page_title: Brussels tapestry
section_title: Tudor patronage
hierarchical_section_title: Brussels tapestry / Tudor patronage
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le_mariage_de_Clovis_et_Clothilde, tapisserie de lisse, dépôt du mobilier de France.
context_page_description: Brussels tapestry workshops produced tapestry from at least the 15th century, but the city's early production in the Late Gothic International style was eclipsed by the more prominent tapestry-weaving workshops based in Arras and Tournai. In 1477 Brussels, capital of the duchy of Brabant, was inherited by the house of Habsburg; and in the same year Arras, the prominent center of tapestry-weaving in the Low Countries, was sacked and its tapestry manufacture never recovered, and Tournai and Brussels seem to have increased in importance.
  The only millefleur tapestry to survive together with a record of its payment was a large heraldic millefleur carpet of very high quality made for Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy in Brussels, of which part is now in the Bern Historical Museum. Sophie Schneebalg-Perelman's attribution to Brussels of The Lady and the Unicorn at the Musée de Cluny may well be correct.
context_section_description: In England, both Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII amassed large tapestry collections. Henry competed with both Charles V and Francis I in displays of courtly magnificence, and vast sums were spent on tapestries to augment the lavish settings for his meeting with Francis at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 and for the visit of Charles V to England in 1522. 
  Wolsey furnished his palaces at York Place and Hampton Court with rich tapestries. Many of the cardinal's acquisitions illustrate Biblical texts, but he also acquired secular works, including two sets of Triumphs of Petrarch.  One was purchased from the executors of the Bishop of Durham and one was commissioned directly by Wolsey. Evidence associates this later set with a partial set now in the Victoria & Albert Museum and likely woven in Brussels. The Seven Deadly Sins panels woven for Wolsey's bedroom at Hampton Court are also thought to be Brussels work. By the time of his fall in 1529, Wolsey's collection included over 600 tapestry pieces, old and new. But despite his commissions to the weavers of Brussels, his tastes were conventional, and none of his acquisitions seem to have been in the new style pioneered by van Orley.
  Conversely, Henry VIII embraced the new Italianate style. From the later 1520s, the king's tapestry commissions reflect two marked tendencies: a selection of themes and subjects chosen as "unambiguous and pointed" propaganda, and the first appearance of the figural styles of the Italian Renaissance in England, albeit through the "distorted lens of the Brussels 'Romanist' artists." 
  In October 1528, Henry acquired a small set of the Twelve Months and a much larger ten-piece set of The Story of David measuring 743 1/2 ells (418 square yards) from the merchant Richard Gresham.  Recent research suggests strongly that this set of the Story of David has survived intact and is the Brussels-woven set worked in wool, silk, and metal-wrapped thread now housed in the Musée National de la Renaissance, Écouen, described as "one of the finest examples in the world of pre-1530 weaving."  
  In the 1540s Henry commissioned Brussels reproductions of the Raphael Acts of the Apostles series and a set of Antiques also woven to designs created for Leo X  ca 1517–20 by artists of the Raphael workshop.  Two of these, The Triumph of Hercules and the Triumph of Bacchus, remain in the Royal Collection and are hung in Hampton Court Palace.
caption: The Marriage of Clovis (detail) by Jean Le Clerc, Brussels, 17th century  (ex-Palace of Tau)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:05:17 11:07:46", "Image ExifOffset": "172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "11301", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2576", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2684"}