These two large-scale embroideries were purchased by the Lyon Museum of Fine Arts in 1970, to ornate the choir of the Chapel, which was then dedicated to the display of tapestries and sculptures. Their theme is the Trojan War, as they were inspired by Homer's famous ancient Greek poem, The Iliad. These two embroideries belong to a cycle of seven pieces, which we call a hanging.

The other three are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Another is in private hands, owned by individual collectors, and the last, unfortunately, has not been located since 1934, when it came onto the Florentine art market.

The seven embroidered panels are linked by the coats of arms at the corners of each canvas, attributed by heraldry experts to Dom Francisco Mascarenhas, a Portuguese nobleman who was appointed governor of Macao from 1623 to 1626.

Since Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India at the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese had established a whole series of trading posts on the coasts of Africa, India and as far afield as Asia. Macao, south of Canton in China, became one of these trading posts in 1557.

It is highly likely that Dom Francisco Mascarenhas commissioned this embroidered cycle from Chinese workshops. Each embroidered canvas represents an episode from the Trojan War, the famous confrontation between the Greeks and the Trojans.

As inspiration source, the Chinese embroiderers might have used engravings, probably brought to Asia by European travelers, merchants and mainly Jesuits. Some of the embroidered canvases were inspired by vignettes engraved in Lyon in the 16th century, based on drawings by Bernard Salomon, a famous Renaissance artist from Lyon. The engraved vignettes were transposed to produce a scale cardboard which was then used by Chinese embroiderers.

China was one of the cradles of the art of embroidery, particularly during the Ming dynasty. The Canton area specialized in the manufacture of large embroideries with relief motifs, bearing particularly three-dimensional effects and a rich chromatic palette.

Two workshops and two kinds of specialized artists probably worked on this hanging more or less simultaneously. On the one hand, Chinese embroiderers, needlepointing cotton threads, metallic threads and threads with silver highlights. On the other hand, painters, probably trained by the Jesuits in Western methods – mastering perspective, shadow rendering and modelling. To achieve these pictorial effects, they used satin inserts. This explains the superimposition of both techniques on the same embroidered canvas.

The cycle begins with the abduction of the Greek princess Helena by the Trojan prince Paris. This offence against the king of Sparta starts the Trojan War and leads to the fall of this mythical city.

The two embroideries held in Lyon depict episodes that follow one another in the order of the story. The story begins with the death of Polydoros. The young man is discovered dead on the shore by his mother Hecuba, Queen of Troy, accompanied by her handmaidens. In the second embroidery, Hecuba and the maids take revenge by gouging out the eyes of the murderer, the treacherous King Polymestor.

The theme of these embroideries was not chosen by chance. The commissioner, if indeed the Governor of Macao, favored an iconographic cycle tinged with violence to insist on his power and domination in the region. The governor was appointed in the aftermath of the Battle of Macao, the confrontation with the Dutch enemy in 1622. He deliberately chose this iconographic program, no doubt to emphasize the legitimacy of the Portuguese presence in Asia and the hub represented by Macao, a port city perfectly situated between Portugal - the head of the Empire - and its extremity, Nagasaki. To underpin this legitimacy, the embroidery of The Death of Polydoros features the city of Macao on its left side and two references to Lisbon on its right, two emblematic monuments being represented: the Belém Tower, from which ships set sail to conquer the world, and the Hieronymite Monastery, which houses the grave of the explorer Vasco de Gama.

The two embroideries of the Lyon Museum of Fine Arts have recently undergone a fundamental restoration, enabling us to rediscover the pictorial quality of the satin inserts, the legibility of the scene and to appreciate the liveliness and freshness of the colours of embroideries made over 400 years ago.

The monumental format of these embroideries, as well as their quality of execution, which exemplifies the encounter of cultures - Far Eastern on the one hand and European on the other - entitles them to a unique status, this of exceptional artworks.