The Glorification of Venus

In 1716, the Viscounty of the Oudburg in Ghent commissioned a series of tapestries devoted to the Exaltation of the Gods. The Viscounty was a fief of the County of Flanders, located within the walls of the Counts’ Castle. Barely a year later, the tapestries were hung in the Castellany. The Oudburg arms appears in the middle of each tapestry…

In 1716, the Viscounty of the Oudburg in Ghent commissioned a series of tapestries devoted to the Exaltation of the Gods. The Viscounty was a fief of the County of Flanders, located within the walls of the Counts’ Castle. Barely a year later, the tapestries were hung in the Castellany. The Oudburg arms appears in the middle of each tapestry. Oudburg College was closed down during the period of French revolutionary occupation and the Viscounty building was demolished. The series ended up in the Museum of Fine Art in 1904, having had several homes in the interim. The last of the five tapestries, The Exaltation of Venus, offers a kind of summary of the others. The Goddess of Love, surrounded by putti or amoretti, is enthroned on a cloud from where she rules over land and sea. Humans and gods alike are under her dominion – she is admired by all Olympus, represented here by Jupiter and his wife Juno, Apollo, Mars and the demigod Hercules with his lion-skin and club. Neptune and his retinue gaze up at her longingly from the sea, and even the chaste Diana, slumbering beneath a canopy, is the target of an amoretto’s arrows and the prying eyes of satyrs. In the upper left of the tapestry, we see Venus and Mars in a adulterous embrace. Mars symbolises the thirst for power, while Venus stands for the tenderness of love – opposing forces that merge harmoniously in the balanced personality.