Currently on View in H215
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This important tapestry, woven after a design by Raphael, is arguably the work that best represents the art of the Italian High Renaissance at the IMA. The pattern for the tapestry, one of ten comprising a series known as the Acts of the Apostles, was commissioned in 1515 by Pope Leo X to decorate the Sistine Chapel. Pieter van Aelst wove the first set, which is still in the Vatican, in Brussels between 1516 and 1521.
The Indianapolis tapestry is part of a set woven from the same pattern in the Brussels workshop of Heinrich Mattens about one hundred years later.
Baron Max von Heyl [1844-1925], Darmstadt, Germany, by 1925;
Sale at (Hugo Helbing, Munich, Germany) in 1930.{1}
(V.B. Galleries, Inc.);{2}
Dr. George Henry Alexander Clowes [1877-1958], Indianapolis, Indiana, by 1958;
Clowes Fund Collection, Indianapolis;
given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2016.
{1} Hugo Helbing, Munich, Katalog der Sammlung Baron Heyl, Darmstadt (Band 1): Sammlung von Antiquitäten, Gemälden alter und neuer Meister, Skulpturen, Textilien, Wandteppichen und Orientteppichen, alten Möbeln und Einrichtungsgegenständen aus dem Nachlass des verewigten Freiherrn Max von Heyl, Generalleutnant à. l. s. und seiner Gemahlin Doris, geb. Stein, Darmstadt, Munich, 28 and 29 October 1930, catalogue no. 256, plate 33.
{2} IMA, Clowes Archive, contains a dealer’s binder whose authorship is identified as “V.B. Galleries, Inc.” This gallery can now be identified as "The Galleries of Paul S. Van Baarn, Ltd." specializing in antique tapestries, paintings, furniture and works of art; see "Front Matter," Burlington Magazine (March 1938): vi.
