THE ROAD TO CALVARY, A RARE FLEMISH NEW TESTAMENT BIBLICAL TAPESTRY FRAGMENT, NETHERLANDS, POSSIBLY TOURNAI, FROM THE SERIES OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST AND THE VIRGIN, DESIGNER UNKNOWN, EARLY 16TH CENTURY, CIRCA 1505-1516

Jacques d'Amboise (d.1516), Bishop of Clermont (1505), Clermont Cathedral

Gallery Boccara, France 

Basilevsky Collection

This panel is the missing section from a wider panel series depicting narrative scenes from The Life of Christ and the Virgin. The series is probably identified with the choir tapestries recorded at Clermont Cathedral in 1883. Jacques d'Amboise (d.1516), Abbot of Cluny and then Bishop of Clermont (1505), was the seventh son of Pierre III Chaumont d'Amboise (d.1473), counsellor to Charles VII and Louis XI, and the family were great patrons of the arts. On appointment to bishop of Clermont, changes were made in the Cathedral and Jacques commissioned a set of choir tapestries. 

The known panels in the set are in The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, with two having been acquired from the Basilevsky collection in 1884, and another two from the set obtained in 1887, having belonged to Prince Gagarin. They take the form of a relief of individual narrative scenes divided by columns, which was a standard device in choir tapestries from the late 15th century. The unusual feature of this particularly finely woven series is the compositional attention to realistic illusion of the scene and the perspective, with accomplished foreshortening. Except for the Trivulzio Months, designed by Bramantino, early 1500, the Hermitage Life of Christ and the Virgin tapestries are considered the earliest application of these Italian design concepts to a narrative tapestry series. The series is unusual and recognised for its importance in Italian design characteristics inspired by Andrea Mantegna and introduced into tapestry design by Raphael, with the Acts of the Apostles, in 1515. It has been proposed that the designer of the series, although unknown, must have been familiar with the works of the above cited artists.

The known panels are as follows: three scene panels with the Meeting of Joachim and Anna, the Birth of Mary and the Presentation in the Temple (153cm high by 663cm wide), another with the Betrothal of Mary and Joseph, the Annunciation and the Visitation (154cm by 584cm), the third with the Death, Burial and Assumption of the Virgin (159 by 611cm), and a two scene panel with the Adoration of the Shepherds (153 by 372cm). The combined length of the overall set in the Hermitage is around 22 metres, and archival records note that originally the tapestry panel would have extended around the choir, and therefore there would have been more than is presently known. It was therefore proposed that there would have been further sections which could have included more scenes from the Life of Christ. The present fragment is a complete width section of a scene from between columns and is of this subject, and identified by Nello Forti Grazzini, concluding that other scenes from the Passion would have been part of the original scheme.

The panel with the Coronation of the Virgin includes a swag along the lower edge which includes the coat-of-arms, crosier and the pendant shells, as seen on the present panel.

Bibliography:

Nina I. Biriukova, The Hermitage, Leningrad: Gothic and Renaissance Tapestries, London, 1965, pp.20-21, figs.26-32,

Nina I. Biriukova, Frantsuzskie shpalery kontsa XV–XX veka v sobranii Ermitazha/Les tapisseries française de la fin du XVe au XXe siècle dans le collections de l’Ermitage, Leningrad, 1974, nos.2-5.,

Jacqueline Boccara, Ames de laine et de soie, 1988, p.132.

Thomas Campbell, Tapestry in the Renaissance, Art and Magnificence, Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibition, March-June 2002, Yale University Press, 2002, Netherlandish Production and the Rise of Brussels, 1480-1515, Cat. Nos. 12-17, pp.131-185, No, 15, The Death, Burial and Assumption of the Virgin, pp.163-167.

Alfred Darcel, Aleksandr P. Basilewsky, Collection Basilewsky. Catalogue raisonné, précédé d’un essai sur les arts industriels du Ier au XVIe siècle, Paris 1874, 2 vol.

Nello Forti Grazzini, Arazzi di Bruxelles in Italia, 1480-1535: Tracce per un catalogo in Castelnuovo, 1990, p.70, no.167.

Edouard Guichard, Alfred Darcel, Les tapisseries décoratives du Garde-meuble (Mobilier National). Choix de plux beaux motifs, Paris, 1881, 2 vol.

Geneviève Souchal, Le mécénat de la Famille d’Amboise, in: Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest et des musées de Poitiers, 13.1975/76, pp. 485-526, pp. 567-612.

A. S. Verhovskaia and Nina I. Biriukova, Zapadnoevropeislie shpalery, XIV–XVIII vv. (14th–18th Century European Tapestries). Exh. Cat. Saint Petersburg, The State Hermitage, Moscow, 1956.