Bernard Van Orley - Later Life

Later Life

He became a member of the Brotherhood of St. Sebastian in the church of St. Gaugericus. More than half of the members of this brotherhood were weavers by profession.

In his later years (1521–1530) he made the twelve small cartoons (also called with their French name petits patrons), perhaps with the help of Jan Geethels, for his best-known tapestry series "The Hunts of Maximilian", one tapestry for each month (Louvre, Paris). They were commissioned by emperor Charles V or someone at the imperial court. It took two years and sixty weavers to realize them. These hunts took place in the wide vicinity of Brussels or in the Sonian Forest. In those cartoons rigidity of the composition is making way for a greater dynamism. He displayed his creative talent for depicting large-scale scenes of imaginary hunts within a realistic, picturesque, minutely detailed landscape. Bernard van Orley sought for this the help of specialists in the matter and consulted the Livre de Chasse (Hunting manual) by Gaston Phoebus With those cartoons he, and also Johannes Stradanus, set the example for their followers by opening up new paths in Italianism with his classic breadth and ease in transforming the rendering of landscapes., successfully integrating it into Netherlandish traditional modes. This dynamism would reach its peak in the Baroque style, especially by Peter Paul Rubens. The iconography of hunting parties would be greatly imitated by the tapestry workshops of the Leyniers family, - especially Everaert Leyniers (1597–1680) - the leading dyers and weavers in Brussels for over four hundred years.

Another famous set of tapestries were commissioned by Henry III of Nassau-Breda at about 1528-1530. They were to glorify the ancestors of the House of Nassau. The tapestries were lost in a fire in 1760, but the cartoons still exist (Metropolitan Museum, New York). These tapestries were among the first to unite equestrian portraiture with more informal group portraiture.

The Battle of Pavia is another set of seven tapestries on display in the Museo di Capodimonte (Naples, Italy), while the seven small cartoons are owned by the Louvre, Paris. Van Orley showed to the viewer in grand-scale scenes a detailed historical authenticity with lifesize figures within imagined surroundings.

The tapestry Hercules carrying the Heavenly Spheres was commissioned by king John II of Portugal in 1530 and can be seen in the Royal Palace of Madrid. The armillary was a symbol of the king of Portugal.