Tapestry, The Triumph of Chastity over Love, 1500-10, Brussels

Tapestry woven with approx 6-7 warps per cm.

Purchased from E. Lowengard, Paris, for £1,000 (Chastity: 440-1883), £1,000 (Fame: 439-1883), £775 os. 6d. (Death: 441-1883)

In his paper published in 1985, Piero Boccardo established that this tapestry and the other two from the same set (museum nos. 439-1883 and 441-1883) can be related to a group of three large tapestries and two smaller fragments documented in Genoa in 1658.
Thomas P. Campbell suggested that the tapestries might have belonged to a set commissioned by Cardinal Wolsey shortly before 1520. He argued their presence in Genoa in 1658 to be significant, because the date ‘would be consistent with a set that had left the British royal collection immediately before or during the Commonwealth sale’. He strengthened his theory with his argument that ‘more than one thousand tapestries, approximately half of the royal tapestry collection, were sold or dispersed between 1649 and 1654, and continental collectors and merchants competed fiercely for the finest. Score of tapestries from the royal collection were acquired by such figures as Cardinal Mazarin and Nicholas Fouquet, while others turned up in collections across Europe in the following decades.’
However, in 2016 Piero Boccardo published newly discovered archival information that shed additional light on the provenance of the three tapestries. Namely, the newly surfaced documents have proven that the three tapestries had in fact reached Genoa already in 1610, when Agostino Durazzo bought ‘pezzi 6 di tapessaria di Fiandra antichi de’ trionfi del Petrarca’ (six old Flemish tapestries of Petrarch’s Triumphs) in Venice from a certain Jew called Baldasar (Baldasar ebreo). It will be Agostino’s son, Marcello Durazzo, who will appear almost half a century later, in the previously published document from 1658, as the owner of the ‘pezzi tre grandi delli Trionfi di Petrarca’ (indicating that the set of six tapestries, as originally acquired in Venice by his father in 1610, has been split by then).
Therefore, the appearance of the Triumphs tapestries in Genoa already in 1610, via Venice, detaches them from the Commonwealth sales and from the circumstantial evidence that associated them tentatively with the English royal collection and from the set of Triumphs listed in Wolsey’s inventory of tapestries, which have also been documented as having a border of the arms of England and Spain sewn to the top (suggesting that Wolsey may have received them as a perquisite from Henry VIII).

This tapestry, together with the Triumph of Death over Chastity (museum no. 441-1883) and the Triumph of Fame over Death (museum no. 439-1883) survives from a series comprising six tapestries based on the poem I Trionfi (The Triumphs), written by the Italian poet Petrach between 1352 and 1374. The tapestries are designed as large-scale dramatic compositions and woven in the low warp Brussels technique; in both respects this was the most advanced style of the first two decades of the 16th century.

Petrarch's Triumphs describe a series of allegorical visions and may have been inspired by the death of Laura to whom Petrarch dedicated many poems. From the 14th to 16th century the theme of the poem was illustrated in numerous works of art and much was added that was not in Petrarch’s text.

The six Triumphs are as follows: The Triumph of Love, the Triumph of Chastity over Love, of Death over Chastity, of Fame over Death, of Time over Fame, of Eternity over Time.

This scene represents the Triumph of Chastity over Love. The figures have a complex allegorical significance drawn from classical and medieval sources.On the left, Cupid is pulled down from his Chariot by Chastity, riding a unicorn, identified here as Petrarch’s Laura (‘LAURA POUR RAISON’). She is attended by Honour (HONESTETE), Modesty (HONTE), and GOODWILL (BON VOULOIR). Above this group and a little to the right is a scroll inscribed ‘HAUX PENSERS ET ESLEVEES CO(N)SIDERACOV(N)S’. Round the chariot are grouped celebrated victims of Love, for instance Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. In the centre, Cupid, now bound, sits at the feet of Chastity in her triumphal car. Lucretia, Virginia and others stand by her chariot. On the right is temple honouring Diana, the Virgin huntress. Below the statue of Diana is a date 1507, repeated as 1510 on the roof. A scroll in the centre of the top border is inscribed: ‘SECOND TRI(U)PHE DE CHASTETE’.

The verses along the top and lower edges describe the main events in each Triumph, but they are not taken from the original poem.

At Hampton Court there are four Triumph tapestries; these were bought as part of a set of eight by Cardinal Wolsey in 1523. Three of them represent the same subjects as the tapestries in the V&A; the fourth shows the Triumph of Time over Fame.

440-1883