Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor

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Depicting the coats of arms of Frederick II of Denmark (r. 1559ñ88) and his wife, Sofia, in a richly decorative ground that combines allegorical figures, heraldic emblems, and medallions with scenes from classical history, this canopy was commissioned in the early 1580s as the centerpiece of a sequence of forty tapestries depicting life-size figures of the genealogy of the Danish kings. The design was made by the Antwerp artist, Hans Knieper (fl. 1577ñ87), and the work was undertaken by a team of Flemish weavers who had established a tapestry workshop for Frederick at Helsing¯r. Woven in the finest materials, it is a tour de force of northern European mannerist design, and a rare example of the canopies that dramatized the focal point of the grandest sixteenth-century throne rooms. It was among the most important works of art looted in 1658 from the Danish royal collection by the Swedish king, Karl Gustav X.

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This tapestry is one of a set that depicts the battles between 1572 and 1576 of the Spanish army and the Northern Provinces for control of the strategic Schledt river deltaóthe waterways between Antwerp and the island of Walcheren. The fight was won by the Zeeland rebels and resulted in the rise of the sovereign and independent State of Zeeland. The tapestries were ordered twenty years later to commemorate the events of this freedom struggle and were used as a visual display of power by this young state, which, together with six other provinces, formed the Dutch Republic. The design was provided by the Haarlem painter Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (1566ñ1640), who later became famous as a painter of seascapes. Vroom undertook detailed research in the preparation of the various designs; to prepare for the Siege of Zierikzee he visited the actual location in the company of eyewitnesses to the events.

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The Liberation of Oriane is a rare product of the Delft workshop set up in the early 1590s by Fran&#231ois Spiering, who had relocated from Antwerp because of the religious turmoil of the era. The Spiering enterprise enjoyed success with designs by the artist Karel van Mander I (1548ñ1606), finding a ready clientele among the Protestant courts of northern Europe who were no longer able to buy tapestries from Brussels, the traditional source. Knowing that he was designing for a workshop that lacked the resources on which high-quality Brussels production had depended, particularly the skilled weavers who could convincingly reproduce large figure compositions, Van Mander's designs concentrated instead on small figures in elaborate costumes, with several narrative scenes from the same story in each composition. The decorative effect was heightened by the abundance of flora, fauna, and grotesque motifs in the main fields and borders. Although Spiering's workshop was in Delft, he wove the BB mark of Brussels in the borders of a number of his early products, thereby claiming the exacting standards of that center for his own products.

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This was one of the last tapestries made in the short-lived manufactory that Duke Maximilian of Bavaria (r. 1597ñ1651) established in Munich between 1604 and 1616 under direction of the Enghien master-weaver Hans van der Biest (fl. 1604ñbefore 1618). This modest-sized workshop benefited from cartoons of extremely high quality provided by the court artist Pieter de Witte (ca. 1548ñ1628), known as Pieter Candid, who had spent his early life in Florence before moving to Munich. Rejecting the small figures and mannerist style of contemporary Flemish tapestry design, Candid looked back to the monumental figures and richly composed settings of mid-sixteenth century Brussels designers, fusing them with dramatic light effects and a spirit of theatrical illusionism that predate the initiatives taken in Flemish tapestry design by Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens in the following years. With their vibrant colors, dynamic figures and engaging details, the tapestries woven in Munich from Candid's designs were among the finest and most innovative products of the early seventeenth-century European tapestry industry.

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The capture of Calais from the French was Archduke Albert's first military campaign after he became governor. It was a significant victory because the city was strategically placed at the narrowest point of the English Channel. The town surrendered to Albert's troops after a surprise attack on April 17, 1596, and eight days later the castle was taken. The figure urging the Spanish troops forward in the foreground may be Don Luis de Velasco, count of Salazar, who led the initial assault. If that is the case, the archduke might be identified as the red-suited commander observing the action from the left middle distance.

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The Decius Mus series was designed by Rubens sometime around 1616 for an unidentified Genoese patron. It was his first documented essay in tapestry design and the first of the ambitious pictorial cycles that he would undertake in his career. Eschewing the decorative, heavily patterned style of much contemporary tapestry, Rubens drew inspiration from Raphael's Acts of the Apostles tapestry designs and, in the case of the Death of Decius Mus, from Leonardo da Vinci's famous failed fresco, the Battle of Anghiari. The series was additionally unusual because Rubens painted both the modelli and the full-scale cartoons in oil on canvas, rather than the more traditional medium of tempera on paper (although paper copies were probably used for the actual weaving process). This presented the weavers with a range of colors and painterly effects that were difficult to capture in wool and silk. Nonetheless, the designs were of immense significance, introducing a new spirit of drama and movement into contemporary tapestry weaving.

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The Story of Artemisia is based on a partly fictional narrative assembled by the French apothecary Nicolas Houel about 1561ñ62 as a homage to the recently widowed queen regent, Catherine de' Medici. Houel constructed the character on two historical figures from Asia Minor: Artemisia I, ally of Xerxes and mother of King Lygdamis; and Artemisia II, widow of King Mausolus, who erected the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus to her husband's memory, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. To this framework, Houel added fictive episodes to enhance the flattering analogies to Catherine. Having written the original text in prose, Houel reworked it into sonnets, illustrated with drawings by Antoine Caron (1521ñ1599). In his preface he noted that these might serve as the basis to "make beautiful and rich tapestry painting". This ambitious plan was not realized at the time, probably because of the turmoil of the French religious wars. Forty years later, however, King Henry IV turned the tapestry project to his own account and, in paying homage to Catherine de' Medici, reaffirmed the dynastic ties that linked him to the last of the Valois rulers. After Henry's death in 1610, the subject gained new relevance as a flattering comparison for Henry's widow, Marie de' Medici, and her son Louis XIII.

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Rubens' Constantine series was probably commissioned sometime in early 1622 by FranÁois de la Planche and Marc Comans, the leading Paris tapestry merchants, with the expectation that the design would appeal to Louis XIII. The subject of the first Christian emperor was a resonant one for the young French king. His father, Henry IV, had been celebrated as a new Constantine for his conversion to Catholicism, and ties to Rome were enhanced in 1622 with the long-deferred promulgation in France of the decrees of the Council of Trent. Rubens executed the modelli of the Constantine series in oil on panel, as he had done for the Decius Mus designs. The cartoons, however, were executed by his pupils in distemper on paper, and were delivered to Paris late in that year and in January 1623. The inspection of the first batch by the king's advisors is described in a letter to Rubens from his friend, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580ñ1637). They admired the historical accuracy of the cartoons, but they criticized the proportions of his figures. Nonetheless, the designs were certainly appreciated by Louis XIII himself, who ordered at least four weavings of this series in the following years. The first was given by Louis to Cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1625. The set of which this panel is a part can be identified with one listed in the posthumous inventory of FranÁois de La Planche's workshop at the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, which would mean that it was woven before 1627.

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The Parisian artist Simon Vouet (1590ñ1649) spent his early career in Italy, where his precocious abilities led to his appointment in 1624 as the president of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. In 1627 he was summoned back to France by Louis XIII, specifically to paint tapestry cartoons. He was appointed First Painter to the King and the commissions he executed for leading members of the court during the following years included a number of tapestry designs which, like his paintings and decorative schemes, reflected his profound response to contemporary Italian painting. Like his successor Charles Le Brun at the Gobelins some years later, Vouet delegated the execution of his tapestry cartoons to a team of skilled French and Flemish cartoonists, some specializing in figures, others in landscapes and border design. Their combined efforts ensured the visual richness and design quality of the final product. With its harmonious combination of richly costumed figuresóreminiscent of those of Paolo Veroneseódeep landscape, and decorative border, Moses Rescued from the Nile typifies Vouet's best work in tapestry. The tapestry is one of two from an unfinished set that Louis XIII commissioned for the Louvre.

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The Acts of the Apostles cartoons were painted by Raphael for Pope Leo X about 1515ñ16 for tapestries woven in Brussels between 1517 and 1521, to hang in the Sistine Chapel. Remarkable for their revolutionary style and content, the designs were subsequently rewoven at least four times during the sixteenth century for notable patrons including Francis I and Henry VIII. During the 1610s, the Brussels workshops started to produce new versions of the design, but these were based on rather coarse copies of the designs, the original cartoons having been dispersed by this date. In 1623, Charles, Prince of Wales, managed to purchase seven of the original cartoons from an unidentified collection in Genoa, and between 1626 and the early 1640s these designs were reproduced a number of times, with great accuracy and in the finest materials, at the new Mortlake manufactory. This panel derives from the editio princeps of the series, made for Charles between 1626 and the early 1640s at the enormous price of about five hundred pounds for each piece. As such, it was the most expensive work of art that he commissioned.

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This scene derives from a series illustrating the tragic story of Hero and Leander, lovers separated by the waters of the Hellespont. Their story, based on the fifth-century A.D. narrative of Musaeus, was popularized in England through the poem by Christopher Marlowe (d. 1593), completed by George Chapman and published in 1598, and by George Chapman's translation, The Loves of Hero and Leander, the Divine Poem of Musaeus, of 1616. The design was the first large-figure narrative series conceived by Francis Clein for the Mortlake manufactory after his appointment as official tapestry designer in 1626. The nervous figures, decorative costumes, and subtle atmospheric effects of the Hero and Leander series typifies the best of his work, which blended influences of Honthort, Rubens, and Inigo Jones. Charles evidently held the series in high esteem and he purchased at least three sets of this design between 1630 and 1636. The first two, acquired in 1630ñ31, were presented as gifts to the French and Spanish ambassadors. This, the third weaving, was paid for in 1636, but at this date it may already have been presented as a gift to the Swedish legate to London, Count Johan Oxonstierna. In 1654 Oxonstierna presented the set to King Charles X of Sweden on the occasion of his marriage.

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Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands between 1646 and 1656, is known to have been a collector of paintings, but he also initiated a number of important tapestry series. January and February derives from one such set, of which the designs were supplied by the archduke's court artist, Jan van den Hoecke (1611ñ1651) soon after the archduke arrived in Brussels. For the painting of the cartoons, Van den Hoecke, a former pupil of Rubens, collaborated with a team of Antwerp painters: Pieter Thijs and Thomas Willeboirts for some of the figures; Adriaen van Utrecht for the still-life elements; and Jan Bruegel the Younger for the flowers. The success of this collaboration is readily evident in the strong characterization of the figures and the charming and carefully drawn details of the finished designs. The series comprised six panels, each representing two of the months of the year, along with other panels of Day, Night, the Seasons, and the Elements. Rather than representing the Months with conventional seasonal activities, Van den Hoecke adopted the symbolic program outlined in Cesara Ripa's Iconologia, published in Rome in 1593, of which a Flemish version was published in Antwerp in 1644. The designs were additionally innovative because they developed the faux architectural setting of Rubens' Triumph of the Eucharist series. Hung together, the individual tapestries would have comprised an all-surrounding, trompe l'oeil gallery.

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Tapestry-woven table carpets with floral designs, some in combination with biblical or mythological scenes, were produced in considerable numbers in seventeenth-century Holland. Typically, they depict picked flowers on stalks, often including newly introduced specimens, strewn over the surface. As such, they testify to the burgeoning commercial market for exotic flowers of all kinds that resulted in the speculative boom known as tulipomania, when the price of tulips soared during the 1630s before crashing in 1637 and bankrupting many investors. In addition to their visual appeal, these floral tapestries were relatively simple to weave and could thus be made by small, independent workshops who lacked the resources for more ambitious schemes. Contemporary paintings show carpets similar to this one in use in the homes of rich merchants and burghers of the day.

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The series from which this piece derives was one of Jordaens' earliest essays in the tapestry medium. Representations of peasants and courtiers engaged in daily activities had been popular in tapestry design since the Middle Ages, but they had generally been couched in terms of allegorical contexts, such as the Months or Ages of Man. Here, Jordaens has abandoned such conventions in favor of vignettes in which his subjects are caught in moments of unposed activity. The spontaneity is heightened by the way they are represented in a faux architectural setting, immediately adjacent to the viewer. The focus of the scenes on ephemeral activities and the careful observation of domestic detailsósome of which provide a sly commentary on the main actionócombine to evoke a whimsical observation of the fleeting pleasures of life. The trompe l'oeil architectural setting and dramatic lighting were inspired by Rubens' Triumph of the Eucharist series, designed in 1626. Quite apart from the impression of immediacy that Jordaens obtained by placing life-size figures in shallow architectural settings, this formula was also advantageous for the weavers because these elements were less demanding to weave than complex landscape backgrounds. Such issues were of considerable significance for the Brussels workshops, which had no royal subsidies, and this may partly account for the commercial success of this series during the 1630s and 1640s.

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Christ before Herod was woven from a cartoon by Ludovico Cardi, called il Cigoli (1559ñ1613), between 1598 and 1601. The model was made to complement four other scenes of the Passion of Christ that had been designed by Alessandro Allori (1535ñ1607) between 1589 and 1592 and executed in the Florentine workshop of Guasparri Papini (ca. 1540ñ1621) during the intervening years. The lapse of almost ten years before Cigoli received the commission was due to the shortage of weavers in Florence who specialized in working with fine silk and gold. The set may originally have been conceived for the Sistine Chapel, but by as early as 1592 the decision to keep it in Florence had been made, and it was allocated instead to the Palazzo Pitti. In contrast to the scenes made after Allori's designs, Christ before Herod manifests a new sense of drama and theatricality, reflecting the important contribution that Cigoli was then making to the development of a Baroque sensibility in Florentine painting.

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Depicting Apollo in his chariot, within an elaborate faux-sculptural border, this tapestry is part of a series illustrating the Seasons and Hours that was woven for the audience chamber of Grand Prince Cosimo in the Palazzo Pitti. It largely duplicated a set that had been made between 1640ñ44 for the Sala di Giove, the audience chamber in the winter quarters of Cosimo's father, Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici, of which the ceiling was then being frescoed by Pietro da Cortona. While the first weaving was made with wool, silk, and gold thread, the second set was made only in wool and filoselle (a lesser grade of silk). The design of the Seasons panels was undertaken by Jacopo Vignali (1592ñ1664); those of the Hours by Lorenzo Lippi (1606ñ64). In the case of the first version of the Chariot of the Sun, Lippi based the figure of Apollo on an earlier drawing by Francesco Salviati (1510ñ63). For the second weaving, he reinterpreted the figure of Apollo more freely.

The borders of the Seasons and Hours, the same in both sets, resemble an elaborate stucco and gold frame decorated with clusters of putti, drapes, cartouches, balls (alluding to the Medici coat of arms), and oak branches (the heraldic device of Vittoria della Rovere, grand ducal consort of Ferdinando II and mother of Grand Prince Cosimo). This simulated stucco work may have been conceived to harmonize with the stuccos of the Sala di Giove (Jupiter) in the Palazzo Pitti, the throne room for which the first weaving was made. The gold ring in the cartouche in the top border is decorated with signs of the zodiac, symbolizing the journey of the sun god in his chariot over the course of the year.

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This tapestry is one of the early products of the Barberini manufactory in Rome. It was conceived as one of several to complement a series that was originally designed by Peter Paul Rubens for Louis XIII of France. The Rubens set was begun in the Paris workshops in 1622 but in 1625, with only seven of the panels completed, the king presented them as a diplomatic gift to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who took the incomplete set back to Rome. There, he commissioned five more narrative panels and an en suite baldachin from Pietro da Cortona (1596ñ1669). Cortona's additions customized Rubens' set to the Roman context in which they were to be displayedóthe great hall of the Palazzo Barberini alle Quattro Fontaneótheir subjects providing an allegorical commentary on the papacy of Urban VIII, Francesco Barberini's uncle.

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This is the seventh of ten monumental narratives and additional related border sections that Cardinal Francesco Barberini commissioned to immortalize the deeds of his uncle, Pope Urban VIII, and, by so doing, to bolster the reputation of the Barberini family. The series was woven at the cardinal's private workshop between 1663 and 1679. Pietro da Cortona, and, after his death in 1669, Ciro Ferri (ca. 1634ñ1689) oversaw the designs, delegating the production of individual cartoons to students and followers such as Giacinto Camassei, who painted the cartoon for this scene in 1673.

The scene provides an allegory of the turbulent years of the early 1630s. In the center foreground, a messenger delivers the news to Pope Urban VIII that northern Italy has been invaded by German troops, who brought plague with them over the Alps. The epidemic rapidly spread down the Italian peninsula to the northern reaches of the Papal States. (The city of Bologna, for example, lost an estimated quarter of its population.) Urban VIII devised a two-pronged strategy to protect Rome: on the administrative side, he instituted quarantines, travel bans, and sanitation standards; on the spiritual side, he led the people in prayers of penitence. The armored officer and priests standing behind him in this scene represent these two approaches. Urban seems to be the only figure who sees the saintly figures above, Peter and Paul, the traditional patrons and protectors of Rome, and Sebastian and Michael, traditionally invoked against plague. In the middle ground to the left, the allegorical figure of Abundance thrashes Famineóa reference to steps that Urban took to ensure that the citizens of Rome were well supplied with grain. A fictive carved frame, decorated with gilded ivy and heraldic Barberini bees, surrounds the tapestry. Originally, the tapestry had four detachable borders that included an inscription explaining the subject matter and the central role that Urban played in saving Rome.

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The successor of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619ñ83) as minister to Louis XIV was Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvois (1641ñ91), who commissioned designs from a number of different artists rather than the previously favored artist Charles Le Brun. An equally important initiative taken during his period was the decision to copy fine tapestry and fresco schemes of the sixteenth century, particularly those of the Raphael school. While this effort was partly motivated by a need for new designs to keep the workshops busy, there was also a strong element of cultural elitism in this process, a wish to appropriate to the French court the finest artistic schemes of Rome, Mantua, and Florence. One of the most decorative of these copied designs was the so-called Triumphs of the Gods, which had been conceived for Pope Leo X in the late 1510s by the Raphael workshop. Drawing on ancient painted and sculpted models, the original scheme presented vignettes of classical gods in elaborate "grotesque" settings in a scheme that was designed as an allegorical celebration of Leo's papacy. Louis XIV had acquired a duplicate sixteenth-century weaving of this design between 1663 and 1673 and this formed the basis for new cartoons painted by NoÎl Coypel (1628ñ1707) in the mid-1680s. Coypel followed the originals closely, but refined the elegance of the figures in line with contemporary taste. The whimsical vocabulary of this series had a significant influence on the development of other decorative series for the Gobelins and the Beauvais workshops in the 1690s and early 1700s. Eight sets of this design were woven for the French crown between 1686 and 1713. The present panel derives from the second of these weavings.

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Le Brun secured his position as First Painter to the King in 1661 with a painting of the Alexander and the Family of Darius, inviting comparison between Louis XIV and Alexander (and, implicitly, between himself and Apelles, Alexander's famous artist). The success of that painting led Louis to commission four more monumental Alexander panels from Le Brun between 1661 and 1668. At the same time that these were being executed, Louis ordered that they be reproduced in the richer medium of tapestry. Two sets of cartoons were prepared, one for use on the high-warp looms, the second for use on low-warp looms. In these, the larger compositions were broken down into smaller sections, so that the series entailed twelve scenes in all. Between 1664 and 1688, four sets of this design were produced on the high-warp looms and four on the low-warp looms. The set from which this particular weaving derives was presented in 1699 as a gift to Leopold Joseph, duke of Lorraine.

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The Four Elements series was the first to be designed and executed entirely at the new Manufacture Royale de Tapisserie des Gobelins. Based on an allegorical scheme initiated by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the series was developed between 1663ñ64 by the members of the Petite AcadÈmie, a group of scholars responsible for devising propagandistic iconography to celebrate Louis XIV. The set from which this panel derives was the first weaving of the design. In 1669, Louis XIV presented it as a diplomatic gift to Cosimo III de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, during his visit to France. Five more sets of the design were woven before 1680, a reflection of the esteem in which the series was held during the early years of Gobelins production.

The scene depicts Neptune, god of the sea, and his consort Thetis riding on a shell-like carriage drawn by sea horses. Although physically on top of his subjects, Neptune has lost control over them and many have been washed ashore. This loss of control is underscored by the inscription on Thetis' shield, which translates as: "The wave adheres less to the trident." The allegorical explanation of this scene is provided by the inscription in the lower cartoucheóLouis XIV alone had the power and goodness to ensure the safety of the maritime routes, as exemplified by scenes of the French naval and maritime activities in the cartouches in the vertical borders. The four corner emblems provide a meditation on the king's virtues: piety, magnanimity, kindliness, and valor.

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While Charles Le Brun's initial designs for the Gobelins manufactory celebrated Louis XIV by allegorical means (the Elements and the Seasons) and classical comparisons (the Story of Alexander), the propagandistic intent of the production became explicit in the most ambitious of these early series, the History of the King. Depicting elaborate scenes celebrating the king's military prowess and bravery, his diplomatic skills, and his vision as a patron of the arts, the series was also the most ambitious of those undertaken at Gobelins during its peak years of production. Le Brun worked with a team of artists, chief of whom was Adam-FranÁois van der Meulen (1634ñ90), who undertook detailed studies of the topography of many of the battlefields and settings that were incorporated into the final designs. With their vivid portrayals of Louis XIV and members of his court, and the detailed rendering of settings, costumes, and interiors, these tapestries provide an extraordinary glimpse of the court of the Sun King.

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Long ascribed on stylistic grounds to Jean Berain I (1640–1711), the design of the Grotesques series was actually created by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636ñ1699), who was renowned at the court of Louis XIV as a painter and designer of ornamentation and flowers. The series depicted troops of theatrical entertainers and exotic animals framed by whimsical trellises and porticos in a narrow architectural space against a tobacco-yellow ground. The design was a modern development of the ancient grotesque form that had been revived during the Renaissance and which had formed a staple of tapestry design throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the early 1690s, sets of the Beauvais "Berain Grotesques" were sold to a number of leading French aristocrats, and in 1696 a set was purchased for the king's sumptuous "hunting lodge" at the Ch‚teau of Marly. During the following years, the Grotesques became the Beauvais manufactory's most successful production. An estimated fifty full or partial sets were made. The design was ingeniously flexible. Like the millefleur and verdure designs of the past, the narrative fields were composed of components that did not follow a specific chronology and that could therefore be adapted easily to the dimensions of individual commissions. With large areas of the surface being essentially plain, the design was less demanding to produce than those with all-over landscape or illusionistic designs.

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This dramatic scene and the series to which it belongs is undocumented, but it can be ascribed on stylistic grounds to the French artist Charles Poerson, who created at least four other tapestry series for the Brussels workshops depicting scenes from the Old Testament and classical history. Poerson's work embodied a classicizing French manner, whose polish and painterly style contrasted with the designs of the Rubens and Jordaens school that had been so popular during the 1630s, 40s, and 50s. Poerson's designs were to enjoy considerable success in Brussels tapestry production during the last third of the seventeenth century and were to be highly influential on the next generation of Brussels cartoonists.

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John Churchill (1650ñ1722) won international fame as the captain general of the allied forces in the War of the Spanish Succession, which pitched England, Holland, and Austria against France and Spain in a struggle over the partition of the Spanish territories after the death of the childless King Charles II. Marlborough stunned the enemy with successive victories between 1704 and 1711, which effectively broke the French military supremacy in Europe and set the stage for the development and expansion of the British Empire in the following decades. In November 1708, Marlborough commissioned a set of tapestries depicting the early victories at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), and Oudenaarde (1708) from Judocus de Vos, the leading tapestry merchant in Brussels, from designs by Philibert de Hondt. All were intended for Blenheim Palace, the new home that was being constructed for Marlborough at the expense of the English nation. The tapestry included here is the third in a trilogy depicting the events of the Battle of Bouchain (1711), the final campaign in the war. Subsequent victories were added to the scheme in the following years.

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This tapestry forms part of the second Art of War series produced in Brussels. The first, conceived around 1695 by Lambert de Hondt, depicted realistic scenes of the rigors of military life. It enjoyed considerable success, with sets being sold to leading European patrons such as Maximilian Emmanuel of Bavaria, governor of the Austrian Netherlands, King William III of England, and the Duke of Marlborough. The success of the Art of War I inspired the development of a second series of this subject by Lambert's son, Philibert, sometime between 1715 and 1720. This incorporated more battle sequences, of which the present piece depicting the turmoil of a naval battle was the most ambitious. The set from which this particular weaving derives was made for the same Maximilian Emmanuel of Bavaria, who had purchased a set of the Art of War I in 1696. Maximilian Emmanuel allied with the French during the Wars of the Spanish Succession and fled to Versailles in 1706, returning to Germany in 1715. After his return he built a new palace at Schleissheim in the grand French style, completed in 1722, and the Art of War II tapestries were presumably commissioned to decorate this palace, where they remain to this day.