National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: The Garden of Gethsemane
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

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Provenance

Possibly imported to England 1528 by (Edward Smytting) for sale to Cardinal Wolsey or Henry VIII, King of England;[1] possibly purchased between 1649 and 1654 from the English royal collection by the Spanish ambassador Don Alonso de Cárdenas and shipped to Spain for Don Luis de Haro;[2] possibly bequest 1658 to the estate of the House of El Carpio;[3] possibly by descent to the House of Alba;[4] probably Jacopo Luis Francesco Pablo Rafael FitzJames-Stuart, 8th duke of Berwick and 15th duke (duque in Spanish) of Alba [1821-1881], Liria Palace, Madrid; (Alba sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 7-20 April 1877, no. 5). (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; after purchase 13 January 1922 by funds of Joseph E. Widener; gift 1942 to NGA.

[1] The proposed provenance from 1528 to the 1877 sale, and the associated notes below, are from Maryan W. Ainsworth's entry on the "Alba Passion" series in Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002: 304, 320. It has been suggested that a gold-woven, four-piece set of the Passion, imported to England in 1528 by the Hanseatic merchant Smytting to offer to Wolsey or the king, may be one and the same as the Alba Passion, of which NGA 1942.9.447 and 1942.9.448 are two pieces. Smytting describes the set in his correspondence as "the storye of Christe's mawndye," "the praying of hym in the gardeyn," "Jehsus bering the crosse," and "the hanging of our lorde on the crosse." A set of tapestry panels depicting "the riche historye of the passion" and each measuring 27 square ells was recorded as having been at the Tower of London in the 1547 inventory of Henry VIII's possessions.

[2] A description of four Passion panels whose measurements match those of the Smytting set appears on a list of items shipped by Cárdenas to Spain before August 1654 on behalf of Haro.

[3] Haro also acquired Henry's set of the Acts of the Apostles, which he left to the House of El Carpio in his will of 1658.

[4] If the Passion set continued to follow the same route as the Acts, they both passed to the House of Alba at some point between 1661 and 1839, probably when the two houses merged in 1733. This would explain the appearance of the Passion set in the 1877 Alba sale.

Exhibition History

2002
Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, no. 31, repro.

Bibliography

1935
Inventory of the Objects d'Art at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, The Estate of the Late P.A.B. Widener. Philadelphia, 1935: 120-121.
1990
Ainsworth, Maryan Wynn. "Bernart van Orley, Peintre-Inventeur." Studies in the History of Art 24 (1990): 48-55, repro.

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