Guy Delmarcel, Margarita Garcia Calvo, and Koenraad Brosens

Spanish Family Pride in Flemish Wool and Silk: The Moncada and their Baroque Tapestry Collection

This is a reduced version of the paper presented at the Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor symposium in New York (October 20-21, 2007). Guy Delmarcel started studying this topic about fifteen years ago. Recent archival discoveries gave impetus to the research which is still in progress. The input of Margarita Garcia Calvo’s archival research in Spain has been crucial, and Koenraad Brosens provided complementary documents found in Brussels.

The complete text with notes and documents will be published in the proceedings of the New York symposium (Thomas p. Campbell, ed.).

The production of Flemish tapestries in the Baroque period coincides with the reign of the Spanish Habsburgs in the Southern Netherlands. The Spanish re-established their power after Antwerp had been re-captured by Alessandro Farnese in 1585 and they managed to maintain it until 1714, at which date Flanders came under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs by the Peace of Utrecht. During more than a century, a large part of the clientele of the Flemish tapestry manufacturers consisted of Spanish noblemen. Many of them resided in Flanders, sometimes for many years, as civil servants or military commanders. But eventually they all returned to their castles and palaces in Spain, carrying their tapestry sets with them. This phenomenon has not yet been the object of a systematic investigation. The study of the patronage of these Spanish “Grandes” for Flemish tapestry is indeed in a rather embryonic stage. Nevertheless, we can trace some outlines for now:

1. The study of these collections is hampered by the fact that many private archives have disappeared or were merged with those of other families, through marriages and alliances.

2. The vast majority of these tapestries are no longer in the possession of the present Spanish nobility, since a large amount of them was eventually donated to the Church. This explains the secular iconography of so many tapestry series in Spanish cathedrals. For example, in the cathedral of Toledo we find sets of a Life of Cyrus, the Planets, Jordaens’ Horse Riding School, Dido and Aeneas and of the Liberal Arts.

A first, superficial inventory of Flemish tapestries still preserved in Spanish churches today amounts to some 500 pieces. Three-quarters of them are from the 17th century, and eighty procent of those are secular pieces, representing some 300 tapestries. Let us illustrate this by discussing one particular collection: that of the Moncada family.

In 1897, Alphonse Wauters, city archivist of Brussels and author of the first comprehensive study of Brussels tapestry, published an article entitled : David Teniers et son fils, le troisième du nom. In his search of paintings by David II and III Teniers, he mentioned an auction at Drouot in Paris in 1870,where an art collection belonging to the Spanish Marquis de Villafranca has been offered for sale. The collection included a set of no less than twenty paintings on copper, each some 55 centimeter high to 70 centimeter wide, illustrating the History of the House of Moncada, a Spanish noble family. Eight of them were signed by Teniers, the twelve others by contemporary artists such as Willem van Herp, Louis Gentil and Jan van Kessel, and dated to respectively 1663 and 1664. Moreover, six tapestries, woven from these painted models and bearing the signature of the Brussels workshop of Albert Auwercx, were sold at the same auction.

The subsequent fate of the tapestries has been revealed by Heinrich Göbel. In his famous handbook of Flemish tapestry, published in 1923, he noted that they were preserved in the mansion of Count Potocki in Paris, but no further research has been done since then. The story popped up again in 1978 when Matias Diaz Padron, then curator at the Prado museum in Madrid and specialist of 17th century Flemish painting, published the pictures of eight of the twenty paintings on copper, all of them signed by Willem van Herp, a minor Antwerp painter ( master in 1637, died 1677). At that time, Diaz Padron could not locate the tapestries. We then tried to track the pieces and managed to discover them in 1985 : they were still in the Hotel Potocki in Paris, nowadays the seat of the Chambre de Commerce de Paris, on Friedland avenue. Four of the six tapestries do correspond with the pictures of the Van Herp models, published by Diaz Padron.

Each weaving represents an episode of the History of the Moncada Family in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries On the upper border, the Moncada arms are accompanied by the Latin name of « Guillelmo Ramon de Moncada, third of the name, count of Agosta « This nobleman rescued queen Maria of Sicily in 1384. Each scene is explained by a Latin legend woven at the bottom, under the coat of arms of the Moncada, surrounded by the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. This detail enables us to identify the patron as Luis Guillen de Moncada, seventh duke of Montalto, who was made a Knight of the Golden Fleece in 1651. Born in 1614, he was also viceroy of Sicily, later became mayordomo mayor of the Queen of Spain, finally a cardinal, and he died in 1672, thus being a Spanish “grande”

Translating the Latin texts, one can describe the episodes as follows: (1) "Before returning to Spain, Guillelmo Ramon de Moncada proposes to help Queen Maria in need", (2) "The Queen is liberated from Catania and is transported in a trireme", (3) "Moncada converses with the king of Aragon and suggests him to marry Queen Maria" (Moncada speaks here to both kings Martin senior and junior of Aragon), (4) "Moncada places his troops at the disposal of the king for a military campaign in Sicily", (5) "King Martin nominates Moncada as baron of Cerbello and Saint Vincent", and (6) "King Martin senior, going back to Spain after the campaign in Sicily, entrusts Moncada with the administration of Sicily and with the tutorship of the young Martin".

All the protagonists, who lived and acted at the end of the 14th century, are represented in pseudo-Renaissance dress, which gives them a “troubadour “ aspect. Moreover, each tapestry has borders with a different design. This is highly uncommon in Flemish tapestry. Normally, the border design tends to be uniform and is usually repeated on all pieces of a same series.

Only one of the copper paintings related to the existing tapestries, published in 1978 as belonging to a private collection, could be traced again. It shows the fifth tapestry, with the Nomination of Moncada. The tapestry reproduces the copper painting in the same direction but the composition was reduced in width. One may notice that the borders are rendered in full detail both on the painting and the tapestry. In the meantime, some other copper paintings have re-emerged, all of them are signed by David II Teniers. Two of them are now in the Museo Thyssen, Madrid, one is on the German art market, and two of them are kept in a private Spanish collection.

The question thus remained: since the six Potocki tapestries were based on painted models sold together with them in 1870, and since there were twenty painted models, we could presume that fourteen other tapestries were woven, but where are they hidden? A series of documents, kept in various archives in Spain and in Belgium, ranking from the middle of the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century, reveal an array of details about Luis Guillen’s tapestry collection, although not all mysteries have been solved.

1. The series of the History of the Moncada’s

Luis Guillén did pay some Flemish painters for these “modelli” on copper plates. A first series was ordered in 1663, they correspond to the first twelve subjects devoted to the Life of Guillermo Raimon. They were painted by two minor Antwerp artists: Willem Van Herp (1614-1677) for the scenes and Jan Van Kessel (1626-1679) for the borders. Though the document does not refer to the painters by name, we know their identity through the signatures on the paintings themselves, as mentioned in the 1870 auction catalogue.

For the second part of the series, dedicated to the Life of Antonio Moncada however, an other document, dated 1664, explicitly refers to David Teniers and this is David Teniers II (1610-1690) who was a court painter in Brussels.

Although he had these twenty modelli in his possession, Luis Guillen de Moncada apparently did not order their weaving during his lifetime. There was no word about a similar set in the inventory of his belongings made up after his death in 1672, eight years after the last order of the paintings, but there is mention of an exceptional blend of other Flemish series, which we will consider later on. His son, don Fernando de Aragon, being short of money, sold all his father’s tapestries in the following thirteen years, up to 1685.

The History of Moncada, however, reappears fourteen years later, in 1699. The duke of Montalto, then don Fernando, ordered the Flemish painter Lambert de Hondt to make cartoons for twelve tapestries of this series. De Hondt is requested to follow the models, painted on copper plates, as precisely as possible, including the specific borders, inscriptions and coats of arms. De Hondt (born ca.1650 - died 1708) was a reputed cartoon painter in those days. He is mostly known as designer of the first series of the Art of War (“ de Exercitiën van den Oorloghe “) woven from 1696 on by Le Clerc and Van der Borcht in Brussels, now i.a. in Munich and in Blenheim Palace. The same document of 1699 states that the tapestries should be woven in the Brussels workshop of Albert Auwercx (c. 1635 – 1710) and his son Nicolaes. But when don Fernando died in 1713, again there is no word of such Moncada tapestries in his belongings! We must wait until 1718 - another thirteen years after the order for the cartoons was made - to finally trace six extant tapestries. In May 1714, these pieces still belonged to the estate of the weaver, Auwercx, and they were sold to the daughter of Don Fernando, Catalina de Moncada, wife of the marques of Villafranca, before December 1718. They were eventually cited as being in the possession of the Moncada family in 1754, thus all together ninety-one years or almost one century after their first inception in 1663. And it is only these six pieces which are mentioned in later times, in the 1870 auction in Paris.

So now we are sure that only six pieces were ever woven, half of the History of Guillermo Moncada series, and none from the History of Antonio Moncada, as described in 1870 from the models on copper. We can also conclude that the modelli by David II Teniers for this last cycle were never translated into weavings.

Such an ambitious genealogical program of twenty tapestries fits quite well in Luis Guillen de Moncada’s art policy. Thanks to the recent discoveries in the archives, we know that he was obsessed by his ancestors. He ordered to write the chronicle of his house, and he also ordered a very large portrait gallery, painted on canvas and presented in his Sicilian palace of Caltanisetta.

Further analysis will be published about the tapestry sets devoted to the history of one specific family, about the specific border for each tapestry, about modelli for tapestries painted on copper.

Finally, we should comment on the social phenomenon implied in this story, namely the ongoing care of several generations of one family for a same tapestry set, considered as a precious heirloom. Luis Guillen conceived the set and ordered the painted models. His son had to sell his father’s tapestries, but after marrying a wealthy woman he picked up his father’s project once again, and he ordered cartoons and tapestries for twelve of the twenty scenes. But he probably died before completion, and it was his daughter or even his grandson who eventually bought the six weavings. Noblemen have always been particularly proud of their origins, of the res gestae of their ancestors. In the art of tapestry, this was mostly represented by armorials, where heraldry symbolically translated their geographical possessions and family connections. The Spanish nobles were particularly fond of these reposteros and some brilliant examples of their baroque grandeur are still preserved. But in the example of the Moncada the entire story of the family was portrayed, and no less than four generations cherished the project, though it was never fully completed.

2. Luis Guillen de Moncada ‘s tapestry collection

This collection included no less than nine series, comprising 124 tapestries; of which 48 pieces consisted of armorials. Concerning the latter we know that Moncada ordered 24 such pieces from François van den Hecke in Brussels, as well as a canopy in 1665, one year after the Moncada paintings. Five of these “ reposteros”, bearing the same heraldry as the Life of the Moncada, are still kept in a Spanish private collection, together with the central part of the canopy.

After Luis Guillen’s death (1672), his inventory revealed him to have been an assiduous collector and patron of the finest available contemporary Flemish tapestry sets. Firstly, Moncada owned two series manufactured from designs by Peter Paul Rubens, which were most fashionable among the Spanish nobility: the Triumph of the Eucharist, and the Life of Achilles. Both sets have been analysed in full detail in separate volumes of the “Corpus Rubenianum”, though the authors do not mention or refer to Moncada. We are tracing now these sets which are apparently still kept in Spanish collections.

Luis Guillen owned also a very large series of 21 weavings, representing Proverbios or Adagios which means Proverbs. In February of 1673, Don Fernando de Aragon sold the Moncada set to Fernando de Valenzuela. This nobleman had been the Prime Minister of the young king Carlos II but later he fell into disgrace. After a revolt in 1677 he was dispossessed of all his goods, and in 1678 he was sent into exile on the Philippines for ten years. In the 1677 sale of Valenzuela ‘s collection, the “Proverbios” bought by him in 1673 are named “los Sentidos” but they have exactly the same dimensions. There is only one “modern” Flemish series with this theme in the 17th century. It was designed by Jacob Jordaens, and it has been documented since 1644. Only two editions of Jordaens’ Proverbs series are known at present. An eight piece edition is kept at Hluboka Castle in Bohemia, it was bought in 1647 by the Archduke Leopold William. Another edition, comprising 18 pieces, now hangs in the cathedral of Tarragona. It consists of the eight Jordaens subjects from Hluboka and a blend of other Jordaens compositions on the other ten pieces, three of which are actually two tapestries sewn together. The Tarragona set is reputed to have been acquired in 1683 from the estate of the canon don Diego Giron de Rebolledo, where they are called “Los Sentidos” too. Circumstantial evidence, namely the presence in Spain of such a large series (corrresponding to the 21 ones of 1672) leads us to believe that the Tarragona edition originally belonged to the Moncada, before it was incorporated in Valenzuela’s collection. Canon Giron de Rebolledo probabaly purchased the series right after Valenzuela’s disgrace in the 1677 sale.

Brief mention should be made of two other series owned by Moncada. He had a series of the Fructus Belli, which he had inherited from his first wife. At the time, this series was described as “already old and worn”. It was probably an early edition from the 16th century, after the cartoons made for Ferrante Gonzaga in 1546-49.

In 1660 he bought a large series of sixteen tapestries representing forest views and landscapes, Arboledas y paises. In the taxation of 1672 (and its sale of 1681, this set is defined as Alamedas echas en Amberes, “woven in Antwerp”. This is a very rare mention in Spanish documents. There are some known examples of such Antwerp landscape tapestries. They bear the signature of Pieter Kolvenaer, a manufacturer who was brother-in-law to Jan Van der Goten. Jan’s son Jacob was the weaver who later emigrated to Spain and founded the Real Fabrica de Tapices, which still exists.

We may conclude that Don Luis Guillen de Moncada was a prominent collector of Flemish tapestry among the “Grandes” in Spain. His collections are as significant as those of his contemporaries, Don Luis de Haro, Don Francisco de Benavides and so many others. For Spanish noblemen Flemish tapestries were a kind of “mobile frescoes”, reflecting their taste for mythology, their ethics and - in this case above all - their family pride.