Lot 1731 Dα

The most famous Constantine series is based on twelve cartoons by Peter Paul Rubens, which he painted in Paris in 1622. The tapestries were created in 1625, in the studios of Marc Comans and François de la Planche in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. The series was extended by five cartoons by Pietro da Cortona and woven from 1630 to 1640 in the studios of Cardinal Francesco Barberini in Rome. The motifs depicted by Cortona also include this scene of the youthful Constantine driving his sword through the neck of the lion. Realised around 1637, the tapestry is now part of the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (acc.no. 1959-78-11).

Heinrich Goebel mentions two other Constantine series: One with eight pictures by the Brussels tapestry maker Wilhelm Tons, delivered to Archduke Albrecht and his wife Isabella in 1607, and a larger one made around 1655 in the Geraert van der Strecken manufactory (Goebel, 1st part, vol. II, Leipzig 1923). The Flemish tapestry here is probably to be dated more than 50 years earlier, certainly still in the 16th century. We do not know the iconographic prototype upon which it was based.

Such depictions from the life of the Roman Emperor Constantine were aimed at a Christian audience, who were well aware that Flavius Valerius Constantinus, later known as Constantine the Great, was the first Christian on the Roman throne and legitimised Christianity as the state religion with the Milan Agreement of 313. The myth about his legendary physical and mental strength is fuelled by the legend of how, as a young man, he struck down a lion with only a sword.