A Marche large leaf tapestry

Circa 1560-1600

Woven in wool and silk with two hounds hunting a boar through large curling leaves, a rabbit running startled through the undergrowth from beneath a quince tree in which a pigeon roosts, and a harrier and a vulture perched before an estuarine landscape, with houses, châteaux and a church standing on the rising ground.

Tapestries of this type, which, in as well as in the communes of Aubusson and Felletin in the medieval county of La Marche in central France from where this originated, were also woven in the Flemish city of Oudenaarde, have, at times, been called ‘Savage Forest’ or ‘Game Park’. The design sits more properly, however, in the class of tapestries known traditionally as ‘feuilles de choux’ or ‘feuilles d’aristoloche’. The recognition that the impressive foliage is far closer to acanthus, or bear’s breech, has led to the more prevalent use of the terms ‘large leaf’ or ‘giant leaf’ to describe them. Large leaf tapestries are notable for the predominance of the stylized broad curving foliage that densely overlays the entire ground and which is embellished, to varying degrees, with flowers, fruits and birds, or sometimes larger and occasionally more exotic animals. The introduction of the landscape in the upper third of these slightly later hangings mark a development towards the verdure tapestries of the 17th and 18th centuries, but also juxtaposes the seemingly more ordered human world with the overwhelming visceral wildness of nature.

In French descriptions, a similar tapestry might be designated a ‘verdure dite d'Anglards-de-Salers’, due to the renown of a set of ten that hangs in the 15th century Château de la Trémolière, in the commune of Anglards-de-Salers in the Auvergne. Commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Guinot de Montclar to Renée de Chalus d’Orcival in 1586, these are directly comparable to the present tapestry, with the animals that plunge through the leaves varying throughout the set, and numbering among them lions and unicorns, gryphons and stags, camels and hydras. Others are held in the collections of the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, accession number 53.332.1, the Musée Rolin d'Autun, and the Musées d’Angers.

Two are illustrated and discussed in the exhibition catalogue ‘Giant Leaf Tapestries of the Renaissance, 1500-1600’, S. Franses, 2005, cat. nos, 13 and 14, with others shown in ‘Les Tapisseries d’Aubusson et de Felletin’, Chevalier & Bertrand, publ. Solange Thierry, 1988, pp. 26 & 27, and both French and Flemish examples in ‘Âmes de Laine et de Soie’, J. Boccara, publ. éditions d’art Monelle Hayot, 1988, pp. 67-79.

With restorations.

244cm (96”) high and 152cm (59¾”) wide.