The Queen Distributing the Booty

Artist: Central designs by Antoine Caron
Title: The Queen Distributing the Booty
Date: ca. 1562-65
Culture: French
Medium: Woven with dyed and undyed wool; silk threads and silver-gilt metallic threads
Dimensions: 464.8 x 236.2 cm (183 x 93 in.)
Accession Number: 1964:003 C
Credit Line: Central designs by Antoine Caron (French, 1521-1599), France, ca. 1562-65, border designs probably by Henry Lerambert (ca. 1540/50-1608), cartoons by various artists, France, ca. 1600-1617, woven by various masters in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel manufactory of Marc de Comans (Flemish, 1563-1644) and Francois de la Planche (Flemish, 1573-1627), Paris, ca. 1620; woven with dyed and undyed wool, silk threads and silver-gilt metallic threads, 464.8 x 236.2 cm (183 x 93 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art.

Description

Woven sometime between 1611 and about 1620, these four tapestries are from a series of at least eighteen, made in Paris to decorate the palace of Duke Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy (1562-1630) in Turin, Italy. The tapestries illustrate episodes from Stories of Queen Artemisia,

an epic tale created in the 1560s by Nicholas Houel. Houel based the tale on the lives of two ancient queens, both named Artemisia, combining them into a single queen of the same name.

Three of the panels in the collection show this admirable monarch - rewarding her soldiers with the spoils of war, taking requests form her citizens on small pieces of paper, and listening to the reading of a petition - acts epitomizing the wisdom of an enlightened monarch. The fourth panel depicts a group of soldiers. The panels are woven of wool and silk, with luxurious metallic silver and silver-glit threads using real silver and gold.

At the top of each panel are the ducal arms of Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. In the bottom border, the monogram is thought to stand for Queen Artemisia and her husband Mausolus.

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Duke Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, 1620; Christina of France, duchess of Savoy; House of Savoy; Archduke Leopold Salvator of Austria, until ca. 1924; P.W. French and Company, New Work by 1931; acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 1964.

Exhibited

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1931, loaned by P.W. French and Company, New York,“ list of tapestries exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. January 24 to March 2, 1931,” on file at National Art Library, London, typescript 86. Y.13, pp. 2-3, nos. 15-18.

Literature

H. D. Marillier, Subject Catalogue of Tapestries, manuscript, Textile and Costume Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv. T37-1946, vol. T37x, "History and Military," II, i, p. 5; Mercedes Viale and Vittorio Viale, Arazzi e tappeti antichi, exh. cat., Palazzo Madama (Turin, 1952), p. 177, inventory of Christina of France, 1664; Alessandro Baudi di Vesme, Schede Vesme. L'arte in Piemonte, 4 vols. (Turin, 1963-82), 4:1679-8o, documents related to purchase, 1620; European and American Works of Art in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, 1983), pp. 46-48, no. 15, ill.; Candace J. Adelson, European Tapestry in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 198-99 n. 120, 258-59, 261 n. 11.