Page 144 - El arte del poder

flanked on the left by Fortune, Prudence, and Virtue; and on the right by Justice, Nobility, and Infamy, a tapestry which brings the cycle to a close with a depiction of the “author” or narrator.
The present tapestry, entitled Fame, depicts the temple of Fame in the center of the composition. This female personification, beneath the canopy displaying her name, rides an elephant and blows two trumpets that spread fame and ill-fame. Standing on her right and left, Pompey and Penthesilea hold the banners of good and ill repute, symbolized by the members, ears, tongues, and eyes through which they are spread orally and in writing. They are the standard bearers of the heroes and heroines of Antiquity and mythology, who come running to the sound of Fame. Above her, the lines of Latin verse in the upper cartouche explain the picture:
“Fama vel effractis revocat quoscu[m]q[ue] sepulchris
Hinc laudes illinc probra cave[n]te tuba”
(“Fame, fracturing even tombs, summons men
With resounding trumpet, alternating praise with reproaches”)
In the sky, to the left and right of the temple of Fame, hovering above the scene as paragons are Perseus and Ill Fame, personifications inspired by Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum Gentilium. Perseus, with the head of Medusa, gallops on Pegasus. The Latin inscription in the cartouche in the border above him provides information about his attitude and astronomical significance:
“Ardua Pegaseo Perseus ad facta volatu
Accelerans, vivax nomen in astra tulit”
(“Flying on Pegasus, inciting to heroic deeds Perseus has transported a living name to the stars”)
Ill Fame, a winged woman with hair streaming in the wind, naked breasts, the legs of a quadruped, and flames in her hands, is also accompanied by a Latin inscription:
“Medx Fama viros, urbes, pallacia, reges
Territat, horrendi nuncia prompta mali”
(“A Deceitful Fame terrifies men, cities, palaces, kings Speedy messenger of terrible evils”)
The sounds of Fame’s trumpets resuscitate the men and women positioned along the length of the tapestry in the foreground. The great majority are illustrious men, prominent among whom are
those on horseback, such as Alexander the Great on Bucephalus, Julius Caesar—whose horse was endowed with human feet according to Suetonius and Pliny—and King David with his harp. The only examples of ill fame are Catiline, on horseback with his back to the viewer, and Mahomet, beneath the legs of David’s horse. Behind him is the female personification of Rome, at the start of the steps leading to the temple of Honor, the central tapestry in the set. The steps are ascended by Marcia accompanied by Hector and Helenus; Veturia, Isis (?), Camilla, Samson, Hercules, Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus, Jason, Lucretia, Hannibal, and Judith with the head of Holofernes and the sword—the only strong woman of the Bible, as the rest of the heroines depicted in the tapestry are from Boccaccio’s work. Behind her are Priam, Agamemnon, and Hecuba. Socrates and Anaximenes, on the left and right, beneath the frieze of the temple, protect the groups of heroes brought to life by Fame. Certain figures stand out among the thirty-one people portrayed, peering through the arches of the first floor of the temple and over the upper balconies. Their names are woven into the tapestry: Homer, who, like Ovid is crowned with a laurel wreath, Claudianus, Cato, Cicero, Tulio, Pliny, Francesco Petrarch with laurel wreath, spectacles and reading a book, Plato, Virgil with laurel wreath, Catullus, Lucianus, Sallust with book and quill, and Valerius. At the top are Boccaccio, Martial, Horace with laurel wreath, Statius, Thales of Miletus, Aristotle, Terence with laurel wreath, Plutarch, the Venerable Bede, Quintilian, Socrates, Demosthenes, and Pompeius Trogus. These are philosophers and literati of Greek and Roman Antiquity and the Middle Ages, whose writings provide a surviving testimony of the heroic deeds and feats of mankind. c.h.c.
1. Memorial from Pedro Gutiérrez to King Philip II explaining his difficulties at the tapestry manufactory he has founded (late 1595-early 1596). Real Academia de la Historia, Colección Salazar, vol. V-IV, fols. 279 and 371. Transcribed by Cruz Yábar 1996, pp. 270-274.
2. The most sumptuous and best described was the joyeuse entrée of Emperor Charles V into Antwerp on 23 September 1520. The program, entitled Hypothese sive argumenta spectaculorum, was designed and published that same year by the humanist Petrus Aegidius (Pierre Gillis), cf. Delmarcel 2000, pp. 22-23, note 86. However, Professor Delmarcel has found close iconographic similarities between the tapestry series of the Honors and the description of the entry of Prince Charles of Habsburg into the city of Bruges in 1515, see Remy de Puys, La tryumphante et solemnelle entrée faicte sur le nouuel et ioyeux aduenement de tre- shault, trespuisant et tresexcellent Monsieur Charles prince des Hespaignes [...] en sa ville de Bruges [...], Paris, Gilles de Gourmont, 1515, cf. Delmarcel 2000, doc. 6.2, p. 169.
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