A Flemish verdure tapestry with figures and exotic bird probably by Oudenaarde

A Flemish verdure tapestry with figures and exotic bird probably by Oudenaarde

Woven in wools and silks, depicting a densely foliated woodland landscape with two robed figures — one apparently mounted or attended — set within a luxuriant ground of large-leafed foliage, flowering plants, and towering trees rendered in the characteristic blue-green palette of the Southern Netherlandish workshops; populated throughout with exotic birds including a prominent heron or egret to the right, with deer visible in the middle distance; the whole enclosed within a border of flowering and fruiting vegetation on a dark ground with architectural cartouche elements to the upper register and foliate scrollwork to the lower; the lateral borders with blue-ground panels of flowering stems and exotic fruit.

The combination of the characteristic mille-fleurs-derived woodland setting, the large architectural foliage, and the blue-dominant palette is closely associated with the productive workshops of Oudenaarde and the surrounding Southern Netherlandish centres, which supplied verdure tapestries of this type in considerable quantities to European courts and noble households throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The figural group at centre, rendered in warmer tones of rose, cream, and ochre against the cool woodland ground, provides a narrative focus characteristic of the more ambitious productions of the period.