Tapestry - Nativity

In what is the most beautiful pre-Renaissance tapestry in the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest the central image is surrounded by a border of flowers and fruit, and is divided into three by richly decorated pillars in the manner of a winged altarpiece. In the centre of the tapestry is a depiction of the birth of Jesus, a type that owed its popularity to late medieval mysticism, where the newborn Saviour is worshipped by his mother, the Virgin Mary, and angels. Angels and shepherds play music in the background, St Joseph is behind Mary, while three angels hover over the central scene. On each side, outside the pillar, a sibyl stands, holding a scroll with the text of her prophecy. There is a distinct scene in each of the upper corners: the Adoration of the Magi on the left, and the Annunciation on the right.

An analogue of the tapestry can be found in the Museo Diocesano of Trento, and it is the first piece in a seven-part series, which is mostly devoted to the Passion of Christ.

The series was purchased in 1531, by Bernard Cles, Archbishop of Trento, from Joris van Lickau, an Antwerp merchant. The tapestries themselves had been made earlier: the piece on the Carrying of the Cross bears the date 1507. In the last piece of the Trento series, which represents the resurrection of Christ, the name of the owner of the Brussels studio where the tapestry was woven, Pieter van Aelst, is inscribed on the hem of one of the soldiers’ cloak.

The compositions in the tapestry can be traced back to Flemish painting from the 15th century: the Annunciation follows a popular composition by Rogier van der Weyden (Munich, Alte Pinakothek), while the execution of the central scene was influenced, among others, by Robert Campin. The most modern scene is the Adoration of the Magi: its model was the relevant piece in Albrecht Dürer’s series of engravings on the life of Mary (ca. 1500–1502). As with the other pieces in the former series, the structure of our tapestry, its treatment of space, as well as the Gothic figures, fit well with the work of Jan van Roome, a Brussels painter who can be identified from different sources. Jan van Roome worked as court painter to Margaret of Austria between 1498 and 1521, and we know from a payment record that in 1513 a tapestry was produced on the basis of his sketches and the cartoons of a certain Philips de Schilder, depicting the miraculous communion of Herkinbald, the legendary 11th-century Brussels judge (Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire), which is stylistically close to the Budapest piece.

Held at the time in the Cathedral of Győr, the tapestry came to the attention of the public in 1889, following a study by Ferenc Ebenhöch (1821–1889), Canon of Győr. This is in all likelihood one of the five or six tapestries which, according to a source, were originally in the estate of Bishop Demeter Náprágyi (1559–1619), and ended up in the cathedral in 1619.

In 1904, the Diocese of Győr decided to raise the funds necessary for the restoration of the cathedral by selling the tapestry. It was purchased by Franz Joseph I, and was first placed in the Royal Palace in Buda, before it was donated to the Friends of the Museum Association in 1914, to enrich the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest as a permanent deposit.