The Gobelin tapestries at the Grand Masters' Palace in Valletta : a study of their iconography and meaning

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was a life-long ambition to research the Tenture des Indes Gobelin tapestries in the Grand Council Chamber of the Palace in Valletta. In an attempt to discover material on the subject I found several resources, all scattered in various books, essays, articles, and documents, in Malta and abroad, but never came across an in depth study on every one of the ten tapestries. This is what encouraged me to try to understand Grand Master Perellos' choice for the "exotic" tapestries. I consulted sources at the archives, discussed material with conservators and scholars, and analyzed the images at the Magistral Palace, Valletta. The aim of this research was to study the generous sixty-fourth Grand Master Ramon Perellos y Roccaful (1697-1720) who, like his predecessors, desired to shine and show-case his elegant city. I followed the trail backwards, from 1710, when the precious cargo arrived in Malta on a vessel from Marseilles, France, then to the Gobelin manufactory in Paris, to the workshop and the cartoons, then to the original artists, Albert Eckhout (ca.1607-1666) and Frans Post (1612-1680), who travelled with the Dutch colonial Governor, Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, (1604- 1679) to Brazil commissioned to copy the fauna and flora of the new territory in the New World. This paper covers a shared history of the Old and New Worlds; it looks at the encounter when the two cultures came together in North East Brazil. The narrative continues when a Dutch Colonial Governor, Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, started to industrialise the local native society, and later influenced European court taste with the art and artifacts he brought back to Europe. Therefore the roots of the Tenture des Indes stem from Dutch colonial expansion, and the appointment of a military man and naturalist, Court Johnn Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, a person with several interests. Initially my impression was that the Gobelin tapestries in Malta depicted a fantasy in a tropical jungle, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the images revealed daily life in a Mangrove forest, where ancient civilizations of tribes lived, until explorers stumbled upon the Americas, and their lives changed forever.