The Toms Collection
Of Threads and Colours: Tapestries of the 16^th to 18^th Century

Payerne Abbey and Museum (Switzerland)
4 May – 22 September 1997
For this first public presentation, 23 major pieces were chosen in order to illustrate the diversity of the Toms Collection, bequeathed to the State of Vaud in 1994. The main centres of production in the Southern Netherlands were represented: Brussels first and foremost, but also Bruges and Audenarde. The influence or direct participation of leading painters of the time, including Bernard Van Orley, Michel Coxcie, Giulio Romano and Andrea Mantegna, can be recognised in these creations. Another group of tapestries made in Paris, Beauvais or Aubusson illustrated the parallel evolution of this art in France. Two Italian pieces of extreme rarity, woven between 1659 and 1663 in the workshops of Cardinal Barberini in Rome, constituted a focal point of the exhibition.

« Les vastes parois des bas-côtés de l’Abbatiale de Payerne, ses murs de pierre nue, se prêtent magnifiquement à la présentation de grandes tapisseries. On doit savoir en effet qu’au Moyen Age ces lieux étaient décorés de somptueuses polychromies ; on y accrochait aussi des tapisseries en certaines occasions solennelles : il était donc légitime que les tapisseries de la collection Toms y prissent place. » Cimaises, 01.06.1997