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The Triumph of Lust is one of four surviving tapestries from a set purchased by Mary of Hungary in 1544. Reinterpreting a long-standing medieval fascination with the conflict between the Vices and Virtues, the series places an eclectic selection of representative figures in a Renaissance setting, a sequence of triumphal cars. Unique to this series among sixteenth-century tapestries is the extant contemporary manuscript description of its complex iconography. This text, in Madrid, specifies that maistre pierre van aelst paintre d'anvers made the overall plan and the designs. A tour de force of imaginative design, the ensemble has long been recognized as one of Coecke's masterpieces in the tapestry medium.