Jodocos de Vos

(active 1700-1734; according to designs by Nicholas van Schoor and Peter Spierincx)
Myrtillus and Amarillis
Brussels ca. 1710
Wool and silk, dimensions: 306 x 546 cm
After the pastoral tragicomedy „Il Pastor Fido“ von Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538-1612)

 
The tapestry illustrates the love story between the shepherd Myrtillus and the nymph Amarillis. The pair, surrounded by numerous companions of Amarillis, sits at the foot of an obelisk in the midst of a detailed landscape. Their story is told in the pastoral play IL PASTOR FIDO by Guaraini, which dates from the year 1590. This pastoral was a popular literary form in the European Renaissance and the Baroque era, and idealised the life of shepherds. One popular theme is the story of an aloof, unapproachable object of love who contrasts with a lover who totally succumbs to her, pines for her and suffers as a consequence. Feelings such as unrequited love, canticles in praise of a shepherdess, melancholy with regard to a fairer past or a lost homeland are some of the typical subjects of this form of artistic representation.

As early as the 17th century, wall tapestries featuring such pastorals were made in Parisian manufactories. Many series of carpets with stories from Il Pastor Fido were later made in Brussels workshops. The warp-knitted ensemble from the manufactory of Judocos de Vos impresses the viewer with two different types of gold-coloured borders. Similar carpets showing the Myrtillius and Amarillis as lovers at the altar of Diana the hunting goddess and made by Judocus de Vos can be found in the former collection of Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria (1869-1955) and in the possession of the Austrian state.

In 1923, in his standard textbook on European tapestries, Heinrich Göbel noted that the sketches for the pastorals were produced for Daniel Stroobant, Lord of Ter-Brugge, who bought from Judocus de Vos in his capacity as the “tapestry agent” of Prince Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz.