The Triumph of Love and Eternity over Time is a fitting testament to a period in Western tapestry when heraldry and moral allegory were intimately entwined to create true woven puzzles.

The center of the hanging – conceived as a tapestry within another tapestry – prominently displays the coat of arms of the López de Ayala family, the Counts of Fuensalida. Immediately below the heraldic group appears an elderly winged man in a posture of submission, restrained by chains being fastened by a putto. To his side are a winged hourglass and scythe. The scene is completed by eight more putti, all toiling to hold up the hanging, adorned with golden fringes, on which the scene just described is depicted.

This hanging is imbued with moral overtones: the figure of the elderly man, with his wings and the objects by his side – the hourglass and scythe – is surely the god Chronos, or more specifically – in Erwin Panofsky’s typology – Father Time.¹ This was one of the motifs revived from classical mythology during the early modern period, though inevitably “contaminated” by medieval interpretations. Father Time thus represents the culmination of a process of phonetic and semantic assimilation between the Greek Χρόνος (Chronos, as an allegory of Time) and the Titan Κρόνος (Kronos, later becoming Saturn in Roman mythology), resulting in Time assuming attributes of the devouring Saturn. The wings of transience and the hourglass meld with two Saturnian attributes: old age and the castrating scythe.

Through this evolutionary process, Time has become increasingly associated with death and destruction, but also with revelation and triumph. Time devours, destroys, and overcomes love, chastity, and fame. However, in David Teniers III’s conception in this tapestry, it is Time who surrenders to Love, contradicting the more commonly disseminated image of Chronos triumphant, associated with the Baroque obsession with the passage of time and the vanitas genre. Yet the allegory cannot be fully understood without the figure of the maiden holding the ouroboros, the ring formed by a serpent devouring its own tail. In the hands of a winged maiden, this symbol of a neverending cycle seems to represent a deliberate appropriation of one of Father Time’s attributes by a figure that must be recognized as the personification of Eternity.

This tapestry of the Counts of Fuensalida, adapted to the coat of arms of the López de Ayala family from a preexisting model, bears the hallmarks of the weaver Jean Leyniers, a renowned craftsman who served the creative genius of David Teniers III, regarded as one of the foremost designers of Baroque tapestry and possessor of a keen sensitivity to the symbolic culture of his age.

This tapestry’s allegorical aspects follow a train of thought where time has become a central concern, infused with reflections on the transience of life. The Banco de España possesses another invaluable piece from a related tapestry series – the Allegory of Time, woven by Geraert Peemans from designs by the same David Teniers III – which also masterfully illustrates this unease over the flow of the months and seasons. Indeed, there is nothing better than a tapestry – a true interweaving of thread and time – to express the feeling that all is vanity.

The Triumph of Love and Eternity over Time offers a ray of hope and, thanks to Cupid’s arts, the irresistible flow of life’s sands appears to have been arrested.

1. Erwin Panofsky, “El padre tiempo”, Estudios sobre iconología, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998, pp. 93-138.

Antonio Sama