Studia Waweliana (16.2015)

and Brzeg were known. This year, two tapestries with arms (lots 620
and 620 bis) and one without (lot 363) appeared in the catalogue
of the auction of the collection of the marąuis de la Gandara at the
Galerie Sangiorgi in Romę. Among them was a subject recognized
by Góbel as the meeting of Esther and Ahasuerus (tapestry without
arms),which could be connected with the Esther series (fig. 4). The
tapestry depicting a rider surrounded by a crowd of men and women
with an army camp in the background (fig. 6) could be part of the
series Seven Kings of Romę. Another tapestry (according to Góbel)
represented Solomon and Bathsheba enthroned (fig. 5). Ali three
were missing workshop marks (their selvedges had been cut off).
In October 2013, Professor Guy Delmarcel, having read my
article in Studia Waweliana, informed me of the existence of two
tapestries linked to Jerzy II bearing the arms of the dukes of Legnica
and Brzeg in the Protestant Cathedral of Saint Paul in Detroit. (In
2005 he appraised the tapestries for the Cathedral, and identified
the arms based on a photograph of the Wrocław tapestry in GóbeTs
book). The tapestries depict scenes from the Story of Saint Paul', the
Blinding ofElymas (fig. 7) and Saint Paul Among the Philosophers at
Athens (fig. 8 a-b). Despite the lack of workshop marks, they can be
identified as Brussels manufacture from the second half of the 1560s.
Not only the arms in the comers (compare figs. 2 a-b and 8 b), but
the entire borders of the Saint Paul cycle and the so-called Rape of
the Sabinę Women tapestry are identical. Mentions of an anonymous
gift of two tapestries in 1936 (see n. 24-26) found in the archives of
Saint Paul’s Cathedral kept in the Bentley Historical Library at the
University of Michigan helped fili in gaps in the Information about
the provenance of these works.
However, the ąuestion to which series belonged the tapestry
hypothetically called the Rape of the Sabinę Women offered by
Sotheby’s in 2003 and 2004 remained unanswered. Theoretically,
it could correspond with the legendary abduction of the daughters
and wives of the Sabines (a link in the Story of the Seven Kings of
Romę and the Story of Romulus and Remus). As I wrote in 2013,
the scene incorporates elements of the tapestry the Massacre of
the Innocents from the cycle Scuola Nuova designed by pupils of
Raphael. Derivations of the Massacre of the Innocents appear earlier
in the background of the Sigismundian tapestry the Wickedness of

Mankind. It was Michiel I Coxcie’s cartoon for this tapestry, with a
Rafaelesąue horse and rider at the center, that was reproduced with
only minor changes in the so-called Rape of the Sabinę Women.
Delmarcel proposed that the tapestry thus titled by Sotheby’s actually
belongs in the Story of Saint Paul series, where it would be a depiction
of SauTs persecution of the Christians. He mistakenly believed it to
be the same tapestry that was offered in the de la Gandara auction
(lot 620 bis; fig. 6). The existence of a tapestry with the arms of
Jerzy II (Georg II) and military, possibly Roman, subject matter in
the former de la Gandara collection might instead suggest that the
tapestry (lot 620 bis) was part of the series the Seven Kings ofRome.
Another tapestry in the de la Gandara sale catalogue, which Góbel
called the Bathsheba Honored (fig. 5) is in fact an episode from the
Story of Saint Paul.
Ahanging with an identical composition now in The Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, is titled Saint Paul Before Agrippa and
is part of the canon of the cycle the Story of the Apostles (fig. 9). In
the Metropolitan Museum’s tapestry catalogue, Edith Standen notes
a similarity between this scene and the iconography of the tapestry in
the Detroit cathedral. She describe two tapestries from the Story of
Saint Paul in the Metropolitan Museum as a later (ca. 1600) edition
of the “Detroit series.”
Summing up the “Brzeg tapestries” discovered thus far, we can
list five forgotten figural Brussels tapestries from this group, all with
the arms of the dukes of Legnica and Brzeg. Among them are three (or
four?) with scenes from the Story of Saint Paul (Story of the Apostles)
and possibly one from the Seven Kings ofRome (?). Two tapestries
in the collection of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Detroit and one
auctioned in London (2003/2004) survived into the 21 st century. We
do not know what happened to the two other tapestries with the arms
of Jerzy II (Georg II) and Barbara von Hohenzollern, from the de la
Gandara collection sale, nor of the tapestry (without arms) depicting
the biblical episode Esther Before Ahasuerus (if it was indeed part
of the Brzeg group), but they may tum up on the market again. The
tapestries’ ąuality, on a par with the Brussels hangings produce in the
1560s for the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, lends new support
to the high assessment of Jerzy II’s (Georg II ’s) art patronage.