Exhibition of the week

Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Through Jan. 6, 2008

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Tapestries are some of the least seen, and least understood, examples of European art, said Holland Cotter in The New York Times. “Tapestry? Doesn’t that come under home furnishings? Isn’t it, basically, rugs on a wall?” Actually, far from being artistic afterthoughts, tapestries were for centuries among the most expensive and prized possessions of European nobility. Playing the role both of propaganda and status symbol, these visions of battles, triumphs, and processions were the Hollywood blockbusters of their era, “Cinemascopic” in scale and designed to awe viewers with their splendor. They still do. The current display of masterpieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, assembled from museums all around Europe and the U.S., “is stupefying, a king-size display of a space-eating art.”

Though huge, these works explode with intricate detail, said Lance Esplund in The New York Sun. We’re overwhelmed by “an overabundance of life-size tumbling noblemen, horses, warriors, saints, and putti.” In backgrounds, plants weave themselves into intricate gardens and panoramas, while oceans in naval scenes teem with exotic sea life. Weavers of the era were remarkably capable of re-creating realistic textures and materials as well as three-dimensional architectural space. “Not every tapestry in the show is an absolute masterpiece from edge to edge, but in every work there is something astounding and absolutely hypnotic and unbelievable.” Many of the designs for these tapestries were sketched by master painters, such as Peter Paul Rubens and Raphael, and carried out by teams of weavers. The closer you look, the more “you realize that the artisans who translated the sketches were geniuses equal to their designers.”

The physical process of creating a tapestry was excruciatingly intricate, said Mario Naves in The New York Observer. With each guild member completing a square yard every month, “it would take four weavers anywhere from six months to a year and a half to complete a 12-by-24-foot tapestry.” Such meticulous care ensures that each square yard in this exhibition offers splendid discoveries. Some of the best come in smaller works depicting mythological or pastoral scenes. The delightful Maidservant With a Basket of Fruit (c. 1635), designed by the Flemish Jacob Jordaens, is “framed by a ridiculously ornate bit of architecture,” and behind the life-size title subject you can just make out two lovers “bathed in an eerie brownish light.” Perhaps the finest work in the show, it proves tapestry didn’t need to be ornate to be magnificent.