DescriptionAbout 1528-30, Henry III of Nassau, an advisor to Emperor Charles V, commissioned eight tapestry designs from Bernaert van Orley glorifying his ancestors in the house of Orange-Nassau. The tapestries were woven by Willem de Moyen in Brussels, where Raphael's influential tapestry designs for the Acts of the Apostles had been produced in 1516-20. Van Orley's tapestries are lost, probably destroyed in a fire in 1760, and the drawings are the only record of the commission. As can be seen in this large and beautifully colored design, which was virtually unknown until recently, van Orley modified the taste for overall surface design in tapestry by situating the figures in the foreground against a deeply receding space. He also created a new sense of verisimilitude and movement through the accurate details and the poses of the horses. The Nassau Genealogy was one of the first tapestry series to unite the imperial tradition of equestrian portraiture with the more informal practice of group portraiture, an innovation that previously had been peculiar to prints.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and MarkingsInscriptions: [in pen and brown ink in the cartouche]: Otho Comes de Nassou, bellice rei expertissimus egregia et memoratu digna In vita peragens facinora, ixorem habuit D. Aleidem Comitis de Viana unicam filiam. hec orba ... celibatum amplexa. opera pietatis passim exercebat. Corpus habet tollus Wetzlar apud franciscanios. [trans.: Otto, count of Nassau, most expert in matters of war, and of famous and worthy memory, overthrowing villany in life; he had as wife the only daughter of Lord Aleidis, count of Vianden. (He was) famous in this encircling world ... he performed deeds of piety throughout. The earth has his body in the Franciscan church at Wetzlar];at top in pen and brown ink, in French beside the coat-of-arms of Otto Count of Nassau, giving instructions for the execution of the arms]: le lyon doibt / estre tourne [the lion should be reversed]