A Flemish grotesque tapestry panel, Brussels, after Perino del Vaga, mid-16th century | Tapisserie des "Grotesques", Bruxelles, d'après Perino del Varga, milieu du XVIe siècle

Sotheby's London, 10th December 2003, lot 216.

Sotheby's Londres, 10 décembre 2003, lot 216.

See Edith Appleton Standen, European Post-Medieval Tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum , 1985, Vol. I, pp. 100-104, for discussion on a very similar panel which is also on a distinctive blue ground, is described as a Grotesque with Minerva, dated to circa 1550 and attributed to cartoons by Perino del Vaga (b.1501 d.1547). Perino del Vaga, along with Raphael and Giulio Romano, were influential Italian painters, which brought to the forefront of the Flemish tapestry industry the style of the Italian High Renaissance, with its important Papal commissions.

Standen notes that the source of this design can be attributed to having been inspired by the frescoes in the Vatican Logge, and also to the Raphaelesque borders of the tapestries of the Acts of the Apostles, taken from cartoons by Raphael of 1514-1516, woven in the workshop of Pieter van Aelst. The Mantua reweaving for the Gonzaga family were woven in the same Brussels workshop from cartoons acquired by and woven by Jan van Tieghem and others. The decorative frescoes of the Vatican were undertaken by da Udine and Perino del Vaga, and del Vaga also worked on other grotesque fresco paintings in Rome. The compositions of grotesque panels woven with the central Gods, woven by Pieter van Aelst for Leo X from da Udine or Raphael workshop artists in 1520 were also a source for subject matter. The source of inspiration for all the designs being the paintings discovered in Nero’s grottoes on the Palatine in Rome.

The offered lot is similar to the Doria family panel depicting Minerva in that the three borders present (lacking the top border which in the Doria series bears the coat-of-arms) has identical designs, though is lacking the central God and certain elements, including a plinth which is between the two bottom corner winds and on which all the other elements are balanced. Examples that are clearly from the same Ancient God series, with the Doria arms and others without are recorded by Standen, op cit. pp.102-103.

Standen, op cit, p.101, also notes that the Brussels origin of the New York panel was established by a town mark appearing on one of the series entitled Mars , which also has the Brussels weaver’s mark of Joost van Herzeele, which dates it to the mid 16th century. It is therefore highly probably that this offered piece was also woven in Brussels. Other grotesque panels were woven in Brussels from Italian designers models. The border including the use of compartmentalised sections of yellow and terracotta, blank corner shields, the head’s of the four winds and terms and winged bulls, is Italian in style. See Guy Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestries, London, 1999, pp.86-94 for discussion on Flemish tapestries and the Italian Renaissance and illustrations of grotesques by Udine, de Ronde, van der Vyst and Aspertini, only the later being on a blue ground, but all being based on compositions featuring central figures with or without surrounding central medallions, of the Ancient Gods. Other grotesque panels were woven by in Italian workshops, run by Brussels trained weavers, in the mid 16th century, such as Ferrara and Florence, see H. Gobel, Die Wandteppiche , 1923-1934, Part II, Vol.ii, nos. 357, 365 & 367 respectively, and see fig. 367, for a black and white illustration of a panel of Pluto, dated 1550 which can not be attributed to being Brussels in that it has identical features to other known examples and has similar elements to the offered panel.