Live Auction 7611Furniture, Sculpture and Carpets
A FLEMISH MYTHOLOGICAL HUNTING TAPESTRY
Lot 28 THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
(LOTS 24-28)

A FLEMISH MYTHOLOGICAL HUNTING TAPESTRY

FIRST HALF 17TH CENTURY

Closed11 September 2008

Price Realised

GBP 8,750

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A FLEMISH MYTHOLOGICAL HUNTING TAPESTRY
FIRST HALF 17TH CENTURY
Wooven in wools and silks, depicting in the foreground Ceres with a young faun and a peasant, to the right a boar hunt, within a wooded landscape with formal gardens beyond, in the background mountains with villages, reduced in size, lacking borders, within a later moulded wooden frame
7 ft. 10 in. (239 cm.) high; 6 ft. 5 in. (195 cm.) wide [without frame]

Specialist note

The verdure tapestry vignette of a palatial park, inspired by Ovid's account of the origins of the lizard in his Metamorphoses or Loves of the Gods, celebrates the Element of Earth and the Season of Autumn.; and is popularly known as 'Ceres seeking her daughter [Proserpine]' or 'The Mocking of Ceres' (see the engraving by H. Goudt (d. 1648) after a painting by Adam Elsheimer illustrated in C.A. Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, Boston, 1981, no. 45).

Ceres, the Earth and Summer harvest deity, is searching for her daughter Persephone, following her abduction by Pluto. A youth mocked her, while drinking, was splashed with water and metamorphosed into a lizard.