Title

Mercury Changes Aglauro to Stone. Tapestry from The Marriage of Mercury

Pannemaker, Willem de (Active between 1535-1581 in Brussels)

Lodi de Cremona, Giovanni (Cremona, ca. 1520 - Cremona, ca. 1612)

Generic classification

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Inventory Number in Current Collection

Inscriptions / Marks

Upholsterer Willem de Pannemaker’s monogram, on the lower part of the right-hand falling border.

Object history

Between 1601 and 1606 the Court of Philip III left Madrid to settle in Valladolid. This city had frequently hosted monarchs since the Middle Ages: the Catholic Monarchs were married there in 1469; Joanna I and her husband Philip I the Handsome were proclaimed sovereigns of Castile in 1506; Emperor Charles was also recognized as king in 1518, and in 1527 the future Philip II was born. In spite of the importance of these historical events, it does not seem that they were fundamental at the time of choosing Valladolid as capital; what weighed was the personal interest of Felipe III's all-powerful valide, the Duke of Lerma. Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, 5th Marquis of Denia and 1st Duke of Lerma, was the scion of a family that had been charged with guarding Queen Juana I during her imprisonment in Tordesillas. His great-grandfather and grandfather had worked as jailers to the full satisfaction of the emperor, but had not managed to get rich. When Francisco Gómez de Sandoval inherited the Marquisate of Denia, his income was very small compared to that of other noble houses, despite having married Catalina de la Cerda, daughter of the IV Duke of Medinaceli, in 1576.

Man of total confidence of the new king, hardly a year after having replaced his father Felipe III granted him the duchy of Lerma, and from that moment his incomes increased without stopping until becoming one of the biggest fortunes of Spain. With plenty of money, he soon wanted to show the magnificence of his house and for this he did not hesitate to buy rich tapestries -he had only inherited from his father five cloths of "vegetables" and "four reposteros"-, among which stands out the series Las bodas de Mercurio, also known as the Fabula de Mercurio y Herse or Metamorfosis de Aglauro. It is a set of eight cloths that, fortunately, are all preserved, although scattered, and which is the only testimony of the more than sixty cloths with gold-covered threads that the Valide came to treasure.

The series was woven by the most prominent of the Brussels tapestry makers, Willem de Pannemaker, around 1570, as this date appears on the first cloth on the right selvage, just above the tapestry maker's monogram. This is not the editio princeps, which as far as we know must have been done by Willem Dermoyen, who made it around 1545-1550. There is no news of this hanging until 1656, when it passed into the hands of Tomás de Saboya Carignano-Soisson, and it was preserved complete until 1858; a copy of it survives in the Quirinal Palace in Rome, Metamorphosis of Aglauro, and two others in private collections. A third edition belonged to Fernando de Toledo, viceroy of Catalonia, who acquired it to hang it in the halls of the General of Catalonia (today headquarters of the Generalitat), which was also manufactured by Pannemaker and bears the date 1574; this one is less rich for not incorporating metallic threads and is currently preserved incomplete.

It has not been possible to document who the carton maker was, although formal and chronological studies suggest that it was probably the Cremonese painter Giovanni Battista Lodi. The cartons were in the hands of Dermoyen, whether or not he was their first owner, and then passed to Pannemaker at least from the late 1560s. That tapestry weaver wove the rich series without being able to specify if it was a commission or if he made it to put it on the market, although the very high cost of the hanging, both for the quality of its manufacture and for the inclusion of metallic threads, leads us to think that he did not embark on the enterprise without having a client behind him.

Lodi, if it was him, conceived a story based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. This author tells (Book II, 1200-1402) that Mercury saw a procession of young women on their way to the temple of Athena, among whom Herse, daughter of Cecrope, stood out. Inflamed by her beauty he presented himself at the palace where Herse's sister, Aglaurus, received him with disdain despite the large amount of gold that the god gave her. Seeing this Athena approached the house of Envy to ask her to infect Aglaurus with the poison of jealousy. This one, being corroded, tried to frustrate the happiness of her sister impeding the entrance to Mercury, to whom she said: "I will not get up, take it for plain, until you have left here". The god, angered at being prevented from entering the palace of his beloved, replied: "as I have to be here present, here you will also be here eternally". No sooner had he uttered these words than Aglaurus began to metamorphose into stone.

Ovid limits his account to this, but the eight cloths complement the story with Lucian's account of the marriage of Alexander the Great and Roxana. This episode served to set the end of the story in which Mercury enters Herse's bedroom to consummate the marriage. Veronese shows it in Mercury, Herse and Aglaurus, c. 1576-1584 (Cambrige, Fitzwilliam Museum), where the envious sister is humiliated by the god, and in different prints, among which the one by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, 1520-1539, stands out for its great erotic charge, in which Herse naked shows her sex in the foreground while Mercury forces Aglaurus to contemplate her.

With these main sources was woven the series of eight panels of about 435/450 cm drop by 541/728 cm wide, which is currently distributed in different hands: 1. Mercury sees from the heavens to Herse in the midst of the maidens who go to the temple of Athena (Collection of the Dukes of Alba); 2. Mercury and Herse walk (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado); 3. Mercury stopped by Aglauro at the entrance of the palace (Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli); 4. Banquet in the palace of Cécrope and Aglauro corrupted by Envy (Collection of the Dukes of Cardona); 6. Dance in the palace of Cécrope (Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli); 7. Metamorphosis of Aglauro (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art); 8. Mercury enters the room of Herse (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Traditionally the last two cloths were placed upside down in the series, but it is evident from Ovid's account that the metamorphosis of Aglaurus was earlier, although visual interpretations from the 16th century onwards had the jealous sister present in the bridal chamber.

The series in the hands of the Duke of Lerma

We know nothing about the tapestries until 1603, when the first known inventory of the assets of Philip III's favourite, the Duke of Lerma, was made in Valladolid. It must be supposed that he had them in his houses, which at that time were in the back of the royal palace, since this one, although he bought it and reformed it, ended up selling it to the king, although maintaining a room towards the Plaza de los Leones (today Plaza de las Brígidas). It has been proposed that the series was acquired from Pannemaker by the IV Duke of Medinaceli, Juan de la Cerda y Silva, who was governor of the Netherlands from 1572. This was the father of Catalina de la Cerda, who married Francisco Gómez de Sandoval in 1576, so the cloths would have come to the wife, either as a dowry or perhaps as an inheritance. The hypothesis has merit, however it must be kept in mind that in those years Lerma was short of resources and supposedly not very interested in tapestries, so that if they had passed into his hands, it is likely that he would have sold them.

Given their considerable size, more than fifty linear meters, they would not be exhibited, which was customary, but would be shown on special dates and events, and generally not all of them, since it was preferred to exhibit different hangings instead of a complete one. Of the twenty-five tapestries of metallic threads that the duke owned, this was the most valuable. It is stated in the inventory that the cloths, which are called Fábula de Mercurio, had "six anas of fall, and all of it has four hundred and fifty-six anas, at quarenta ducados each, which is eight cloths 200 640 reales". A linear ana was equivalent to 6 Castilian rods (a rod is 0.8359 m, three feet, so the ana is approximately 0.697 cm, but ana was also called the surface dimension, without making a distinction with the measure of length). The amount, 18,240 ducats (6,840,000 maravedis), is exaggerated, since among the tapestries that were appraised after the death of Philip II in 1598, only the cloths of the Jornada de Tunis exceeded that price.

During the five years that the Court remained in Valladolid there were all kinds of shows and festivities, such as the celebrations of the births of the Infanta Ana Mauricia (1601) and the future Felipe IV (1605). The Plaza de San Pablo, or Plaza del Palacio, was dressed up and tapestries were displayed hanging from the buildings and inside the church. We have several eyewitness accounts detailing the use of tapestries, all of which were from the collection of Philip III, who had inherited them from his father, although there is no record of Lerma exhibiting his own.

In 1607, a year after the Court left Valladolid, the Duke had moved his possessions to his villa of Lerma (Burgos) and there another inventory was made in which the series is cited as Bodas de Mercurio, with identical valuation. In successive inventories carried out in the ducal villa of Lerma in 1609, 1611, 1616 and 1617, these cloths continue to be collected. But when the Valide fell into disgrace he found himself in need of money, and borrowed it from the Genoese banker Carlo Strata. The debt was considerable and in 1622 he was forced to transfer to him the "tapestry of gold and silk of the Wedding of Mercurio...", on account of the 30,000 ducats he owed him. The delivery was made in Valladolid on March 27, so the cloths should have returned to the city after having been in Lerma.

The Duke died in 1625 and sometime before 1673 the tapestry was recovered from the pawnbroker. At the latter date it was linked to the entailed estate of the house of Lerma, as stipulated in the testamentary mandates of Feliche Enriquez de Cabrera, widow of the II Duke of Lerma, Francisco Gomez de Sandoval (1598-1635), grandson of the valide of Philip III. The duchess bequeathed the tapestry to her granddaughter, Catalina de Aragón, wife of Juan Francisco de la Cerda, VII duke of Medinaceli, and from then on the tapestries were incorporated into the estate of the house of Medinaceli. When the XII duke died (1789) it is said that there was a "tapestry made in Brussels, quite worn, of fine stock, worked with gold thread, silver, silks and stamens [...] representing the Fables of the god Mercury, measuring seventy-one rings by six of fall...".

Later fortune of the tapestries of The Marriage of Mercury

At the end of the 18th century the triumph of painting was absolute among the visual arts and it seems that no one noticed the existence of these tapestries, even though they hung in the great hall of the palace of the Dukes of Medinaceli in the Plaza de Colón in Madrid. It was José Ramón Mélida who noticed their existence and made them known in two articles in 1906 and 1907, but without being able to determine what exactly was the story they reflected. We had to wait until the archaeologist Antonio Blanco Freijeiro identified the source with the story of Mercury, Herse and Aglauro taken from Ovid.

In 1909 the eight cloths were distributed among the children of Ángela Pérez de Barradas, Duchess of Denia and Tarifa, widow of the 15th Duke of Medinaceli. Numbers 3, 5 and 6 passed to her grandson, the XVII Duke of Medinaceli, Luis Jesús Fernández de Córdoba y Salabert, posthumous son of the previous Duke who had died early. The remaining five went to five other children of duchesses: number 1 to the Duchess of Hijar; number 2 to the Duke of Tarifa; number 4 to the Duchess of Uceda; number 7, Metamorphosis of Aglauro, to the Countess of Valdelagrana, and the last of the series Mercury enters the room of Herse, to the Duke of Lerma.

The latter two were immediately sold by their new owners. On November 9, 1909, they had reached a sales agreement with the Paris-based art dealer Raoul Heilbronner. The latter, with no less haste, which seems to indicate that there was a previous agreement, transferred them to another dealer, Jacques Seligmann, who had branches in Paris and New York, who promptly sent them to the United States. On November 17, the two tapestries arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where they remained on loan until 1914. The buyer was the banking magnate George Blumenthal and his wife Florence. Lacking an appropriate house to exhibit their large collection of art objects, they ordered the construction of one on Park Avenue and 70th Street, which was completed in 1920. A large building, no longer standing, it housed the courtyard of the castle of Velez Blanco, a town in the Spanish province of Almeria, and hanging from the walls without lower galleries, the two panels were shown facing each other.

Seligmann had a close and long-standing relationship with Blumenthal. Both were of German origin, as was Heilbronner, as both seem to have attended the same school in Frankfurt. This relationship led Seligmann to sell the cloths to him for the reasonable sum of $120,000, when if he had put them on the market he would probably have received more. Blumenthal must have appreciated this gesture and when Seligmann mounted an exhibition in Paris between March and July 1913, the banker lent them to him. When the show was over, they returned to the New York museum where they remained until the following year.

George Blumenthal became president of the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1933 and made substantial contributions to the institution. When he died in 1941, he left more than 630 art objects to the museum, including the two tapestries, which became part of the Metropolitan Museum's holdings. The eight tapestries that were once in Valladolid are preserved, in addition to those in New York, scattered in different Spanish collections, of which two belong to the Museo Nacional del Prado, were brought together again in this museum in a temporary exhibition in 2010, curated by Concha Herrero Carretero with the participation of Nello Forti-Grazzini. To this day, they have never met again.

Description

Along with the tapestry Mercury enters Herse's room, this, the seventh in the Metamorphoses of Aglaurus series, is part of the holdings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The story shows Mercury as he attempts to enter King Cecrope's palace to visit his beloved Herse, but is prevented from doing so by his sister Aglaurus. The latter had behaved inhospitably to Mercury and Athena, annoyed with her behavior, ordered Envy to corrupt her with unbearable jealousy over Herse's happiness. When the messenger of the gods arrived at the palace she, without moving from the door, prevented him from passing, to which Mercury, angry, turns Aglaurus into stone. Mercury with a grim gesture raises his right hand and Herse begins to disappear through the legs to imbricate herself in the wall. The fading of the envious sister is masterfully achieved for a tapestry, as is the use of colors and metallic threads. To the right of the cloth the god takes flight and leaves the lands of Cécrope. Up to this point Ovid's account in the Metamorphoses (Book II, 1200-1402) is faithfully followed. The other scenes do not appear in the Latin poet's account, such as the inclusion of Cecrope who, horrified, sees how his daughter begins to disappear, and all the other characters in the center of the tapestry serve to set the story.

The richness of materials and quality of workmanship has rarely been achieved as in these tapestries. Pannemaker was probably the most outstanding tapestry maker in the Netherlands and the favorite of Spanish royalty: to him we owe the series of the Journey of Tunis, woven for the emperor, and that of the Apocalypse, which was so highly appreciated by Philip II (Patrimonio Nacional). Pannemaker enriched the cartoons attributed to Giovanni Lodi, as can be seen between the cloth of the same subject preserved in the Quirinal Palace in Rome, woven by Willem Dermoyen, and the one in the Metropolitan Museum.

If the originality of the story is evident, the borders reused previous models and refer directly to those of the Acts of the Apostles by Raphael, tapestries woven by Pieter van Aelst at the end of the 1510s. Even in their arrangement, with figures in the lower and lower borders and a simple fretwork in the upper one. Christian virtues and others taken from Aristotle are arranged in a classical architecture, while depicting representations of the liberal arts.

Cloth in good state of conservation, has 8/9 threads per cm of warp. The lower selvage is a later addition.

Locations

• 1603

  municipality

  Valladolid, Valladolid (Spain)

• 1673 - 1909

  palace

  Ducal House of Medinaceli, Madrid (Spain)

• 1909

  dealer/antiquarian

  Heilbronner Gallery / Heilbronner Galleries / Raoul Heilbronner, Paris (France) *

• 1909

  dealer/antiquarian

  Jacques Seligmann, New York (United States) *

• ca. 1941

  private collection

  Georges Blumenthal and Florence Meyer Blumenthal, New York (United States) *

• 1941 - present

  museum

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (United States)