A Flemish tapestry with Triumph of Flora from the Triumph of the Gods series
Wool and silk tapestry. With fragmentary Brussels city mark and signature "AVWERCX" in the lower border. Lined, older restorations, the outer strips of the border only fragmentarily preserved, soiled. H 309, W 325 cm.
Based on a design by Jan van Orley, executed by Albert Auwercx (1657 - 1709), Brussels.
Albert Auwercx (around 1629 - 1709) joined the Brussels guild of tapestry weavers in 1657. Over the course of 50 years, his weaving workshop developed into a large-scale enterprise with five looms. Auwerckx realised several extensive series for which he engaged well-known pattern painters, such as Jan I van Kessel, who translated his own designs or those of Jan van Orley or Pieter Coecke, for example, into the format of the loom. The story of St Paul the Apostle, but also a Diana series and a Moses series after Lodewijk van Schoor were part of his repertoire. Triumph of the Gods motifs were also realised by various other weavers, albeit based on different cartoons. A landscape tapestry in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam shows the Triumph of Diana, also based on a design by Jan van Orley, but produced after 1729 by Urbanus and Daniel Leyniers III.
Literature
On Auwercx s. Göbel, Die Niederlande vol. I, part 1, Leipzig 1923, p. 381.
On Jan van Orley see. Heinz, Europäische Tapisseriekunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Die Geschichte ihrer Produktionsstätten und ihrer künstlerischen Zielsetzung, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 1995, p. 223 ff., where several tapestries with a similar compositional scheme are illustrated.
Cf. Hartkamp-Jonxis/Smit, European Tapestries in the Rijksmuseum, Zwolle-Amsterdam 2004, cat. no. 46.