Hunters in a Landscape

Anonymous, 16th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Late sixteenth-century London experienced a massive influx of talent as Protestant artisans fled religious persecution in the Spanish Netherlands. This tapestry was probably made by Flemish weavers in Southwark, then situated just south of London and not subject to the city’s strict guild regulations. Low and wide, it was made for the open market, targeted to appeal to the English taste for tapestries hung between a room’s wooden wainscot paneling and its ceiling. The Flemish called such wainscot hangings “English style.” For refugee weavers restarting their businesses from scratch, a tapestry like this—woven with the image on its side—had the advantage of requiring only a single small loom at which one weaver could work quite comfortably. This setup was a far cry from the collaborative, commercial workshops of Flanders. In the same make-do spirit, the tapestry’s cartoon reuses existing design sources, collaged into a new landscape setting.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art