English: A franco-flemish armorial tapestry with caot of arms of Robert Chabot (d. 1518) and Antoinette d'Illiers (d. 1537)

c. 1503

Depicting the arms of Robert Chabot and Antoinette d'Illiers within a wreath of flowers on a red and brown striped backing with initials A and R, with a floral border, areas of reweaving

9 ft. 2 in. (280 cm.) high, 8 ft. 7 in. (262 cm.) wide

PROVENANCE

Probably supplied to Robert Chabot (d. 1518) and Antoinette d'Illiers (d. 1537) shortly after their marriage in 1503.

Together with an identical tapestry with Thiérard Frères, Paris, in 1935 and sold to Auguste Lambiotte, Prémery and Biarritz on 23 April 1936 as a pair and thence by descent.

HISTORY This rare tapestry was woven as part of a suite of tapestries of identical design. One panel remains at the château de Talcy, an early 16th century château in the Loir-et-Cher, while the tapestry panel paired with the current lot in the first half 20th century was sold anonymously, François de Ricqlès, Paris, 17 June 1997, lot 182.

ROBERT CHABOT AND ANTOINETTE D'ILLIERS The Chabot family was a prominent 15th and 16th century family established in several regions of France as comtes de Jarnac, barons de Retz, vicomtes de Tramecourt and seigneurs of regions such as Poitou, but most notably as the ducs de Rohan and princes de Léon. Robert Chabot (c. 1452-1517) was the 5th child of Renaud Chabot (c. 1410-1474), seigneur of Aspremont and of Jarnac, and his second wife Isabeau de Rochechouart (d. 1477). Notably, Renaud Chabot is recorded as having purchased the château de Jarnac from Jean d'Orléans to enable him to pay ransom for his brother Charles duc d'Orléans, who was captured at the battle of Azincourt in 1415 and kept captive until 1444. In 1503, Robert Chabot, seigneur de Clervaux and Baussay, baron d'Aspremont, married Antoinette d'Illiers, daughter of Jean, seigneur d'Illiers and Marguerite de Chourses, which is almost certainly when this suite of tapestries was commissioned.

DESIGN The striped background of this tapestry overlayed with repeating monograms is a rare survival of early armorial tapestry design.

A miniature painting of the trial of Jean, Duke of Alençon, from 1458 shows the court proceedings set against a background of red, white and green striped tapestries with the armorial devices of Charles VII, and is one of the earliest representations of this simulated fabric-hung background (T. Campbell, ed., Tapestry in the Renaissance, 'exhibtion catalogue', New Haven, 2002, p. 21). Surviving tapestries with this design include a suite with repeating stripes of the same colors, depicting figures in a rose garden from c. 1450-1460, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (A.S. Cavallo, Medieval Tapestries in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993, pp. 174-189, no. 8). Several armorial tapestries with striped grounds were recorded by the 18th century art historian François Roger de Gaignières (d. 1715) in his archive of drawings of tapestries (at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), including that of René II, duc de Lorraine, and his wife Philippine von Geldern, which must pre-date 1507, and Jacques III d'Estouteville and his wife Jeanne, who were married in 1509. Other, slightly later examples include armorial tapestries for Henry VIII and also Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre.

The cyphers represent an important design feature that appears in Medieval tapestries either as the main focus or to identify the patron of the work. Several armorial tapestries in Gaignières' drawings employ this design, but it is also used less centrally in tapestries such as in the magnificent late 15th/early 16th century unicorn tapestry set surviving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (A.S. Cavallo, op. cit, pp. 297-327, no. 20), where the cypher 'AE' is featured on a mille-fleurs ground.

The mille-fleurs ground found in the borders of the offered lot is a design that evolved c. 1450-1460, with one of the first fully developed surviving examples being the armorial tapestry of Philip the Good of Burgundy woven in Brussels in c. 1466, now in the Historisches Museum, Bern (A. Rapp-Buri and M. Stucky-Schürer, Burgundische Tapisserien, Munich, 2001, pp. 116-117, no. 104). This genre of tapestry, however, remained popular until the mid-16th century. The repeating pattern of individual and randomly combined cartoon panels of floral sprays is closely related to mille-fleurs tapestries woven in Bruges (see G. Delmarcel and E. Duverger, Bruges et la Tapisserie, 'exhibition catalogue', Bruges, 1987). However, similar designs were also woven in the Marche workshops in Felletin and Aubusson, and the offered tapestry was historically attributed to that region (see abovementioned exhibition catalogues).