Page 143 - El arte del poder

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Fame
Sixth panel in the Honors series
Pieter van Aelst, tapestry weaver, after cartoons attributed to Bernaert van Orley
Brussels, c. 1520
Gold, silver, silk, and wool; 5.05 x 10.30 m
Patrimonio Nacional. Palacio de La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia), Museo de Tapices, inv. no. TA.8/3, 10026280
bibliography: Catálogo de la Exposición Histórico-Europea 1892- 1893, rooms XVI and XVIII, nos. 248-253; Delmarcel 1979, pp. 41-57; Junquera and Herrero 1986, pp. 35-44; Herrero 1991, pp. 26-39; Herrero 1992, pp. 55-64; Herrero 1994, pp. 71-80; Delmarcel 2000, pp. 102-113
The monarchs of the houses of Austria (Habsburg) and Bourbon, the ruling dynasties in Spain, regarded tapestries as treasures that represented royal authority. The acquisitions made during the period of Isabella the Catholic (1451-1504) and, in particular, during the reigns of Charles V (1500-1558) and Philip II (1527-1598), enriched the collection with masterpieces of Flemish tapestry weaving, among them the monumental nine-piece series of the Honors.
The set, also referred to in the early inventories of the Tapestry Office of the Royal Household as Fortune, was woven by Pieter van Aelst (act. 1495-1531), a famous tapestry maker of the court of Brussels. It was produced to commemorate the election of Charles of Habsburg (Charles I of Spain since 1516) as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1519 and his coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle on 23 October 1520, the date woven into the tapestries.
Although the nine panels of the series were completed in 1523, Pieter van Aelst was forced by financial straits to pledge the set as security to the Antwerp agents of the Fugger family of bankers. The tapestry weaver suggested that his creditors first offer such precious tapestries to His Imperial Majesty, for whom they had been woven. His suggestion was accepted and it was decided to send as a sample the central piece in the series, an allegory of Honor. The rest were not delivered to Charles V until 1526 on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella of Portugal in Seville, where he resided during that year. They were hung in the church of San Benito in Valladolid in 1527 for the baptism of Prince Philip, and were first listed in the inventory compiled in 1544 by Gilleson de Warenghien, tapestry
weaver at the emperor’s Brussels court. As Charles stipulated in his will, the tapestries passed to his son Philip II, and remained in the Alcázar palace in Madrid thereafter. Pedro Gutiérrez, a tapestry weaver of Salamanca in the monarch’s service, wrote that “if there is any [tapestry set] that I can call stable in all kinds of dyes, it is that of the Honors, which Your Majesty rightly appreciates.”1
No record has been found of the names of the cartoonists, who were no doubt numerous, nor do any preparatory drawings survive. The series is undoubtedly the product of several artists, among them Bernaert van Orley and Jean Gossaert Mabuse.
The anonymous iconographic scheme reflects the Aristotelian ethic and Stoic philosophy of the struggle of the virtues against what destiny has in store. Its author or authors were inspired by medieval writings such as Alain de Lille’s De Virtutibus et de Vitiis et de Donis Spiritus Sancti (c. 1150), and contemporary works like Les Illustrations de Gaule and Singularitez de Troie (published in 1510 and 1513) by Jean Lemaire de Belges, a humanist at the court of Margaret of Austria.
The sequence of scenes of the nine panels of the Honors draws on the medieval system of accumulating like elements. The figures—personifications of moral qualities and their opposite vices, embodied by numerous characters from classical mythology, biblical history, the history of Antiquity, and the history of the Middle Ages—are arranged according to the ideal hierarchy of the theme, of which they are a “detail”. This tapestry set can therefore be classified as a woven Historia magistra vitae or handbook of lay morals, whose emblems and inscriptions are linked to the programs devised for the triumphal entries or joyeuses entrées of monarchs and princes. The composition of the scenes, which display an architectural structure or temple of virtue in the centre and are arranged on two superimposed levels, clearly reflects the temporary constructions and triumphal arches erected in the cities to mark such occasions.2 The literary sources for this moral allegorical discourse on royal ethics were many, particularly the aforementioned works of Alain de Lille and Jean Lemaire des Belges, as well as the classics by Ovid, Valerius Maximus, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, whose likenesses are woven into the central panel devoted to the temple of Honor. In his analysis of the iconographic scheme, Professor Delmarcel arranges the nine tapestries into groups of three. The central group consists of the temple of Honor, surrounded on either side by the temples of Faith and Fame; the flights of steps leading off from these side panels end at the steps of the temple of Honor. This central triptych is
142 las armaduras como obras de arte e imagen del poder