NEW YORK—Following the groundbreaking international loan exhibition "Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art five years ago, the Met has opened an equally stunning show of 17th Century wall hangings.
"Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor" exhibits, and the extensive catalog amply explains how the tradition of Renaissance tapestry passed on to the Baroque and the importance of textiles and their glamorous display at European courts.
Woven over years and decades and treasured for centuries, the 44 tapestries, as well as additional paintings and prints, clearly show the unfaded beauty and unsurpassed quality of a medium once so central to royal ceremonies and propaganda. In true succession of the earlier exhibition, the current display traces weaving techniques and styles from Flanders (present-day Belgium) to neighboring European courts. Favored for their traditional technique and skill, Flemish weavers left their economically unstable region and set up workshops abroad.
Their influence was soon felt throughout Western Europe. They employed contemporary designs, many of which were supplied by the most famed painters of the day including Peter Paul Rubens and Charles Le Brun, and started a new era of textile production.
Aided by new dyes, Baroque tapestries achieved subtly nuanced effects very much like their painted models through their fine palette but, both in dimension and materials, excelled their sister art. Like gold, silver, and jewels, as well as semi-precious stones (of which the Met is organizing an exhibition for July 2008), tapestries stood among the most luxurious of arts, and as political imagery, fulfilled important propagandistic purposes.
Whether the early throne canopy produced for Frederick II of Denmark, the Mortlake tapestries woven for the English royal family, or the complex and esthetically unparalleled weavings made at the royal Gobelins manufactory for Louis XIV, "Treads of Splendor" brings to New York the finest and most beautifully preserved 17th Century tapestries that for hundreds of years did, and often still do today, embellish the most celebrated castles in Europe.
Majestic in its scope, the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see and closely study many invaluable pieces of high Baroque art, and presents us with a court culture so characteristic of the "ancien régime."
'Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor' is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028) through January 6, 2008.
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