Canopy of Charles VII: Two Angels Holding a Crown
Jacob de Littemont · 1425-1450
On a ground of vermilion red, a great golden sun with twelve rays, its beams crowded with a multitude of stars, fills the centre, while two flying angels in tunics sown with fleurs-de-lis hold a crown between them. The composition could not be simpler. The golden sun on red was one of the emblems of the kings of France in the fifteenth century; Charles the Sixth used it first, but the style, especially the sharp broken folds of the angels' albs, belongs to a later moment. The hanging was the dosser, the vertical back panel, of a canopy behind a throne of Charles the Seventh, the king whom Joan of Arc led to Reims. The design is attributed to Jacob de Littemont, painter to the king.
Wool and silk, nearly three metres square, the tapestry was woven between fourteen twenty five and fourteen fifty and is one of the rare surviving pieces of royal French furnishing from the reign. The Louvre bought it in Paris from the Machault family in two thousand and nine, with the help of the Société des Amis du Louvre and the national heritage fund, and it entered the collection in two thousand and ten.
Did You Know? Whoever sat on the throne beneath this hanging appeared to a visitor framed by a golden sun and a crown held down from heaven.
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