Bernard van Orley and Malines: The Dido and Aeneas Tapestries at Hampton Court

Abstract

SummaryThe designs of the early sixteenth-century series of five tapestries on the story of Dido and Aeneas at Hampton Court Palace {Collection of H.M. the Queen) were tentatively ascribed by A. E. Popham in 1926, and following him by K. T. Parker, to ‘Aert Ortkens’. But the drawings attributed to Ortkens by successive writers since Friedländer (1921) can now be shown to represent the production of the Malines school of designers for glass and tapestry during the first third of the sixteenth century, and to include a number of early sketches by Bernard van Orley. The article suggests how the design of the second tapestry of the Dido and Aeneas seriesfitsinto van Orley's œuvre, and refers the others to minor masters of the Malines—Brussels circle round van Orley and the brothers Adrian and Peter van den Houte of Malines.