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By Rev. C. Kerry. 



OME of the finest and largest tapestry hangings in 

 Derbyshire are to be found in the stately rooms at 

 Renishaw, the seat of Sir George Reresby Sitwell, Bart. 

 The principal suite ' consists of five hangings, of 

 which three are suspended in the great Drawing Room, and the 

 other two in the Ball Room. These are traditionally said to 

 represent the "Triumph of Solomon," and to have been purchased 

 in France by Sir Sitwell Sitwell when he was making the " grand 

 tour" about a hundred years ago. He left Christ Church, 

 Oxford, in December, 1789, or January, 1790, and, according 

 to tradition, travelled abroad before his marriage in the summer 

 of 1 79 1. The whole of these hangings, which were probably 

 placed in their present position on the completion of the great 

 Drawing Room in 1803, were executed in the seventeenth 

 century, at the atelier of Judoc de Vos, of Brussels, as may be 

 seen by his name and mark on the lower sinister margins of 

 the several pieces. The texture is singularly fine, there being 

 no less than nineteen threads of the warp, and forty-eight threads 

 of woof in one square inch of surface; an unmistakable 

 proof of the infinite labour bestowed on this example. The 

 seven magnificent hangings in the Queen's Gallery at Hampton 

 Court, representing the History of Alexander from the cartoons 

 of Le Brun, Louis XIV.'s minister of art, were woven by the 

 same tapisier. Sir George Sitwell believes that the Renishaw 



