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Shared images, shared thoughts:
Johanna the Mad and four tapestry
variations of the Mystic
Grapes
Elisabeth Cleland, Metropolitan
Museum of Art
In 1532, Johanna the Mad presented
her daughter-in-law, Isabella of
Portugal, with a small devotional
tapestry, exactly replicating
another tapestry which Johanna
retained in her own collection.
This example of the use of a
replica art work to forge a link
between the two women serves as the
culmination of a fascinating
sequence of commissions involving
Johanna, her mother, Isabella the
Catholic and her sister, Katherine
of Aragon. Four surviving miniature
tapestries, each less than a metre
square, can be associated with
these commissions. Each repeats
variations of the same design.
Sumptuously woven in silk and
glittering with gold and silver
metal-wrapped threads, these
jewel-like objects illustrate the
theme of the Mystic Grapes, or the
Infant Christ squeezing the grapes
of the Eucharist.
The material discussed in this
paper develops my recent research
undertaken at the Metropolitan
Museum on the nature of the links
between these tapestries. Setting
these commissioned copies alongside
Isabella the Catholic’s
sophisticated use of painted copies
of her prized Netherlandish works,
most famously van der Weyden’s
Miraflores altarpiece, this paper
explores the production of copies
and replicas motivated by the
original work’s associations of
ownership and location.
These costly tapestry copies by
Netherlandish weavers were created
in a conscious effort by the three
women to retain their strong
familial bond across Europe, as
Johanna left Castile for the
Southern Netherlands to marry
Philip the Fair and Katherine
settled in England as the bride,
first of Prince Arthur, then of
Henry VIII. Small and portable
enough to travel with their owners,
they could serve daily in the women’b
s devotional rituals and, as such,
with each praying to variations of
the same work, enabled them to
retain a shared visual and
spiritual experience, linking
mother and daughters despite their
geographical separation.
Netherlandish tapestry design in
the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries involved a nuanced
interplay between the role of
painters and weavers. Commonly,
cartoons reused existing designs
and motifs, often more familiar in
panel paintings, sometimes as
homage to the original work, but
more often than not for the more
practical motives of successful
workshop patterns and easily
transferable design tools. However,
this group of four versions of the
same sumptuous devotional tapestry
represents a third, rather more
unusual, circumstance. These
tapestries were copied and
replicated by two generations of
patrons, long after the design
itself will have appeared
old-fashioned. Motivation to
replicate the weavings combined
familial ownership association and
devotional efficacy, rather than
being purely a matter of visual
success or aesthetic appreciation.
As such, they prove more than
worthy of study.
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