Offering to Pan - Lot 31

Offering to Pan H. 2.64 x W. 2.28 m H. 8ft 8 x W. 7ft 6 Description: In the center of the tapestry, framed by a portico holding up red draperies, stands the statue of Pan. A young girl decorates the statue with flowers, which she takes from a little boy's basket. With her left hand, she leans on Pan's shoulder (for her position, see Bremer-David above). Two tambourine players seem to be answering each other (left and center). The terrace is strewn with flowers. The music, the scent of the flowers, the beauty of the setting, all the senses are awakened. Materials and condition : Finely woven - wool warp (8 to 9 warp threads per cm) - wool and silk weft Good condition, colors well preserved. Provenance : - Private collection, USA - Galerie Chevalier - Florence Gould Collection - Cornelius Vanderbilt Collection La Tenture des Grotesques à fond jaune Two tapestries from the Manufacture Royale de Beauvais: Le Dromadaire and L'Offrande à Pan Models and cartoons by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, inspired by Jean Bérain Louis XIV period, circa 1700-1715 From 1689 onwards, at the Manufacture Royale de Beauvais, under the direction of Philippe Béhagle, a hanging of Grotesques with a yellow background, initially comprising six subjects and inspired by the work of Louis XIV's painter and ornamentalist, Jean Berain I (1640-1711), was loomed. It's worth recalling that the word grotesque was adopted to designate decorations inspired by the 15th-century finds of Nero's Domus Aurea in excavations in Rome, i.e. underground as in caves, hence the word groteschi in Italian. Later, the exaggeration and sometimes caricature-like distortion of the small figures featured in the decorations changed the meaning of the word, giving it today's meaning of buffoon, ridiculous. Of course, this does not apply to the magnificent Grotesques hanging with its yellow background. The success of this hanging was immense, and it was rewoven several times until around 1730. Various border designs framed these infinitely decorative compositions: first with chinoiserie motifs, then in imitation of frames in different versions. The hanging originally comprised six subjects: broad compositions (The Elephant, The Dromedary, The Animal Tamers, Musicians and Dancers), narrower compositions (The Offering to Pan, The Offering to Bacchus). However, there were many combinations of subjects, multiplying the variants from a central subject. The compositions of the tapestries also vary in their upper and lower parts, in the arrangement of entablatures, draperies and other "aerial" motifs. The lower sections may or may not feature stone staircases, small laurels and boxwood parterres. The heights of the tapestries in the Grotesques hanging vary from 2.75 m to 3.57 m, which also explains the differences in decoration for the same subject. The tapestries also vary in their borders (nine different borders have been identified, see Pazzis-Chevalier, pp. 10 and 11). The decorations and characters in the Grotesques give the tapestries a decorative rather than narrative dimension. The tapestries will be sold separately Origin of the models : Bremer-David in his 2015 book details the sources from which Monnoyer, author of the cartoons, drew his inspiration (in addition to Bérain already cited): the dromedary is directly inspired by a painting (oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims) by Pieter Boël (1622-1674), a Flemish painter who worked at the Manufacture royale des Gobelins like Monnoyer (fig. 43, p. 53). The peacock and parrots are also inspired by him. Both the Dromedary and the Elephant were animals in Louis XIV's royal Menagerie. With regard to L'Offrande à Pan, the author points out that the position of the dancer gracefully spreading her arms wide and the tambourine player on the left are inspired by Nicolas Poussin's Triomphe de Pan in the National Gallery in London (op. cit. p. 39). This point has also been addressed by Anna Gray Bennett and Hartkamp-Jonxis/Smit. All the major American, French and European museums have one or more tapestries from the Grotesques yellow-background hanging. Bibliographical references and related tapestries include in particular - Candice Adelson, 1994, European tapestry in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, pp. 307-321, Le Dromadaire no. 18, repr. p. 307 is almost identical to that in the Galerie Chevalier - Charissa Bremer-David, 1996, French Tapestries and Textiles in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, pp. 72 - 80. - Charissa Bremer-David, 2007, in catalog of the Exhibition Tapestry in the Baroque (New-York, October 2007 - January 2008) pp. 427 - 433. - Charissa Bremer-David, 2015, Conundrum, Puzzles in the Grotesques Tapestry Series, Le Dromadaire and L'Offrande à Pan (bordures aux chinois), acquired from Galerie Che