem, a Flemish
Renaissance tapestry richly floriated in the Flem-
ish manner, in both panel and border; next to it a
Gobelin tapestry woven in 1794, with golden yel-
low damasse mat ground, surrounding the two
medallions picturing scenes designed by Charles
Coyhel to illustrate the Story of Don Quixote; at
the farther end of the Main Room, on the left of
the splendid Renaissance cantonniere, Masinissa
and Sophonisba, a seventeenth-century Brussels
tapestry, after a colour sketch by Rubens, that is

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