2011 Annual Report - National Gallery of Art

28
� The Gothic Spirit
of John Taylor Arms
� The Invention
of Glory: Afonso V
and the Pastrana
Tapestries
Exhibiting
daughter as she sketches, and included friend and
author James Fenimore Cooper with his wife
and daughter. Executed in Paris and New York,
the Gallery of the Louvre was intended to inspire
and inform American audiences. An illustrated
booklet provided a key to the works of art in the
Louvre that Morse depicted in his painting.
For the first time in the United States some
of the finest surviving Gothic tapestries were
exhibited in The Invention of Glory: Afonso V
and the Pastrana Tapestries. The recently restored
tapestries commemorate the conquest of two
cities in Morocco by the King of Portugal,
Afonso V (1432–1481). Since the seventeenth
century the tapestries have been the property
of the Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the
Assumption in Pastrana, Spain. Because of
their quality and historical significance, the
Spanish government listed them as cultural
patrimony to be safeguarded during the
Spanish Civil War. An illustrated timeline
highlighted major fifteenth-century events
pertinent to the tapestries.
Text panels within the exhibition provided
English translations of the inscriptions on the
tapestries, summaries of the battles depicted,
and illustrations of key details in the visually
complex compositions. Three tapestries
depicting battles in Asilah were installed in
one large room. A curved wall in a second
room was designed to hold The Conquest of
Tangiers, the only tapestry to have traveled
previously to the United States for the 1991
Gallery exhibition Circa 1492: Art in the Age
of Exploration. A fully illustrated catalogue
accompanied the exhibition.