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The larger tapestries are cartoons of Miguel de Cervantes' story of Don Quixote and are most extraordinary in their grotesque style. The maker and designer are not known for certain. Experts, as ever, disagree: one theory is that the panels are Spanish of the late 17th century, but recent research suggests that they are the work (c.1680) of James Bridges who is thought to have succeeded, and used the same cartoons as, Francis Poyntz of Hatton Garden in London - 'Yeoman arrasworker to the Great Wardrobe'. Various scenes from the book are easily recognisable - the Knight of the Woeful Countenance trying to bait the tame lion into fighting; tilting at the windmills mounted on his scrawny steed, Rocinante;
being knighted by the innkeeper.
The smaller tapestries are Franco-Flemish (Louis XIV), sliced up with enthusiastic scissorwork on some remote rainy aftemoon. |
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