The Triumph of Love and Eternity over Time is a fine example of a moment in Western tapestry-making when heraldry became closely entwined with moral allegory to create a complex set of iconographic symbols. This period saw the convergence of a long tradition of using drapes and tapestries to display the blazons or coats of arms of noble houses and a fashion for Baroque symbolism, with all its moral imagery. As a result, the fascination of the Renaissance humanists in hermetic enigma led to the development of ‘logo-iconic’ codes of communication: emblems – which became increasingly moralistic as the seventeenth century progressed – and the iconology or art of representing vices and virtues with images ‘designed to signify something other than what is seen with the eye’, as Cesare Ripa defined it in his Iconologia. This repostero, or armorial tapestry, bearing the Ayala family coat of arms is a perfect example of the fusion between the long-standing Spanish tradition of tapestry-making and the practice of ‘writing with silent signs’ referred to by Alciato in his Emblematum Liber.

It is devised as a tapestry-within-a-tapestry. A somewhat liberal interpretation of the coat of arms of the López de Ayala family, the Counts of Fuensalida, is displayed in a prominent position in the centre. In heraldic terms, it can be described as two black wolves, langued and armed Gules, in pale on a field Argent; bordure Gules with eight saltires Or. And for the crest a count’s coronet. The artist has placed the coat of arms against a decorative background combining acanthus scrollwork rendered in grisaille with a garland of flowers. It is topped by a large scallop shell, girdled by a lavish crown set with numerous gemstones. Two putti or winged cherubs hold the coronet aloft, whilst the shield is supported by another putto and, on the right, a winged maiden holding, in her right hand, a snake biting its own tail.

Immediately below the heraldic group, there is an elderly winged man, partially covered in a red cloak. He is on one knee in a submissive posture and is restrained by chains, held by another putto. Lying on the ground next to him are a winged hourglass and scythe. The entire scene is shown on a gold-fringed drape, held up by eight more putti. Behind it, a classical building with Ionic columns or pilasters can just be seen. The drape is bordered on the inside with bright garlands of multicoloured flowers entwined around golden stems.

Luckily, the tapestry retains the marks of the manufacturer or weaver (‘IOAN: LEYNERS FECIT’) and cartoonist (‘D: TENIERS: INV: PINX: 1684’). We therefore know that it was made at the manufactory of Jan Leyniers – a prominent Brussels textile merchant, in business between 1630 and 1686 – and that the artist who created the composition was David Teniers Junior, also known as David Teniers III (b. Antwerp, 1638–d. Brussels, 1685). Beneath his name appears the figure 1684, indicating the year when the cartoon was – and, in all likelihood, the tapestry – were made.

From this detail we can also conclude that the patron must have been Don Antonio López de Ayala y Velasco, ninth count of Fuensalida and a leading authority during the reign of Spain’s King Charles II. Inter alia, he is known to have occupied the posts of Councillor of State, Viceroy of Navarre, Governor and Captain-General of Galicia, and Governor of Milan. The tapestry must have been commissioned during his time as viceroy, lieutenant and captain-general of Sardinia, posts he held from late 1682 until at least March 1685.

The inclusion of the painter’s mark was a new development, introduced into Flemish tapestry around the mid-seventeenth century. According to Guy Delmarcel,[1] the first instance can be seen in Allegory of Time, a series designed by Jan van den Hoecke (1611–1651). This is significant for our critical assessment of the tapestry. The innovation should be seen as championing tapestry’s place as an art, worthy of a place as ‘woven painting’ among the select group of liberal arts. This desire to demonstrate the pictorial qualities that could be achieved is further underpinned by the extraordinarily fine weave (90 warp threads per dm) and the subtlety of the resulting hues. And so, this tapestry – which was originally intended to be primarily heraldic – also took on a moral significance, becoming a sort of ‘silent poetry’, in keeping with the old adage ut pictura poesis.

The allegory clearly centres on the figure of the elderly man whose wings and attributes (the hourglass and the scythe), identify him as Chronos, the personification of time or, as Erwin Panofsky prefers to call him, Father Time.[2] Panofsky, the founder of modern iconology, considered this figure – along with Cupid – to be one of the best examples of ‘pseudomorphosis’ – Renaissance and Baroque revivals of motifs from classical mythology, ‘contaminated’ by medieval interpretations. Thus, Father Time is the result of a process of phonetic confusion and semantic assimilation between Chronos (the personification of time) and Cronus or Kronos (the equivalent of the Roman Saturn). Consequently, medieval personifications of time progressively came to be associated with the terrible, all-devouring Saturn, so that, from the very first illustrations of Petrarch’s Trionfi, the allegorical figure symbolising temporal power was shown with both the attributes of Father Time (the wings of transience and the hourglass) and the old age and the scythe with which Saturn castrated his father, Uranus. Cesare Ripa, in his 1593 Iconologia, also characterised Time as a winged old man, quoting the dictum ‘Volat irreparabile tempus’ (time flies and cannot be recovered).[3]

As it has evolved, the figure of Time has become increasingly associated with the concepts of Death and Destruction, but also of Revelation (‘Veritas Alia Temporis’, Truth is the daughter of time) and Triumph. Time is all-consuming and through its destructive power, triumphs over all that is human. This is how it is portrayed in Petrarch’s great allegorical poem, in which time triumphs over Love, Chastity, Death and Fame. A magnificent tapestry from the early sixteenth century, recently acquired by Spanish National Heritage (Patrimonio Nacional), provides an exemplary depiction of this ‘Triumph of Time’ within the context of the Petrarchan cycle. At that stage, the allegorical representation of Chronos had yet to adopt the fearsome attributes of Saturn that were to become so integral to depictions of Father Time in the visual arts of the modern age, when the castrating power of Time/Saturn was felt particularly strongly among the romantics. Ripa illustrates the idea of ‘Amor domato’ (the tamed heart or subdued passion) with the image of Cupid holding an hourglass in his right hand as a symbol of time, ‘the moderator of all human affection’.

This notion of time as the destroyer of romantic passion triumphing over Cupid is frequent in Baroque emblems and paintings. The most common depiction is the scene of Chronos cutting off the wings of Venus’s son. This is the imagery shown in Otto Vaenius’s Amorum Emblemata (Antwerp, 1608) and in the famous paintings by Anthony van Dyck (Time Clipping the Wings of Love, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, ca. 1627) and Pierre Mignard (Time Clipping Cupid’s Wings, Denver Art Museum, 1694). In seventeenth-century tapestries too, Time is depicted triumph prevailing over Love, as can be seen in the two pieces entitled Time and Temperance Restrain Cupid, which form part of the two series of the same name in the Patrimonio Nacional’s collection: The Suffering of Cupid.[4]

In this context, it is particularly striking how Father Time is depicted in the tapestry commissioned by Antonio López de Ayala y Velasco: his submission or defeat at the hands of Love directly contrasts with the image of the triumphant Chronos that was so widespread in seventeenth-century iconography. And it should be noted that the notion of a triumphant Chronos was entirely consistent with the Baroque obsession with the passing of time, and the emergence of the vanitas, a pictorial reflection on the transience of life and the fleeting nature of earthly possessions. A prime example is the famous painting attributed to Antonio de Pereda, entitled The Gentleman’s Dream. It shows a clock at the centre of a group of items forming the vanitas, while an angel holds a phylactery with the legend: ‘eterne pungit cito volat et occidit’ (‘It [time] stings eternally, flies swiftly and kills’).

In the tapestry we are dealing with here, this sense of melancholy about the transience of existence –summed up in the biblical quote ‘Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas’ (‘Vanity of Vanities, […] all is vanity’, Ecclesiastes 1:2), is represented by the hourglass lying on the ground with the scythe beside the old man in chains. It is winged, to emphasise its role as a memento mori, a visual representation of Virgil’s tempus fugit. However, in the picture by David Teniers III, Time is depicted as being in chains and thus defeated.

We know of no other pictures that might have served as a source for this particular imagery. Nonetheless, it is worth citing two significant examples of exceptions to the Baroque tradition of the triumphant Chronos. One is the 1627 oil painting by Simon Vouet entitled Time Vanquished by Hope and Beauty (now in the Prado Museum). However, although its bears a certain iconographic resemblance to the tapestry in the Banco de España – and the cherubs also appear to play some role – the allegorical composition is clearly different. The other example is a clock design by André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732), entitled Love Conquers Time.[5] Here, the figure of Time/Saturn is not shown in chains, but reclining, based on a model popularised in the mid-sixteenth century by an engraving by Niccolò Vicentino.[6] This style proved quite successful within its genre and timepieces inspired by it continued to be produced even as late as the end of the eighteenth century.[7] Outside the area of clockmaking, however, it appears to have had no further impact.

To decipher the true meaning of David Teniers III’s motif for his cartoons, it may be helpful to compare the tapestry bearing the López de Ayala coat of arms with other parallel examples (i.e. woven from the same cartoon) featuring other heraldic designs and dated a year earlier (1683). One of them is now in the Hotel Negresco in Nice, and another is in the Arenberg Museum in Ghent. They differ not only in the coats-of-arms depicted, but also in featuring two coats of arms rather than one. The most important is that of the House of Arenberg, one of the most prominent families in the Spanish Netherlands; the other belongs to the Carretto family. The latter is held aloft in his left hand by an angel who is also holding, in his right hand, the large shield that takes pride of place in the tapestry. In the Banco de España tapestry, the design of this putto has been altered to replace the disc bearing the Carretto coat of arms with a bouquet of flowers, since the dual heraldic devices would have made no sense in a commission from Don Antonio López de Ayala y Velasco. The other tapestries were meant to celebrate (and symbolise) two weddings between the Arenberg and Carretto families that took place just six months apart in 1683 and 1684.[8] We must therefore assume that this joyous alliance is the motive behind the iconography of Time being tamed by Love on the coat of arms. This makes even more sense if we bear in mind that the Marquis of Carretto married at the advanced age of 56 and died just two years later (1685).

However, the full complexity of the allegory cannot be understood without exploring the significance of another figure that appears unaltered in all editions of the armorial tapestry by David Teniers III. This is the maiden holding up a ring formed by a serpent biting its own tail. This attribute, which has its origins in ancient Greek mythology (in connection with the Hellenistic god Aion), had come to form part of the iconography of Father Time. It is the ouroboros, a serpent or dragon devouring itself to form a sort of endless circle representing the idea of infinity and the cyclical nature of the world, which always returns to itself. This symbol of eternal return would seem to represent the deliberate expropriation or confiscation of the sign of Saturn by the winged maiden, the personification of Eternity.

It thus appears that the artist wanted to depict Love and Eternity stripping the all-powerful Father Time of some of his powers of destruction or voracity. Ultimately, this is a reference to the final somnium or allegorical dream in Petrarch’s cycle of Trionfi (in which the force of the eternal vanquishes Time), but in this case adding the equally indomitable power of Love.

We must therefore conclude that the Fuensalida tapestry was not based on a cartoon designed ad hoc or devised specifically as a heraldic tapestry for the family. Rather, it appears to have been a version, adapted to the coat of arms of the López de Ayala family, of the model previously ‘invented’ by David Teniers III for the Arenberg-Carretto families. Adaptations of this kind were by no means unusual in Flemish tapestry-making, particularly in the seventeenth century, and were made for reasons of industrial economy. It is quite possible that the decision to reuse the cartoon was taken by the manufacturers upon receiving the commission from the Fuensalida family. However, we should not entirely rule out the possibility that they had decided to design their reposteros in the style of the ones presented by the city of Brussels scarcely a year before to Ottone Enrico del Caretto, Marquis of Savona, governor and captain-general of the Spanish Netherlands.[9] Given the stature of the families featured in these heraldic tapestries, others may have wished to emulate them.

Likewise, just as there are known to have been five identical panels in the Arenberg-Carretto tapestries, we have reason to believe that the commission from Antonio López de Ayala y Velasco’s consisted not of just one single panel, but a set of several in the same design, each with its respective coat of arms. The chief argument for this hypothesis is that at least three other tapestries with a design almost identical to the one held by the Banco de España since 1974 are known to be in existence. One is illustrated by Heinrich Göbel in the first volume of his monumental work Wandteppiche;[10] Another features in a black-and-white photograph in the Paul Getty Trust’s GRI Digital Collections[11] and the third was sold in 2011 by the German auctioneer’s Van Han,[12] currently listed in the catalogue of the Parvizyar – Il Nodo Antico gallery in Milan.[13] Based on our current information, therefore, at least four tapestries appear to have been commissioned with the coats of arms of the Counts of Fuensalida. The one in the Banco de España collection bears the weaver’s marks of Jan Leyniers, but the other three feature those of Willem Leefdael. This is not surprising, since it was common practice among Flemish tapestry makers for several manufactories to work together to fill specific commissions, particularly in the seventeenth century. The same is true, for instance, of the tapestries belonging to the Arenberg-Carretto families, whose two known examples bear the marks of different tapestry makers: Geraert Peemans and Sébastien Leclerc. Jan Leyniers was a member of one of the most important and longest-established families of Brussels tapestry makers, in business from the sixteenth century until well into the second half of the eighteenth. Jan’s mark appears in other important series, such as The Story of the Life of Moses (Vienna and Palazzo Clerici in Milan) and several editions of The Story of Alexander, based on cartoons by Jacob Jordaens (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Palazzo Chigi in Rome, Almudena Cathedral in Madrid, etc.). Jan Leyniers’ workshops also produced several series from the Story of Meleager), woven from designs by Charles Le Brun (now held in museums in St Petersburg, Stockholm and Chichester (UK), amongst other European museums).

Willem van Leefdael was a member of another well-known family of Brussels printmakers whose workshops flourished in the seventeenth century. He was in business as a textile merchant from 1656 until at least 1684. In addition to working with Leyniers on the tapestries for the Counts of Fuensalida, he is also known to have participated in making several series with Brussels weaver Geraert Peemans. Van Leefdael’s work focused primarily on the lives and deeds of great figures from antiquity, and so his designs feature in tapestries depicting the stories of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, Titus and Vespasian, Constantine and Scipio.

The expertise of these renowned Brussels weavers was employed to complement the creative genius of David Teniers III, enabling the weavers to produce some of the most authentic and refined examples of seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry. The youngest member of the Teniers (son of David II and Anna Brueghel) is considered to have been one of the leading designers of Baroque tapestry. His elegant style, which borrowed from both the style of Anton van Dyck and his own family tradition, was manifested with particular success in his compositions of allegorical scenes. This is evident in his designs for the López de Ayala and Arenberg-Carretto tapestries. In them, he shows an ability to assimilate Rubens’ innovations in tapestry paintings and his sensitivity to the symbolic culture of his time.

His familiarity with Rubens’s style is demonstrated by a series of copies of the modelli created by the Antwerp master for the series The Triumph of the Eucharist (made for the Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid), which are now preserved in the Prado Museum and bear Teniers III’s mark. From these extraordinary compositions, the designer of the Fuensalida tapestries has borrowed the scenographic device of a tapestry within a tapestry, showing his adoption of Baroque theatricality with its enthusiasm for blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

Drawing on the contemporary fascination with symbols and the visual codes of emblems, David Teniers came up with a whole paradigm, by introducing this complex new allegory. Heraldic tapestry was particularly well suited to this purpose, since its primary purpose was not only to condense and display family symbols, but also to reflect the personality of patrons, who wanted to put their own personal stamp on the coats of arms they commissioned. In this allegorical context, the younger Teniers also echoed contemporary French innovations in the field of heraldic tapestry: the famous portières (the French term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish repostero) designed by Charles Le Brun for Nicolas Fouquet and woven at the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne (Gobelins), ultimately designed in praise of the Sun King.

As a result of this convergence of sensibilities and traditions (combining the Spanish repostero tradition with Flemish and French contributions to heraldic tapestry), a new type of armorial tapestry emerged in Flanders in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Thus, the Spanish aristocracy maintained their ancestral custom of honouring their families in tapestry, whilst adapting the heraldic language to new tastes.

Examples of this trend in repostero design include a piece made for the Count and Countess of Monterrey in the workshops of De Melter and Jacob van der Borcht around 1675. Commissioned by Juan Domingo de Zúñiga y Fonseca, Governor of the Netherlands from 1670 to 1675, it is generally considered to be the first example of this new trend in heraldic and allegorical tapestry. A slightly later example is the piece made for the Duke of Medinaceli, dated 1680 and attributed to the weaver Jacob I van der Borcht. This was followed by one woven for the Marquis of La Ensenada in the workshops of Geraert Peemans between 1681 and 1685.[14] Spanish nobles were not the only ones to adopt the new emblazoned drapes being made by the Flemish manufactories. A particularly interesting example is the pieces bearing the coat of arms of Filippo Archinto of Milan, woven in Brussels at the workshop of Sébastien Le Clerc.[15] The authorship of the cartoon for the Monterrey tapestry is unknown, but all the others listed here were either signed by David Teniers III (Junior) or have been attributed to him with almost complete certainty. Taking all these pieces into account, in addition to his work for the Arenberg-Carretto and López de Ayala families, the Antwerp painter’s importance was in the modernisation of heraldic tapestry design is indisputable.

The tapestry made for the Ninth Count of Fuensalida is a magnificent example of this period of change in heraldic tapestry. However, as a woven emblem or symbol, its significance extends beyond the realm of mere heraldry. The allegories depicted offer a reflection on time, prompted by considerations of the transience of life. The Banco de España also holds a fine set from another series of tapestries woven by Geraert Peemans based on cartoons by Daniel Teniers III. Entitled Allegory of Time, it also illustrates this preoccupation with the passing of the months and seasons. And indeed, what better medium than tapestry – with its interweaving of thread and time – to express that notion of vanitas?

In the Triumph of Love and Eternity over Time, a small glimmer of hope seems to have appeared; Cupid’s arts have halted the ceaseless flow of the sands of life.

Bibliography

Thomas P. Campbell (ed.). Hilos de esplendor, Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional & The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Guy Delmarcel. La Tapisserie flamande du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1999.

Heinrich Göbel. Wandteppiche: I. Die Nederlande, Leipzig, 1923, vols. 1 and 2.

P. Junquera & C. Díaz. Catálogo de Tapices del Patrimonio Nacional. Volume II: siglo XVII, Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1986.

Erwing Panofsky. ‘El Padre Tiempo’, in Estudios sobre iconología, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998.

Victoria Ramírez Ruiz. Las tapicerías en las colecciones de la nobleza española del siglo XVII, Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 2013 (PhD thesis).

S.O.S. Wandtapijten/S.O.S. Tapisseries, Brussels: Fondation Roi Badouin/Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, 1994.

[1] Guy Delmarcel. La Tapisserie flamande du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1999, p. 247.

[2] Erwing Panofsky. ‘El Padre Tiempo’, in Estudios sobre iconología, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998, pp. 93–138.

[3] Cesare Ripa. Iconologia overo Descrittione d’Imagini delle Virtú, Vitij, Afetti, Passioni humane, Corpi celesti, Mondo e sue parti, Padua: Pietro Paolo Tozzi, 1611, p. 511. Second description of Time.

[4] Series 60 and 61, woven in the first third of the seventeenth century in the workshops of Franz van den Hoecke and Jan Raes, based on cartoons by Anton Sallaert.

[5] Dessin pour une horloge murale avec L’Amour vainqueur de Temps, Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (inv. 723.D.6).

[6] Based on a lost fresco by the Italian painter Antonio de’Sacchis, entitled Il Pordenone), created ca. 1535 for the Palazzo Martino d’Anna (Venice).

[7] For example, the clock with a revolving-ring dial, also titled The Triumph of Love over Time, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was made at the Lepautre workshops (Paris) between 1780 and 1790.

[8] Guy Delmarcel, op. cit., p. 236. The two weddings were: in 1683, the marriage of Othon Enrique Carretto, Marquis of Carretto, to Princess Marie Thérèse d’Arenberg; in 1684, the marriage of Maria Henrietta del Carretto to Philippe Charles François, 3rd Duke of Arenberg.

[9] S.O.S. Wandtapijten/S.O.S. Tapisseries, Brussels: Fondation Roi Badouin/Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, 1994, pp. 68-70. Documentary sources suggest that it was planned to present five tapestries as a gift to the governor.

[10] Heinrich Göbel. Wandteppiche: I. Die Nederlande, Leipzig, 1923, vol. 2, no. 185.

[11] GRI Digital Collections, image GCPA: 0236267. Based on information from Getty Search Gateway, this tapestry appears to have been exhibited at the 1935 Exposition Universelle et Internationale in Brussels.

[12] Van Ham Hall. Sale 305. Europäisches Kunstgewerbe und Schmuck, Cologne, 18-19 November 2011. Lot 928, Tapisserie mit Wappen der Ayala Grafen von Fuensalida.

[13] In https://www.parvizyar.com/en/inventory/cat/tapestries/brussels-tapestries/an-important-brussels-armorial-tapestry/ Last accessed 05/05/2024.

[14] It bears no woven date and no documentation on the commission is extant. However, an armorial tapestry of a very similar design bearing Peeman’s marks and the date 1681 was sold at Sotheby’s, Monte Carlo on 9 December 1995 (Lot no. 14). It shows the coats of arms of the Arese, Panigaroli, Legani and Ottolini families.

[15] It is currently housed in the Louvre.

Antonio Sama