Pastrana Series: Assault on Asilah
Origin: Real Fábrica de Tapices, Madrid, Spain
Dating: 1949
Material: Wool & Silk
Dimensions (cm): 490 x 1057
Inv. no.: PD0145
Assault on Asilah
On the upper part, there is an incomplete Gothic legend, written in Latin, which describes Assault on Asilah as happening on the 24th August 1471. It “began before dawn and after the king had exhorted the men at arms”. Through holes in the walls caused by cannon shots or climbing scaling ladders, the Portuguese invaded the city. They fought vehemently against their besieged enemies, “resulting in a barbaric slaughter in a battle between the Portuguese victors and the desperate yielded, which lasted until midday”.
The “Siege of Asilah” Pastrana Tapestry depicts a more static field, as if they were waiting for the moment to attack. However, the tapestry has more dynamic representations in showing the troops’ movements during the siege as well as in the movements of the defending Muslims who are inside the walls.
The disposition of the Portuguese troops is similar to that of the “Siege of Asilah” Tapestry: the camp inside the defensive wall, Asilah is in the middle and the topsails of the vessels are seen on the upper side and along the Tapestry.
On the right-hand side, one may see King Afonso V on horseback, wearing a fine suit of armour, with his crown on his helmet now wielding his sword. On the left side, one may observe Prince João on horseback, wearing luxurious clothes and a helmet with plumes and cabochons, now grasping the Command baton. According to Luís Vaz de Camões, the Prince was “a gentle, strong and brave Knight”.
Pastrana Tapestries
The “Pastrana Tapestries” are known by this name for they are the unique copies of the ones made during the last quarter of the 15th century. The original ones may be found in the Pastrana Collegiate, in Spain.
The series narrates Portuguese exploits in the North of Africa, in 1471, during the reign of Afonso V: the conquest of Asilah (three tapestries) and the taking of Tangier (one).
It is believed that they were made by royal command during the third quarter of the 15th century in one of the Manufacturing Centres in Flanders.
According to Maria Antónia Quina, these tapestries would take between 3 to 5 years to be made, on four looms operating simultaneously, overseen by 16 to 20 craftspeople.
In Europe, as well as in the whole world, these tapestries are considered to be unique for they retract, with documented historical accuracy, the military events that occurred.
“Music in the Palace’s Collections”
«Of great size, the Pastrana tapestries may be considered an exception to other examples that have survived to this day, as they represent events contemporary to their creation, unlike their counterparts. Being considered a luxury at the time, they were property for the high clergy and for high nobility, which had the economic means to have them woven. Due to the status they conferred to their owners, they were even transported on voyages […], possibly to decorate empty chambers in which they would have to stay.
The tapestries with musical elements are the three on the taking of Asilah, respectively, the Disembarkation, the Siege and the Assault. Musically, and as settings for the fights in the taking of Asilah, the trumpets depicted, straight and bent, contextualized in the actions, are instruments for command signals […]. With two versions of the musical instrument coexisting at the time, the Italian trumpet (or natural) and the Spanish trumpet (or “bastard”), it is difficult to identify if both are represented in the Tapestries.
The vocal pose of the trumpeters is not the same in all musicians: some hold the instrument with only one hand and others with both hands, with the particularity that the hand closest to the mouthpiece is in a position that would allow the tube of the instrument to slide, shortening or lengthening it. The presence or absence of a ring where the tube would insert the other – if it exists – is confused with the place where the pennants were attached. Thus, it is not guaranteed that the trumpets in the tapestries are “natural” or “bastard” or both.
The tapestry representing the disembarkation from the ships into the barges, that took them to land, is the one that contains the greatest number of trumpets. Thus, […] excepting the flagship – on the left, where the king and prince are recognizable – there are 13 vessels. In seven of them, two trumpets are visible; in four [vessels], only one [trumpet] is seen, added to that of the flagship. Naturally, all the ships should have two instrumentalists, but music was not an important detail for the artist or […] he “portrayed” what could be seen in the disembarkation. In all, there are 19 trumpets, of which only four are straight.
In such a military context, the function of the trumpet was to transmit orders or command signals. As they all seem to be being played simultaneously, it can also be interpreted as a moral boost for the attacking soldiers, along with demoralizing objectives for the contraries. Naturally – as with the walls of Jericho – the joint noise along with the sounds of the trumpets, aimed to rattle the contraries, so that they would get disorganized and the attack have better results.
In the two other tapestries of the Taking of Asilah set, one finds nine trumpets represented in the Siege of the city and six trumpets in the Assault.
In all of the representations, the musicians are in playing position, with one exception, in the Assault, in which the musician appears with the trumpet in a resting position and with the bell in the opposite direction to the others.
[…]
From the medieval period until the 18th century, the signals or orders in the military context – where war is included – were mainly based on drums, pailas or timbales and on loud wind instruments such as trumpets. Most of the time, if not always, these players were not musicians. The signals or commands used between two and four sounds, achieved through greater or lesser lip pressure on the mouthpiece of the instrument. This means that it was not necessary to know music to memorize these sound patterns “by ear”. Their main calls on the battlefield conveyed the following orders or commands: “enter”, “load” and “retreat”. In addition to these, each regiment had its own calls which, in France, Louis XIV came to standardize and which would serve as an example for other armies.»
Eduardo Magalhães
“Flora in the Palace’s Collections”
«The execution of tapestries or panels, which met the orders destined for the most illustrious households in Europe, came, from the 15th century onwards, from Paris […] Arras, Tournai, Lille and Brussels, in Flanders. These were the centres where the tapestry workshops existed which, for decades, were capable of producing a regular volume of quality pieces.
Tournai – one of the French enclaves in the heart of the Duchy of Burgundy’s domains – was the place where the tapestries named of Pastrana were likely manufactured – they are currently in the Collegiate Church of Pastrana, in Spain. The style and the complex spatial arrangement – considering the architecture, the landscape, the animals and characters – seem to be comparable to the technique found in another series of tapestries, The History of the Trojan War, with the design attributed to the Master of Coetivy (ca. 1465), dated between 1475-95, belonging to the collection of the Zamora Cathedral Museum and attributed to the same weaving workshop in Tournai.
The trader and tapestry merchant Pasquier Grenier – who lived and based his commerce in the city of Tournai – is documented as the intermediary between several European patrons and tapestry workshops, and as an important member of the local tapestry guild. Regarding the series The History of the Trojan War, Grenier was the owner of the cartoons and is believed to have subcontracted the most efficient workshops to execute the work promptly, but with high quality – According to the most recent estimates, a series of 6 tapestries, between 5 × 8 meters, required employing 30 weavers for a period of 8 to 16 months, excluding the time involved in the design, preparation of the cartoons and organization of the looms (CAMPBELL, 2002B). In the absence of documentation on the order or manufacture, it is likely that it was Grenier who received the royal order for the Pastrana tapestries. Although it is a subject of debate as to who commissioned them (ARAÚJO, 2012; CAMPBELL, 2002C: 22), it seems likely that the order took place in the reign of King Afonso V – for the exaltation and propaganda of the dynastic deeds.
[…]
Although workshops could resort to the valuable contributions of professional painters or royal painters – to devise the designs of the cartoons that would serve as a models for the weavers – the minute floral details that filled the entire ornate background of the large tapestries would not be part of the original design laboriously conceived by such painters, nor would the meticulous work of the draughtsmen who adapted the original design so that it could be copied for the tapestries. As far as it is known, medieval tapestries were woven piece by piece and some patterns were repeated in different areas of the tapestry, as a way of approach to the reproducibility of images, which was at the basis of the mechanical movable system in the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press (DIDI-HUBERMAN, 2002).
This technique is particularly clear in the representation of flowers and plants which, produced many times in a mirror image in the same tapestry, suggest the use of the same cartoon repeatedly, which could be used in other series of tapestries, regardless of where the pieces were produced.
The proximity of the production centres, the mobility of artisans, the business practice of merchants moving between cities and between weaving centres, the geographical itinerancy of the patrons’ own emissaries, and the exchange of cartoons between workshops, meant that the diverse activities that took place simultaneously – in the various centres where the workshops and tapestry markets were located – transcended regional borders (CAVALLO, 1993: 64-71).
Therefore, the Pastrana tapestries present themselves as an interesting field of study, regarding the method of transferring orders, from order to order, and where one observes the contamination of other production centres in terms of filling every space in a horror vacui [“vacuum horror”].
However, the representation of flora is more simplified and disperse than in other cases, allowing, nevertheless, the approximate botanical identification of the standard plant – on the assumption that the vast majority of plants belong to the indigenous European flora, all mixed in their flowering, regardless of the seasons, as if witnessing a botanical miracle.
[…]
While some plants would be delineated in a natural way, others would acquire inventive forms, so they do not allow precise identification – possibly because the lineage of cultures and hybridizations caused them to disappear or transform – and cannot be recognized nowadays.
At the time, the observation of the natural world was not governed by any taxonomic classification system – such as the one developed from the 17th century onwards and that still prevails today as the scientific identification method – so, the important thing during the previous centuries, was to represent certain characteristics of flowers or plants to better emphasize a transcendent relationship on a religious level, or in their use in medicinal or aggro-alimentary practices. Despite this, it is now evident that – particularly in northern Europe – the botanical representations in these tapestries, were the first step towards the scientific study of plants (CROCKETT, 1982).
The plants that seem to float in the field and in the idealized landscape – through the areas that the compact action of the narrative allows one to see – are identified both as species in land-field and cultivated garden environments. Most ought to represent the familiarity or ubiquity of their presence in rural or gardened lands. Their profusion – in the space left empty among the historical scenes – resembles more a catalogue or flora collection, than a record of symbolic interpretations suggested by the tapestries with courtly, hunting or religious motifs that, during the late medieval period, followed the mystical concepts postulated in various writings.
Some plants identified in this series are indisputably among the most represented in millefleurs tapestries. The violets, wild strawberries, hyacinths, primula, cowslips, dianthus, daffodils, periwinkles, arums or bellflowers are examples of this. Others may not have been as common such as saffron, the bird’s-foot or the briza. But they all figure scattered throughout the vast woven space of the Pastrana series, although we cannot associated them with a precise symbolism. [I]n this case, they all belong to the great encyclopedia of knowledge of classical-medieval origin – of erudite or religious nature – and to the traditions of rural empirical knowledge.
However, within the total set of forty-four plants identified in the tapestries, some stand out as structural, with a broad semiotic spectrum regarding the dominion ideology in a Christian kingdom, interrelated with the narrative. Suggesting this open reading in the field of Christian ideology and royal power, one finds some trees that – either by houses and walls or dispersed in conspicuous areas in the tapestries – are represented with well-defined fruits and flowers, contrasting with the small, undefined tufts of trees scattered across the horizon.
A small group of trees are distinguishable – in every way – and seem to converge in a crossroads of symbols and transcendent functions. Codified in the visual world of the European Christian ideology, they served to rectify the ostentation of weapons and – according to the contemporary doctrine of the Portuguese crown – of chivalric cult and of heroic and grandiose deeds; they were privileged elements of the natural world, filled with supernatural signs ordered by the Divine Creator, which justified and coincided with the expansionist plans in North Africa – comparatively to the appropriation of the fruits of the biblical Promised Land and the ineffable sweetness of Paradise.»
Sasha Assis Lima
