Los Honores

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The nine-part wall hanging Los Honores (German: The Virtues ) was ordered in 1520 for Emperor Charles V on the occasion of his coronation in Aachen and bought by him in 1526. The large-format knitted images made of wool , silk , silver and gold threads each have dimensions of 5 × 10 meters. They were made in the Brussels studio of Pieter van Aelst from boxes by Barend van Orley , Jan Gossaert van Mabuse and other recognized artists of the time. They testify to the mastery achieved by the earlier Flemish workshops and to the splendid decoration of the rich library of the Burgundian court during the Renaissance .

The nine tapestries illustrate works by Valerius Maximus , Ovid , Petrarca and Boccaccio and show allegorical representations of the highest virtues a young prince should strive for in order to receive the highest reward: fame, eternal nobility and the highest honor. Each of the individual works is structured like a theater scene: central is the allegory , which is surrounded by numerous examples from the Bible and world history. In terms of content and form, each tapestry is linked to the previous or following one, so that three can be read as one large scene.

The individual works are titled:

  1. Fortuna : fate
  2. Prudentia : the wisdom
  3. Virtus : virtue
  4. Fides : belief
  5. Honor : the honor
  6. Fama : the fame
  7. Justitia : justice
  8. Nobilitas : the nobility
  9. Infamia : the shame

bibliography

  • Delmarcel, G., Koninklijke splendor in goud en zijde. Vlaamse wandtapijten van de Spaanse Kroon, Mechelen , 1993.
  • Schulte, P., The Ethics of Political Communication in the Franco-Burgundian Late Middle Ages, in: Dartmann, Chr. (Et al.), (Ed.), Between Pragmatics and Performance. Dimensions of medieval written culture (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 18), 2011, pp. 461–489.