Tapestries with boys at play, or winged cupids, amidst a pergola of vines trained on trees, known as Giochi di Putti, were first woven for Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, after designs by Giulio Romano, in workshops of Ferrara (or possibly Mantua). A lot has been written about the meaning of the tapestries with the Puttini subject. Forti Grazzini, for example, has interpreted the iconography of these sets as a manifestation of the Mantuan 'golden era' - a period of peace and prosperity owed to the Gonzaga family which has started with the duke Federico II and continued throughout the reigns of Ercole and Ferrante.
Six drawings exist to establish the identity of the artist responsible for these delightful fantasies. A set of four tapestries, with two additional entre-fenêtres, with Cardinal Gonzaga's arms, are in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and another two pieces (same subject, also with Gonzaga arms) are in the Vatican. The tapestries are woven with gold and silver and are without borders.
This piece - like a tapestry at Compton Wynyates (country house in Warwickshire) and a fragment in Milan - would appear to come from another Italian set based on the same models (it is woven without silver and silver-gilt threads). It has been furnished with Flemish borders and carefully repaired, but it very likely lost little or nothing of its original size and shape.
A central pair of apple trees entwined with a vine forming a pergola above. A boy (or winged cupid) on the central stem above is picking grapes, with another reclined above (left) munching from a bunch. A trellised fence runs behind the central trees with two disposed to the left and one to the right. A lake or estuary with ships is seen between the fence and overhanging branches and vines. On the right two cupids are playing with a stag recumbent, on which one sits. To the left three cupids are playing, one swarms up a tree, and two appear above the fence looking on , one on the shoulders of the other. All the boys are winged.
The border is composed of large flowers, fruit and grapes, rising from a vase with mask above at the sides, and cornucopiae at the ends of the horizontal sections above and below. The borders have been woven onto this tapestry, probably in the 19th century.
The drawing (Museum no. E.4586-1910), which together with the tapestry belonged to George Salting, shows the design for the tapestry and several (but not all) details exactly: namely, the putti with stag, the two seen pick-a-back behind the fence, recumbent putto with his arms linked over head, and his mate, and one swarming up a tree and another recumbent in the pergola above; the trees with apples, vines and trellised fence are all there, but the tapestry is reversed