Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)

Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This tapestry illustrates a poem about human frailty, in which the stag represents Man. Here, Age and her hounds Heat, Grief, Heaviness, Cold, and Anxiety, drive the stag from a lake. A French inscription may be translated: Then Old Age mounts an all-out assault That drives him from the lake And unleashes upon him Pain and Doubt, Cold and Heat, and thus brings on Care and Trouble to seize him. And Age with wrinkled flesh And Heaviness make him flee Toward Sickness, the dreaded one.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)Old Age Drives the Stag out of a Lake and the Hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness Pursue Him: (from The Hunt of the Frail Stag)

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.