A 17th century tapestry cushion cover 

Hamburg, circa 1620

Woven in silks and wools with two angels holding palm leaves and, between them, a roundel containing a depiction of Samson and the lion. The angels stand among tulips and other flowers, and at their feet a dog pursues a hare, all within a border decorated with leaves, pears and tulips, squashes and pomegranates or medlars. In the lower border are set two coats of arms, one with a sword piercing a snake, the other with fleurs de lis.

The story of Samson and the lion is taken from chapter 14 of the Book of Judges. As Samson walked to the Philistine city of Timnath to converse with a woman that he wished to marry, a young lion ‘roared against him’…

6  And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.

The episode was relatively popular in the art of the first half of the 17th century, a painting by Rubens furnishing the design for several engravings and also for a large tapestry woven in the Brussels workshops of Jan Raes. This very different treatment, however, was peculiar to the weaving of tapestry cushion covers in the city of Hamburg and the surrounding states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig Holstein. Two examples ascribed to Schleswig Holstein appear in the Burrell Collection, nos. 47.31 and 47.34, with others, (one given to Lower Saxony, and one to Schleswig Holstein), illustrated in ‘Wandteppiche (III. Teil, Band 2): Die germanischen und slawischen Länder’, Heinrich Göbel, Leipzig 1934, as plates 86b and 98b. Similar examples were also sold at auction, as part of the Mayorcas Collection, Christie’s London, 12th February 1999, lot 364, and of the Gutmann Collection, Christie's Amsterdam, 13 May 2003, lot 32.

The more refined layout of the current panel suggests a Hamburg origin, as does the use of a very closely related border on a Hamburg cushion cover in the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Lübeck, also illustrated in Göbel as plate 97b.

Edged with gold braid and mounted on a stretcher. 23” (58.4cm) high and 21” (53.2cm) wide.