An woven tapestry panel with the Virgin and Child
Wool and silk tapestry depicting the Virgin Mary with the sleeping infant Christ. With a fragmentary signature and date "176?" in the lower left. Older repairs, especially to the lower corners. With later frame H 91.5, W 72.8 cm.
Rome, attributed to Manifattura die San Michele, probably after Jacopo Amigoni, 1760s.
This tapestry can be attributed to weavers at the San Michele manufactory in Rome, which was founded by Pope Clemens XI in 1710 as an addition to the wool and dyeing workshops of the San Michele a Ripa orphanage. The tapestries produced there were not only technically ambitious but also woven from precious materials including gold thread, and were occasionally used as diplomatic gifts. The weavers drew their motifs from the religious paintings in the Vatican collections, often using depictions of the Evangelists Saint Peter and Saint Paul, princes of the Apostles and patron saints of Rome, but also the Virgin Mary, an exceptionally important figure for the Catholic church. Many of these tapestries were small format works, as demonstrated by the existing and published examples.
Similar adoration scenes were produced in Brussels in the 17th century, often based on paintings by Rubens and his circle. Ilya Churilov also wove a similar tapestry for the Russian royal family in the early 19th century (Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, inv. nos. ERT 16190 and ERT 18748).
Literature
Cf. Göbel, Wandteppiche, part II, Die romanischen Länder, Leipzig 1928, illus. 443, for a slightly earlier similar depiction of an adoration scene in the Vatican Museums.
Cf. Also the mourning Virgin in a tapestry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, acc.no. 88.3.107.
Cf. Heinz, Europäische Tapisseriekunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 1995, p. 295 f.
Cf. also González-Palacios, Arredi e ornamenti alla corte di Roma, Milan 2004, p. 69 (the sleeping angel by Guido Reni in the Palazzo Barberini) and p. 230.
For a similar, smaller Flemish tapestry see Gray Bennet, Five Centuries of Tapestry. The Fine Art Museum of San Francisco 1992, no 59 f.