The Four Seasons Tapestries

Abstract

The way that the identifiable print sources used as patterns for the total of 170 emblems in the borders of the Four Seasons tapestries at Hatfield House are handled can tell us something not only about the meaning of the emblems in their new medium and setting but also about their weaving process. Changes to the Latin mottoes and to pictorial detail are shown to be purely pragmatic in some cases but clearly motivated in others, whilst both are influenced not only by the received iconology but also by the art of rhetoric as taught in the Elizabethan schoolroom. These changes are highly likely to have been decided on by the patron who commissioned them, Sir John Tracy.

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