War At Troy Views
Three scenes from the story are seen on this tapestry. On the left, Queen Penthesilea comes with her Amazon warriors to join the Greeks and kneels before Priam at the gate of Troy. In the centre is a battle between the Amazons and the Greeks, and on the right we see Pyrrhus being armed. The tapestry is crammed with beautifully executed and lively scenes of battle, kings, queens, princes, warriors and horses. Contemporary costume and armour, waving banners and a military tent are depicted in exquisite detail.
This tapestry is from a much larger original set which showed a medieval version of the history of the Trojan wars. The tapestry has been cut into three vertical sections, with the two left sections being again cut horizontally. The inscription (in French) along the top is missing. Itshows three episodes in the story with a fourth on the right, now almost entirely missing. From left: Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, kneeling before Priam at the gate of Troy and offering her services to the Trojans; the Amazons, issued from the Dardanid Gate, engaging in the twenty-first battle with the Greeks; the young Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, in his tent being armed by Ajax Telamon with his fallen father's armour, in the presence of Agamemnon and others; the twenty-second battle with Pyrrhus joining the Greek forces in their resistance to Penthesilea (mostly missing).
The War of Troy tapestries consisted of eleven hangings each about 4.8 metres high and 9-10 metres long. They were inscribed with French verses explaining the scenes above and in Latin beneath; this double inscription is very unusual. The War of Troy series epitomizes the grandest large-scale Netherlandish tapestry production of the late 15th century, in both design (a dense, complex narrative style) and subject matter (a classical myth reinterpreted in terms of medieval romance). The series is also unique in that it is remarkably well documented; the merchant who owned the cartoons was Pasquier Grenier, and he supplied weavings of this design to several clients.
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. The Iliad relates a part of the last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the Achaean leaders. Other parts of the war were told in a cycle of epic poems, which has only survived in fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets like Virgil and Ovid.
War At Troy Images
