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Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor
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The Camel (detail)
From a six-piece set of the Grotesques
Design by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer in the style of Jean Berain I; border design by Monnoyer and Guy-Louis Vernansal, ca. 1688
Woven at the Beauvais tapestry manufactory under the direction of Philippe Behagle or his successors, his widow Anne van Heuven, or his son Philippe Behagle, ca. 1690–1711
Wool and silk; 9 ft. 2 in. x 17 ft. 4 in. (279 x 528 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of John M. Schiff, 1977 (1977.437.1)
See an image of the entire panel.
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Long ascribed on stylistic grounds to Jean Berain I (1640–1711), the design of the Grotesques series was actually created by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636–1699), who was renowned at the court of Louis XIV as a painter and designer of ornamentation and flowers. The series depicted troops of theatrical entertainers and exotic animals framed by whimsical trellises and porticos in a narrow architectural space against a tobacco-yellow ground. The design was a modern development of the ancient grotesque form that had been revived during the Renaissance and which had formed a staple of tapestry design throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the early 1690s, sets of the Beauvais "Berain Grotesques" were sold to a number of leading French aristocrats, and in 1696 a set was purchased for the king's sumptuous "hunting lodge" at the Château of Marly. During the following years, the Grotesques became the Beauvais manufactory's most successful production. An estimated fifty full or partial sets were made. The design was ingeniously flexible. Like the millefleur and verdure designs of the past, the narrative fields were composed of components that did not follow a specific chronology and that could therefore be adapted easily to the dimensions of individual commissions. With large areas of the surface being essentially plain, the design was less demanding to produce than those with all-over landscape or illusionistic designs.
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