Wild Kingdom: The Animals of King Sigismund Augustus’s Tapestries
In 16th-century Europe, humanism, the opening up of new geographical horizons, the conquest of distant lands, a belief in the power of reason, and the self-awareness and dignity of the individual shaped the Renaissance people’s attitude towards the world. This world appeared as a realm of boundless possibilities and great discoveries, including in the natural world, which surrounded a man as if at his fingertips, yet remained full of mysteries. Scholars and artists set out to explore these mysteries, in a sense, shoulder to shoulder.
Animals and plants, our closest companions, have always aroused our curiosity. Systematic studies of plant and animal taxonomy began in the first half of the 16th century, but were notably preceded by iconography in the form of drawings and paintings. These were not merely the enchantingly beautiful depictions of flowers in the margins of illuminated manuscripts from the so-called Ghent-Bruges school of the third quarter of the 15th century. The artistic community in Lombardy, in northern Italy, had been at the forefront of animal depictions since the mid-14th century, as preserved in the sketchbooks of anonymous artists associated with Giovanni de’Grassi. However, collaboration between artists and researchers of fauna and flora, and their parallel achievements, peaked in the mid-16th century.
It was then that illustrated depictions of plants became part of the research process, appearing in scientific herbaria such as Leonhard Fuchs’s handbook from 1542. These precise drawings ‘described’ the details of plant structure. A similar role may have been played by the beautiful depictions of flora and fauna in Albrecht Dürer’s watercolours from around 1500–1510, such as the famous Little Owl, Stork, Young Hare, Elk, Iris, Columbine, Mullein, or the so-called Great Piece of Turf. At the same time as the herbaria, between 1551 and 1560, the monumental zoological compendia by the Swiss scholar Konrad Gessner began to appear in Zurich. The woodcuts in these works indicate that the illustrators of Gessner’s books and the designers of the tapestries drew on the same sources.
Drawing on Dürer’s watercolours – widely copied and regarded as iconic – as well as on models from Lombard draughtsmen’s sketchbooks and fresh studies of animals from life, artists created ‘portfolios of designs’. These were then used in workshops preparing painted models for tapestries, the so-called tapestry cartoons.
The demand for such fabrics in the mid-16th century was enormous. We know from sources that Maria of Hungary, sister of Emperor Charles V, who ruled on his behalf in the Netherlands from 1531 to 1555, owned a collection of verdures. Several groups of Flemish tapestries on this theme have survived, dating from slightly later than the Sigismund collection, i.e. the third or fourth quarter of the 16th century – in the Borromeo collection on Isola Bella (an island on Lake Maggiore), at Serrant Castle on the Loire, and at the castle in Urbino, formerly the seat of the Dukes of Montefeltro. None of these collections can compare with the Wawel series of verdures – particularly in terms of the number of pieces – which once numbered around 50 and now comprises 44 tapestries. In terms of quantity, the Wawel series accounted for one-third of the entire collection of the last Jagiellonian king, which once comprised around 160 tapestries.
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Tapestry from the series ‘The History of the First Parents, Paradise Bliss’, (inv. No. 1), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
These tapestries, designed around or shortly after 1550 and produced in Brussels over the following few years, are described as the finest ‘zoological and botanical atlas’ of their time. They bear witness to a profound fascination with nature, evident in the royal patron, Sigismund Augustus (1520–1572), and among the artists of the time who specialised in depictions of fauna and flora. In this case, the authorship of the cartoons can be attributed to one of the members of the multi-generational Tons family – Jan II or Willem (active in the second half of the 16th century).
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Wawel tapestry (inv. No. 9), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
It should also be borne in mind that the artists who designed the fauna in the verdures had probably previously collaborated with the cartoonist of the Wawel biblical tapestries (19 pieces), the outstanding painter Michiel I Coxcie (1499–1592), a native of Malines (Mechelen). In this group of Sigismund’s tapestries, i.e., the earlier set created before 1553, animals in the backdrop of scenes from the Old Testament often play a role more significant than that of an extra, limited to ‘commenting’ on the biblical narrative (Szczęśliwość Rajska) (Paradise Bliss); they are instrumental. This is evident in the scenes Wejście do Arki (Animals Entering the Ark) and Wyjście z Arki (Animals Leaving the Ark) in the Dzieje Noego (Story of Noah) series. There, processions of animals, grouped in pairs, make their way to Noah’s Ark and depart from it, providing a veritable scientific overview of the fauna of the time, comprising both European and exotic species. The unique appeal of these processions continues to captivate viewers to this day.
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Wawel tapestry (inv. No. 11), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
The verdures for Sigismund Augustus were produced in three formats. These include narrow vertical rectangles approximately five metres high (tailored to the dimensions of the state rooms at Wawel, where they could cover sections of wall between windows or between a door and the corner of a room), as well as larger, almost square pieces of fabric and horizontal tapestries, used as back panels for benches or as friezes beneath the ceiling, running all the way round the interior. This division reflects what we would today call a ‘commissioned design’, that is, the connection between the fabrics and the architecture of the Kraków residence.
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Verdure ‘The Reclining Fallow Deer’, (inv. No. 31), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
In early sources, this series was sometimes referred to as pugnae ferrarum (battles of wild beasts). Contrary to this term, only a small proportion of the Wawel tapestries depict conflicts in the animal world; rather, the animals shown fighting illustrate the act of ‘foraging’. In the vast majority of these verdures, the animals are depicted ‘in portrait format’, as in Leżący Daniel (The Reclining Fallow Deer); they are shown in all their splendour against a backdrop of lush greenery, as the sole rightful masters of the forest kingdom. Only three or four of the textiles in this collection can be read as metaphors for the age-old struggle between good and evil: Walka Smoka z Panterą (The Fight of a Dragon with a Panther), Walka Lamparta z Niedźwiedziem (Leopard Fighting with a Bear), Fantastyczne Drapieżniki i Małpy (Fantastic Predators and Monkeys), and Żuraw z Wężem w Dziobie (Crane with Snake in the Beak).
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Verdure ‘Leopard Fighting with a Bear’ (inv. No. 19), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
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Verdure ‘Fantastic Predators and Monkeys’ (inv. No. 20), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
The most spectacular and, at the same time, dramatic scene appears to be The Fight of a Dragon with a Panther, featuring a fantastical winged monster and a tawny-coloured panther, whose coat is adorned with enigmatic ‘eye’-like patterns. Legendary dragons have always been regarded as embodiments of Satan, and, according to Christian theologians’ commentaries, the predatory panther unexpectedly turns out to symbolise Christ.
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Verdure ‘The Fight of a Dragon with a Panther’, (inv. No. 38), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
Two other textiles clearly illustrate the duality of good and evil, a theme also present, albeit less clearly, in the tapestry Crane with Snake in the Beak. Here, good, embodied by a noble bird (a category that included eagles, herons, cranes and storks), triumphs over the serpent, a cursed reptile that, as the perpetrator of ‘original sin’, is synonymous with Satan.
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Verdure ‘Crane with Snake in the Beak’, (inv. No. 59), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
However, these are not the only examples in this collection to feature symbolic content. As one might readily surmise, Renaissance knowledge of the hidden meanings of plants and animals drew on elements of medieval religious literature and, above all, on the immensely inspiring legacy of antiquity. It drew mainly on the Latin treatises of the 1st-century AD Roman ‘encyclopaedist’ Pliny the Elder (author of the multi-volume Historia Naturalis) and on the so-called Physiologus works, which are compilations of Greek texts on animals. For the educated reader of that era, associations with ancient legends and works such as Aesop’s Fables (the works of a Greek writer from the 6th century BC, which were frequently translated and adapted in the 16th century) were self-evident and did not require captions.
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Verdure ‘Wild Boars and a Lion Killing a Monkey’, (inv. No. 37), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
One of the compositions, in which various hidden themes are brought together, belongs to a group of large, representative verdures in an almost square format. It is the tapestry Dziki i Lew Zagryzający Małpę (Wild Boars and a Lion Killing a Monkey). Alongside the ‘family of wild boars’ – a herd modelled on the drawings and engravings of Martin Schongauer, Dürer’s teacher – two other scenes are depicted. In the foreground, a lion is holding a monkey in its mouth, symbolising the maxim – a classic in Renaissance literature and still very much relevant at European courts – that ‘rulers must free themselves from flatterers’. In ancient literature, there was also a belief, recorded by Pliny the Elder, that eating monkey meat cures a sick lion. In the background, in a brightly lit clearing, a group of monkeys are dancing around a tiger lying on the ground. This scene teaches us not to be taken in by appearances and to act with caution – for the predator, by feigning death, lures the gullible monkeys so it can capture them more easily.
Sigismund’s tapestries also feature several exotic specimens. Their depictions are among the earliest colourful, life-size ‘portraits’ of these species in 16th-century iconography. Such creatures include turkeys, birds that reached Europe from the New World following Columbus’s expedition (1502) and Cortés’s arrival at the court of Charles V in Brussels with trophies from America (1520). A popular animal, imported from Africa, was the civet (verdure Cyweta Zagryzająca Ptaka [Civet Gripping a Bird in Its Jaws]), a predator kept in European menageries for the substance obtained from it, used to produce musk, a fragrant essence for freshening dresses, which was indispensable in the culture and daily life of the court.
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Verdure ‘Two Leopards, a Pheasant, and a Monkey’, (inv. No. 62), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
Another novelty in the Wawel tapestries’ repertoire is the presence of figures alluding to ancient physiognomic theories, which were revived during the Renaissance. In the tapestry Dwa Lamparty, Bażant i Małpka (Two Leopards, a Pheasant, and a Monkey), one of the bloodthirsty creatures has a human face, characteristic of the most aggressive of the four temperaments – the choleric.
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Verdure ‘An Otter with a Fish in Its Mouth’ (inv. No. 36), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
All the elements of flora and fauna – avant-garde in their realism – gathered in these fabrics are encompassed and unified by a modern landscape perspective. This innovative vision of the landscape is one of the most significant achievements of the designers of our verdures, Wydra z Rybą w Pysku (An Otter with a Fish in Its Mouth) and Żyrafa Jednorożec i Ryś (A Unicorn-Giraffe and a Lynx), and one of the series’ key strengths. Depth, the gradation of planes, the use of light and the saturation of colours create the unique atmosphere of these compositions. At the same time, they mark a breakthrough in European landscape painting, predating the achievements of the so-called Frankenthal School, namely the works of Gillis van Coninxloo and Roelant Savery.
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Arras ‘A Unicorn-Giraffe and a Lynx’, (inv. No. 39), collection of the Wawel Royal Castle, photo: Tomasz Śliwiński
Sigismund’s tapestries depicting animals, which contain a wealth of meanings and an extraordinary vision of the power of nature, became, shortly after the mid-16th century, a groundbreaking, exemplary series from which artists of later times drew inspiration.
Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur