"The little deaf-mute has been walking with his rags and his feather duster among the woods of the organ for a long time. At his feet, the nave of the church of San Juan Bautista lies in shadow. The light of dawn - the dawn of the day of the Kings - flickers in the windows and then, slowly, lovingly, begins to burnish the gold of the altars. Cristóbal polishes the grain of the great lectern and painstakingly lines up the choir books, almost as voluminous as he is. Behind it is the tapestry, but Cristóbal prefers not to look at it today. Of so many beautiful and curious things that the temple exhibits, none attracts and seduces him like the tapestry of the Adoration of the Kings; not even the mysterious Nazarene, nor the Saint Francis of Assisi with silver wings, nor the Christ that Viceroy Ceballos brought from the Colonia del Sacramento and who bends his head on Good Friday when the sacristan pulls a string. The huge canvas covers the window that opens onto Potosí street, and extends behind the organ, which it protects from the sun and the rain. When the wind blows and the air seeps through the interstices, the tall figures that surround the Christ Child move. Cristóbal has seen them move in the greenish chiaroscuro. And today he does not dare to look at them. It will soon be three years since the tapestry occupies that place. They hung it there, amid the rapturous fuss of the Capuchins, when it was presented to him by Don Pedro Pablo Vidal, the canon, who bought it at a public auction for sixteen pelucona ounces. The cloth has a romantic history. It is known that one of the Argentine corsairs who harassed the Spanish ships in the waters of Cadiz took it as war prize with the cargo of an adversary schooner. Mr. Fernando VII sent the tapestry, woven according to a cartoon by Rubens, to his governor of the Philippines, assuring him of his royal appreciation. He wanted the singular destiny that instead of adorning the Manila palace he would come to Buenos Aires, to the temple of the nuns of Santa Clara […]" (1)
Thus, the Flemish tapestry Adoration of the Magi begins to come to life in one of the stories of Misteriosa Buenos Aires by Manuel Mujica Láinez; a knight joins the woven figures to adore the Child God: it is Rubens, who leaves a brush next to myrrh, gold and frankincense. With narrative ability, the writer inserts into the story the historical information that was known about the textile piece. He was a good connoisseur, due to his role as secretary of the National Museum of Decorative Art in Buenos Aires (during the management of its first director Ignacio Pirovano) as well as a relevant art critic. In that porteño museum the most outstanding European tapestries that can be found in Argentina are preserved. The inclusion of Adoration of the Magi as a mysterious object in a fictional history of the city can still be sustained today, since it is surprising that a work of such quality was displayed at the beginning of the nineteenth century in a temple in Buenos Aires in the midst of post-revolutionary crisis.
The story takes place in the church of San Juan Bautista. This had been built on a parish of Indians from the mid-seventeenth century. Attached to the temple was the Nuestra Señora del Pilar convent of the Capuchin Poor Clare sisters, in charge of the Church in 1754, when they received a donation of the adjoining land to build their convent in 1756, which consolidated their presence in the city. Shortly before, in 1749, they had crossed the Andes from Santiago de Chile. The temple was inaugurated at the end of the 18th century, but the definitive form of the façade is from the beginning of the 20th century, made by Rómulo Ayerza, (2) with some reforms from the previous century. The fifth viceroy Pedro de Melo y Portugal was buried, according to his request, in the temple in 1797, after he died in Montevideo – when due to his rank the mother church corresponded. Those who fell during the English Invasions were buried in a courtyard; Since the Reconquest of the city took place on August 12, Saint Clare's day, the saint of Assisi was named patron saint of the city, in gratitude for the prayers of her nuns. These indicated her adherence to the patriot cause, as good poor daughters of the Creole elite (no dowry was requested to enter the cloistered life, which depended on alms). The revolutionary troops of the insurgent army in the northern provinces wore the scapulars made by the Capuchin women. The extensive poetry of Sister Gertrudis dedicated to General San Martín after the patriot triumph in Maipú is well known: “Those of us who flee from the century in it are / dedicated to the sovereign numen, / and Franciscan habit / with hermit life we profess, / possessed of the highest patriotism / we sing your virtue, your honor, and your heroism,” and that in another of his twenty-seven sextets of the Gratulatory Encomiastic Song he does not hesitate to affirm “We are yours in Christ and for Christ […] Because you are such a Franciscan general” (3 )
The construction, then, was recent but with a long history when it received the donation of the tapestry, around 1819. An apt setting as a place of Creole identity to display a war trophy, it was practical to hang them in churches, obtained from a Spanish frigate. by an insurgent corsair. Even more so if the donor, according to tradition, was a prominent member of the patriotic clergy, such as Canon Pedro Pablo Vidal. He was placed, as Mújica Láinez relates, covering a window above the choir to protect the organ. In 1890 he relocated it, framed, to the right of the altar above the lower choir of the cloistered nuns. It was covered by a satin curtain, which could be drawn on certain liturgical festivities. In this way, the tapestry was integrated into the widespread custom of veiling sacred images, an issue that does not only imply, in this case, the conservation of the image but also maintaining the separation of the everyday from the sacred, stimulating the mystery and devotion of the loyals. (4) That mystery, that fear of the sacred, which is well expressed by the character of the deaf and dumb Cristóbal in the aforementioned story.
The cardboard of the tapestry the Adoration of the Magi that is in Buenos Aires. It is preserved in the Norbertine Abbey of Grimbergen, near Brussels. Photo: Astrid Maulhardt.
The changes of modern life and devotions forced the nuns to move to the town of Moreno, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires in 1982. Part of the land of the convent, with the negligence of the State in this regard, was sold to a hotel chain. Given the warning from the Order of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Bétharram, (5) about the removal of the tapestry by the nuns, the archbishopric resolved that it be placed, in 1986, in the Argentine Episcopal Conference, after a donation with a charge by the the congregation of Poor Clare nuns. (6) One of the reasons for the transfer was the decoration of the episcopate for the papal visit of John Paul II in April of the following year.
The good prey of the Corsican
Pastor S. Obligado (1841-1924), a traditionalist writer, tells the story of the tapestry in 1898 in one of his widely published books with anecdotes and customs from the past of Buenos Aires. (7) his account based on oral tradition is the source of information for all later commentaries until his rectification in the last century. Obligado fixes two issues: the legend of origin and the relevant quality of the tapestry.
Pastor Obligado recounts that the piece arrived in Buenos Aires as a product of the good prey of a flag corsair of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. It records the following data: the name of Navy Lieutenant Colonel James Chaytor (known in El Plata by the name of Diego and the various spellings of the surname Chyter and Chayter) and of the corsair ship, Vigilancia, without mentioning the name of the dams. Obligado considers the course from the Philippines to Cádiz, since he supposes the return of the governor with him to the metropolis. Enrique Udaondo (1880-1962) - historian, founding director of the Museum of Luján, deeply religious man, member of the Third Order of San Francisco and of the Archconfraternity of the Blessed Sacrament - adds that the tapestry would have been a gift from King Ferdinand VII to the Governor General of the Philippines, Don Mariano Fernández de Folgueras, suggesting a different course for the ship, from Cádiz to Manila. (8)
However, it is not possible to imagine another entrance to Buenos Aires than the one stated in the legend. (9) However, the corsair ship was probably another. Chaytor commanding the frigate Independencia del Sur, coordinating the action with the Mangoré, under the command of James Barnes, captured the Royal Philippine Company frigate Nuestra Señora de El Buen Suceso, alias La Esperanza in 1817. In this regard it is interesting the diplomatic letter sent by the Spanish ambassador Luis de Onis to the Secretary of State of the United States John Quincy Adams, claiming an amount of seven hundred thousand nine hundred and eighty dollars for damages generated to the crown declaring said total as the value of loss calculated between the loot of the two captured ships, since the captains were American citizens born in Baltimore:
I have just received a statement, dated the 14th of July, addressed to me by the directors of the Royal Philippine Company at Madrid, informing me of the unfortunate fate of two ships belonging to the said company, the one named Nuestra Senora del Buen Suceso, alias La Esperanza, and the other El Triton, captured, the first on the 8th of June last, the day on which she sailed from Cadiz for Calcutta and Manilla, by the pretended insurgent privateers La Independencia del Sud, commanded by James Chaytor, of 18 guns and one traversing 42-pounder; and the Mangore, under the orders of the same Chaytor, of 14 guns and one traversing 36-pounder; and the ship Triton, from Calcutta and the coast of Coromandel, which was captured off the Cape de Verd islands, after a gallant defense of two hours and a half, in which she lost twenty killed, and sprung her foremast, by a privateer ( of the same description as the two above mentioned) called the Regent, alias Trepacamara, commanded by one Manson, who, when seventeen days out from Baltimore, fell in with the Triton, and conducted her as a prize to Buenos Ayres, where she arrived on the 2d of April last, according to the advices received by the underwriters at Lloyd's from their agent at Buenos Ayres […]. I have the honor to enclose, for suitable purposes, a note of the articles shipped on board the Esperanza and Triton, which sums united, amount, according to the invoice, to that of seven hundred and one thousand nine hundred and eighty dollars. (10)
Among the prisoners taken were General Ambrosio de la Cuadra, Lieutenant Colonel Sebastián Ruiz de Labastida and the prosecutor of the Audiencia de Manila Ramón Power e Hidalgo and also the Bishop of Manila. The capture of the frigate La Esperanza was on June 9, 1817, just 8 leagues from Cádiz en route to Manila. She is the only ship in which the name of the corsair commander, the approximate date, and the course to the Philippines coincide. Although we do not know the reference with certainty, another captured ship from the Philippines is mentioned along with La Esperanza: "... the damage that the insurgent corsairs cause at the present time, to the Spanish maritime trade is of such magnitude as evidenced by the seizure of a frigate of the company of the Philippines that was returning richly laden from those dominions, and they have taken to Buenos Aires, and another that they have taken in sight of Cádiz, from whose port it had just left carrying the captain general and the bishop of those islands .” (11)
La Esperanza entered Buenos Aires on August 30, 1817 and was declared good prize on October 14, 1817. (12) The Vigilancia captured the frigate Santo Tomás, alias La Intrépida, in August 1818, on a trip from Russia to Cádiz, and Nuestra Señora del Carmen, at Cape Finisterre. Then a mutiny occurred on board, which was later controlled by Captain Jorge Ross. In other words, the Vigilancia, a 16-gun frigate, was not captained by Chayter, but by another Marine lieutenant colonel, the aforementioned Ross. The confusion, perhaps, has occurred between the common owner of the Vigilancia and the prize agent of La Independencia del Sud, Adam Guy. In addition to the fact that Chaytor joined the consortium to buy and enlist the Vigilancia frigate, and although he was not its captain, he made this corsair cruise ship jointly with Independencia del Sud and Alerta. They captured the Spanish frigate Aventurera, alias El Águila of Captain Ramón Torres y Conde, which arrived in Buenos Aires on October 15, 1818 as good prize. This corvette was captured in the blockade of Cádiz, coming from Havana to Barcelona, so that must be discarded as a carrier of the tapestry.
The discussion about the rights of the cargo from La Esperanza between the owners of La Independencia del Sud and Mangoré, once declared good prey, generated a judicial file, in the folio in which the notary's office describes the cargo –leather, wine, oils, boxes of various merchandise - also adds how much more could have been sent in it, that is to say that a complete list of it is lacking, something common in Corsicans, who traveled the limit of legality. (13) The oral tradition is completed with the purchase as a carpet in a public customs auction by the priest Pedro Pablo Vidal for 16 ounces of gold, who donated it to the church of San Juan Bautista. As has been mentioned, Vidal was part of the patriotic clergy, actively participating in the revolutionary events, mainly as a member of the Assembly of the Year XIII and, later, in the conflicts of the Banda Oriental. He was appointed canon of the Cathedral, but was expelled in 1820, for factious political reasons. Although he was previously intermittently in Buenos Aires, this last year is the limit for the possibility of buying the tapestry himself.
The “gobelin” of Buenos Aires
Pastor S. Obligado produces a remarkable invention from the erroneous reading of the B for a G: “upon looking up, we read the date, (1657) in the great tapestry suspended over the lower Choir, of the Capuchin nuns, next to the initials and coat of arms of the founder of the Gobelin Manufacture”. This “first class” gobelin quality is also supported by the authorities of the foreign artists active in Buenos Aires in the 19th century: the Savoy artist Charles Pellegrini, who arrived in 1828, and the Italians Gaetano Descalzi, active between 1856 and 1862. , and Ignacio Manzoni, present with interruptions between 1852 and 1871, however we have not located a source with their comments. From now on, these artists had a relationship with their father, Pastor Obligado, governor of the State of Buenos Aires, between 1853 and 1858.
Still identified as a Gobelin, he occupied the attention of Jorge Mitre in Caras y Caretas (January 7, 1899). Image: Digital Hemeroteca, National Library of Spain.
Reading as a gobelin was widely disseminated, for example in the popular magazine Caras y Caretas, Jorge Mitre -who wrote under the pseudonym Figarillo- paraphrased the content of Obligado's story. (14) Eduardo del Saz did the same, almost twenty years later, in the illustrated magazine Plus Ultra. This note adds a point of interest: the chaplain and confessor of the Poor Clares since 1875, the Betharramite Francisco Laphitz - who died in 1905 - ordered in 1890 the transfer of the tapestry to the right of the altar above the lower choir. (15) The deterioration of the “gobelin”, Obligado comments, was due to some cuts so that the nuns had rugs to kneel on. In 1876 it was restored by the nuns themselves. Among the most notable interventions that the textile underwent is the covering with black paint of the sex of the Child God. It is probable that the horizontal cut, which the piece presents, is due to the aforementioned transfer within the temple itself. Also from Obligado it was spread that the image was derived from the Adoration of the Magi by Titian, preserved in the Prado Museum.
The Rubens Tapestry
It was only in September 1928 that its cataloging as Gobelin was abandoned, determining its Flemish invoice by some French experts, according to what Udaondo points out, which the Bayonian fathers transmitted to him. (16) It was exhibited during the XXXII International Eucharistic Congress of 1934, (17) held in Buenos Aires with the presence of the papal delegate Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII. After the religious art exhibition, the first professional restoration was carried out by a team led by a Spanish specialist. (18) Udaondo, who had been the president of the organizing commission of that exhibition, then carried out the academic study on the tapestry, which precedes the essay on the history of the convent in 1949. (19) It is the first advance of more solid foundations that the traditionalist story of Obligado, then the attribution to Rubens is fixed and its cataloging as Gobelin is discarded to affirm the Flemish invoice, but without defining the authorship of the cardboard; without integrating it into an iconographic series and with the wrong dating. This date of 1657 is also noted in the cataloging of the main tapestry exhibition held with those belonging to the Argentine collections in 1939. (20)
The tapestry of the Adoration of the Magi preserved in Buenos Aires is part of the reissues of a series of cartoons used for the first time in the enormous commission of twenty-nine tapestries, woven in Brussels between 1699 and 1702, in the Jodocus de Vos manufacture, (21) by the committee of Ramón Perellos y Roccafull, Grand Master of the Order of Malta. (22) The complete series was donated to the Co-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Valletta, Malta, where it is still preserved. The series can be divided into three groups: A. Life of Christ; B. Triumph of the Eucharist; C. Apostolate of Jesus, Mary and the twelve apostles. In addition to a portrait of Perellos himself. The Life of Christ in Valletta is represented in seven panels: 1. Annunciation to Mary; 2. Adoration of the Shepherds; 3. Adoration of the Magi; 4. The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem; 5. Last Supper; 6. Erection of the Cross; 7. Resurrection. Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 6 are indirectly based on paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, through engravings that take his work as a model. Thus the Adoration of the Magi follows the composition of the Rubens painting, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, dated around 1617; but the entire design is a copy of the engraving adapted from that painting by Lucas Vorsterman in 1621. In the engraving the architectural elements were enlarged and completed.
After the great commission for Malta, Judocus De Vos kept the cartoons and used some of them for later partial editions. One of these reissues belongs to the collegiate church of the Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso. This consisted of five panels (the Annunciation to Mary and the Adoration of the Magi are currently missing). (23) The original cartoon for the Malta/Buenos Aires tapestries has been preserved, along with seven others from the great set of Malta, in the Norbertine Abbey of Grimbergen, near Brussels, since 1765. The artist has not been identified but must have belonged to the circle of Jan van Orley (1665-1735), the most talented cartoon painter in Brussels at the time. (24)
The tapestries of La Granja, like the one found in the episcopate of Buenos Aires, present only the mark of the city of Brussels, without the signature of the weaver. Although the manufacture surely corresponds to De Vos, since the borders are identical to those of the reissue of the Siege of Tunis, woven and signed by De Vos between 1712 and 1721 for Emperor Charles VI in Vienna. The series of tapestries was commissioned by King Felipe V (1683-1746) or by his wife Isabel Farnese (1692-1766). It can only have occurred after 1721, when designs for the aforementioned Siege of Tunis border were available. The weaving probably predates Judocus De Vos's death on February 8, 1734, but the lack of the weaver's signature does not exclude a later date. (25)
We end here the journey through the different views over time of the Buenos Aires tapestry, a good prize for privateering, with the intention that by dating it and integrating it into the corresponding series it has gained a new fortune, without forgetting the fear of the deaf and dumb Cristóbal who did not He turned to look at him "because the tapestry will be moving and around the Child the turbans and feathers of the oriental retinues will shake”.
Notes:
1. Manuel Mujica Lainez. “The adoration of the Magi. 1822”. In: Misteriosa Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: South American Editorial, 1951.
2. For the history of the order see: María Dolores Ledesma de Casares, The Noble Poor Women. History of the Capuchin nuns in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Glaudio. 2005, and Enrique Udaondo. Historical Background of the Ntra. Sra. del Pilar Monastery of Poor Clare Nuns annexed to the Temple of San Juan Bautista. Buenos Aires: s/e, 1949.
3. Reproduced in Udaondo, op.cit., p. 50-54.
4. On veiled imagery and sliding canvases in the colonial sphere, see Héctor Schenone, “La Pintura”. In: National Academy of Fine Arts, General History of Art in Argentina. Buenos Aires: ANBA, 1983, volume II, pp. 76-80.
5. Since 1862, the temple was the regional residence of the congregation founded by Miguel de Garicoits, as well as the chaplaincy of the convent. The main institution of the Bayonian fathers is the Colegio San José, in Balvanera, founded in 1858. The French community frequented the temple of the Basque priests.
6. Until 1934, they were called Capuchinas Coletinas -by the rule of Santa Coleta- with the new rules of the Poor Clares Constitutions, they replaced the name of the congregation with that of the Poor Clares of the first observance.
7. Pastor S. Obligado. “The first tapestry”. In: Traditions of Buenos Aires (Fourth series). Buenos Aires. 1898, p. 43-49.
8. Udaondo clarifies in his historical essay that the search for archival documents, both in the General Archive of the Nation and in the convent, was unsuccessful in corroborating the tradition. In the same sense, current research carried out in the same reservoirs has not been successful. Maritime entries and prize courts have been consulted in the range of years 1817-1821 (cessation of the River Plate privateering). It should be noted that generally not all merchandise was described, in order to avoid the corresponding taxes. Neither in the press of the time, La Gaceta de Buenos Ayres and El Censor, has any information been found that corroborates the origin of the piece. Neither is any data found in the archive of the convent, currently in Moreno. It is worth mentioning that the burning of churches on June 16, 1955 affected the Church of San Juan Bautista, without damaging the tapestry, in the same episode the archive of the metropolitan curia was lost, where it might have been possible to find some information. It has not been possible to consult Spanish archives. I must thank the advice and collaboration in the archival research of Roberto Amigo, and also of Fabiola Serralunga and Jorge Vigo of the Department of Naval Historical Studies of the Argentine Navy.
9. Another description of the tapestry and its respective arrival in Buenos Aires is provided by Julio B. Jaimes Répide in Paseos evocativos por el viejo Buenos Aires, however the latter does not provide any extra information but rather repeats the account of the recent investigations of his contemporary Enrique Udaondo. See Julio B Jaimes Répide, Evocative walks through old Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1936, p. 270.
10. “Luis de Onis, Spanish Minister to the United States, to John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State of the United States, Philadelphia, November 2, 1817”. In: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. IV, doc.1074.
11. "Several biographical notes and about the Navy of the lieutenant general of the Navy D. Justo José de Salcedo, member of the Admiralty Council, knight of the military order of Santiago and commander of Montijo" In Crónica Naval de España, volume X, 1859 , p. 57. Cited in Feliciano Gámez Duarte. The insurgent challenge. Analysis of the Hispano-American corsican from a peninsular perspective 1812-1828. Doctoral thesis University of Cádiz, 2004. This author refers to a document from the General Archive of the Navy (Corso y Presas Section, file 5238) detailing the capture and the prisoners. Unfortunately this Spanish file is closed, out of consultation. By the same author, see “El nomenclator de la libertad. Independence myths and symbols
in the ships of the Hispano-American insurgent corsairs”. In: Alberto Ramos Santana, Alberto Romero Ferrer (ed.). 1808-1812, the emblems of liberty. Cádiz: UCA Publications Service, 2009, p. 277. The departures and destinations of the catches have these publications as their source.
12. AGN, room IX, 35.5.1. See Horacio Rodríguez and Pablo E. Arguindeguy. The River Plate Corsican. Buenos Aires: Brownian Institute, 1996, p. 191. See AGN, Prey Courts, leg. 29, exp. 7.
13. Gazette of Buenos Ayres, no. 118, April 21, 1817.
14. Figarillo [Jorge Mitre]. “The adoration of the Magi. The gobelin of San Juan”. In: Faces and Masks, year 1, no. 14, January 7, 1899.
15. Eduardo del Saz. “An authentic gobelin in Buenos Aires”. In: Plus Ultra, year 1, no. 1, March 1916. Eduardo del Saz y Álvarez-Sierra, from Malaga, had lived in Buenos Aires since 1909, where he practiced journalism in the main publications of his time until his death in 1947.
16. See María Dolores Ledesma de Casares, “The richest tapestry of the poorest nuns”. In The
poor nobles. History of the Capuchin nuns in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Glaudio. 2005, p.75-96. Reissue of the Archivum article. Journal of the Argentine Ecclesiastical History Board, year XXIII, 2004, p. 67-77.
17. Retrospective religious art exhibition. (cat. exp.), Buenos Aires, 1934, no. 596, reproduced as a tapestry from the Brussels factory, year 1657, measures 500 x 685 cm.
18. It was restored in 1935 by Antonia I. de García, from the Royal Factory of Madrid. The last restoration (1988-1991) was carried out by the Argentine specialist Patricia Lissa. See María Dolores Ledesma de Casares, ibid.
19. Enrique Udaondo. Background and description of a great work of art in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 1935. Previously, Udaondo had cited the tapestry as Gobelin in Historical Review of the Temple of Our Lady of Pilar (Recoleta). Buenos Aires: Casa Mirau, 1918, p. 40.
20. National Commission of Culture. Exhibition of tapestries. 15th to 18th centuries. (exp. cat.), Buenos Aires, National Museum of Decorative Art, 1939, no. 52, p. 37, reproduced s/p. As a manufacture of Brussels, year 1657, cardboard by Rubens, measures 525 x 700 cm. It is dated to the 18th century in the National Artistic Heritage Inventory of Movable Property. City of Buenos Aires I. Buenos Aires: National Academy of Fine Arts-National Fund for the Arts, 1998, p. 363.
21. In this section I follow the following study: Astrid Maulhardt and Guy Delmarcel “The Adoration of the Magi. A Brussels Tapestry after Rubens in Buenos Aires and its context”. Revue Belge d' Archéologie et d' Histoire de L' Art, Number LVXXXVIII, Belgium, 2019.
22. For the Valletta series, see Guy Delmarcel, “The Rubens Tapestry Set in Valletta, Malta. Some New Facts and Documents”, The Ringling Museum of Art Journal, 1983, pp. 192-209; “Nieuwe gegevens over de wandtapijten van het Nieuwe Testament door Judocus de Vos te Malta (1699-1700)”, Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art, LIV, 1985, pp. 29-44; "Rubens' Tapestries in Malta. The Life of Christ and the Triumph of the Eucharist”, in Rubenstextiel. Rubens’s Textiles, (exp. cat.), Antwerpen, Hessenhuis, 28.06-5.10.1997, pp.136-15. For La Granja, see Paulina Junquera, “Los tapestries de la Pasión”, Reales Sitios, III-7, 1966, pp. 51, 55, 61-62.
23. A second partial edition, without borders, is kept in the Diocesan Museum of Ancona; includes Adoration of the Shepherds, Last Supper, Resurrection of Christ and Assumption of Mary; would see. Arazzi rubensiani e tessuti preziosi dei musei Diocesiani di Ancona e Osimo, (exhibition catalogue) Ancona, 1989.
24. Koenraad Brosens, “Brussels Tapestry Producer Judocus De Vos (1661/62- 1734)- New Data and Design Attributions”, Studies in the Decorative Arts, IX – 2, Spring-Summer 2002, pp. 58-88, and more recently Koenraad Brosens and Astrid Slegten, “Creativity and disruption in
Brussels tapestry, 1698-1706: New data on jan van orley and Judocus de Vos”, The Burlington Magazine, July 2017.
25. Various border designs from the De Vos series were also used by Jasper and Jan Frans van der Borcht, who may have recovered the cartoons after 1734. Both families were related.