A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art by Babette Bohn

Author:Babette Bohn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Brussels and Parisian Baroque Tapestry, 1620–60

In 1616–17, the Brussels tapestry mogul Jan I Raes (1574–1651) and the Antwerp tapestry dealer François II Sweerts, who had been friends as well as business partners for many years, decided to commission a new set of cartoons from Rubens. He created the Story of Decius Mus, a monumental set with heroic figures enacting highly dramatic and weighty episodes (http://www.liechtensteinmuseum.at). Tapestry historians have often hailed Rubens’s Raphaelesque departure from the popular Mannerist idiom as a long-awaited and very successful renewal of European tapestry design, and one that set out a completely new course. However, this view must be nuanced. Many of the Decius Mus tapestries have faint colors and large compositions empty of details, and thus lack the visual complexity and power of their Mannerist counterparts. Though previous scholars have sometimes blamed the Brussels dyers and weavers for these shortcomings, their limited skills do not provide a convincing explanation, because they made dazzlingly colorful pieces before and after the Decius Mus editions. The ­weaknesses may be attributed to Rubens instead. Indeed, while the Mannerist designs, such as the Story of Artemisia, were a visual voyage of discovery, the monumental Decius Mus compositions, stripped bare of anecdotal detail, annihilated the picturesque. It deserves emphasis that the Brussels tapestry producers, who carefully kept a finger on the pulse of the European markets, were not at all convinced by Rubens’s austerity. They never commissioned a second series from the Antwerp master.

FIGURE 14.3 Simon Vouet, Moses Rescued from the Nile, from the Old Testament series, tapestry, ca. 1640–43. Louvre, Paris. Photo © RMN / Daniel Arnaudet.

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