La tenture des Métamorphoses des Gobelins : émulation artistique et stratégies commerciales

Abstract

The Metamorphoses tapestry, woven at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins over some fifty years, beginning in 1680, is one of the largest creations ever made by Parisian craftsmen. It has been extensively woven. However, it has not been thoroughly studied, as it was not included in the Gobelins official production. The workshop managers followed cartoons belonging to the king or to ones they themselves owned, which they commissioned from renowned painters and rising stars. The origins of the tapestry have long been unclear. There are in fact two groups, conceived twenty years apart, made up of several groups of models and with some subjects shared by the two groups. The first series was most likely created just before 1680, based on the work of various painters (Louis Boullogne, Charles Le Brun, René-Antoine Houasse and Charles de La Fosse) owned by the entrepreneur Jean Jans. In the early years of the eighteenth century a new set of cartoons were used, all made from paintings or copies of paintings by different artists (Louis Boullogne, Antoine Coypel, Charles de La Fosse, Nicolas Bertin, Antoine Dieu and Sébastien Leclerc). Many of these were royal commissions for Trianon, the menagerie of Versailles or for Marly. Some had been shown in the Salons of 1699 and 1704. This paper focuses on the weaving of these paintings. In creating the tapestries, how did the transition from small to large format happen, and from painted image to woven?

Keywords

• tapestry
• Louis XIV
• Gobelins
• Beauvais
• Brussels
• metamorphoses