Description
Rare tapestry illustrating "Hercules and the boar Erymanthe" from the Hercules hanging. Brussels, second half of the 16th century, in the taste of Bernard van Orley (1488-1541). Very good condition, some restorations notably in the silks, fragment or between-window, small braid for the border. H: 2,93-W: 1,38 m This tapestry illustrates Hercules in one of his twelve works related in the Iliad and the Odyssey, i.e. the capture of the boar Erymanthe which ravaged the crops of Arcadia. The account of these tales is not from antiquity but from Raoul Lefèvre's Recueil des Histoires de Troie, written at the request of the Duke of Burgundy, Philippe Le Bon in 1464. These subjects valued the "virtue" of man and were very popular from the 15th to the 17th century, but it is known that several suites of Hercules coexisted in the 16th century. However, it is accepted that the first edition dates from 1535. The most important museums preserve tapestries of the Hercules hanging but the theme Hercules and the boar Erymanthe remains rare. A tapestry made according to the same drawing and some variants is kept in a private collection (Aubusson). Anne Sophie Laruelle, Quelques observations sur la tenture de l'Histoire d'Hercule des Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Bruxelles, in Actes du neuvième congrès de l'Association des Cercles francophones d'Histoire et d'Archéologie de Belgique, t. II, vol. 3, 2017, pp. 785-91.
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Rare tapestry illustrating "Hercules and the boar Erymanthe" from the Hercules hanging. Brussels, second half of the 16th century, in the taste of Bernard van Orley (1488-1541). Very good condition, some restorations notably in the silks, fragment or between-window, small braid for the border. H: 2,93-W: 1,38 m This tapestry illustrates Hercules in one of his twelve works related in the Iliad and the Odyssey, i.e. the capture of the boar Erymanthe which ravaged the crops of Arcadia. The account of these tales is not from antiquity but from Raoul Lefèvre's Recueil des Histoires de Troie, written at the request of the Duke of Burgundy, Philippe Le Bon in 1464. These subjects valued the "virtue" of man and were very popular from the 15th to the 17th century, but it is known that several suites of Hercules coexisted in the 16th century. However, it is accepted that the first edition dates from 1535. The most important museums preserve tapestries of the Hercules hanging but the theme Hercules and the boar Erymanthe remains rare. A tapestry made according to the same drawing and some variants is kept in a private collection (Aubusson). Anne Sophie Laruelle, Quelques observations sur la tenture de l'Histoire d'Hercule des Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Bruxelles, in Actes du neuvième congrès de l'Association des Cercles francophones d'Histoire et d'Archéologie de Belgique, t. II, vol. 3, 2017, pp. 785-91.
