Hi Smites!
This week I thought I would veer away a little bit from the visiting of a certain place, and instead give you a tapestry tour of Paris and England as seen through my iPhone.
I'll start with the Cluny Museum in Paris, https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/en/
the National Museum of the Middle Ages. This is a museum I wasn't at all familiar with, the last time I was in Paris it didn't exist in its current form. The first day we checked into our hotel, we went for a walk and discovered it hiding just around the block. It underwent an emormous and quite wonderful upgrade in the last few years, and only opened in it's current form in Paris in 2023.
The bottom floor of the museum houses Roman baths, over which the museum was built. https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/en/site/the-ancient-thermae.html
We didn't realise that the museum only opens half of it's collection at a time - we had set aside the morning to visit, and the baths were only open in the afternoon on that day. If I'd realised what an incredible collection they have I would have set aside the full day.... in fact, I would go back to Paris just to spend a day or even two in there. It really is a remarkable museum, especially for someone like me who is obsessive and passionate about medieval art, but for anyone really.
But I digress! Tapestries. Amongst the absolute pirate's hoard of treasures in the museum is now housed the full suite of six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. They are in their own seperate room, hung on four walls, along with a real unicorn's horn hiding in the corner. (OK, its from a narwhal. A little pixie dust here please people!)
The tapestries are so incredibly beautiful. I saw them once before in Sydney, when they were brought to Australia for a special exhibition in 2018 - as I've now discovered, while this very room at the Musee de Cluny was being built to house them. There's actually a great webpage left from that exhibition that has better information about the tapestries than the Cluny website! https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artboards/theladyandtheunicorn/
The tapestries were made in the late 15th to early 16th centuries in Belgium, and today they are considered one of the great masterpieces of Western art. Five of the tapestries are commonly interpreted as depicting the five senses – taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. The sixth displays the words "À mon seul désir", meaning "to my only desire". The sixth tapestry's intended meaning is obscure, but has been interpreted as representing love or understanding. Each of the six tapestries depicts a noble lady with a unicorn on her left and a lion on her right.
The tapestries are worked in the millefleurs style, meaning thousand flowers. The figure of the lady is surrounded by countless flowers, orange trees, pines and oaks, as well as animals such as rabbits and dogs, a monkey and birds, along with the unicorn and the lion. You could look at them for hours. Sitting in the darkened room with the pieces, they give off a quiet power and beauty. We were so lucky that the museum wasn't busy, and Flo and I had a good 15 minutes in there completely alone with the lady and her beasts before anyone else turned up.
These are my own photos and video - there are a lot of better lit and more detailed ones at the links I've provided, and a lot more information, so go and have a detailed look if you are so inclined!
Just when we thought we had seen the Cluny textiles, through a few more galleries and we happened upon this beauty. Made around the same time, but this time in The Netherlands.
This next tapestry is at the Palace of Versailles, where we went the next day. It's a little different in that it's not a huge wall tapestry, its a chair in the Queen's bedchamber that took my fancy. I just love that little face.
In 1793, during the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was completely emptied. 17,000 lots of furniture and objects in the royal collections were dispersed at revolutionary sales. Since the beginning of the 20th century, generations of curators have passionately and untiringly hunted and identified furniture and objects that came from Versailles or were ordered for other royal or princely palaces in order to acquire them, and some have been restored to the Palace. There wasn't much (any really!!) information at the Palace about the pieces in each room, but from searching online I know that they are all contemporary to the pre-Revolution age of the building.
Here is another grand tapestry piece from one of the salon rooms in the Palace.
I think my favourite stop of all of our wanderings was Hever Castle. In case you haven't already figured it out, I am an absolute history NERD and I love history in general but particularly everything to do with medieval European and Tudor history. As a kid, the story of Henry VIII and his wives was one of my favourites, and I. have always had such a fascination with Anne Boleyn. Visiting her childhood home of Hever, the place where she was courted by the King, has always been on my bucket list so it was a massive, massive tick to go there. There will be more about Hever and the Tudor artworks, carvings and textiles there (just try and stop me), but just for today here are three wonderful tapestries from the castle - the last one is red because the room was badly lit and it was very difficult to get a photo. The piece in the first picture is hanging in the bedroom that is presumed to have been Anne's room, when she was living at the castle during Henry's courtship.
There's some a great articles linked below about all the tapestries, giving information about their size, stories and when they were made etc, as well as some better photos. In my search for links for you I also found a podcast about items in gallery. collections, and the first episode available is about the tapestries at Hever! I haven't listened yet but I am going to this afternoon while I stitch on my Lemonade Stand projects. (BTW have you signed up yet?? It's going to. be FUN)
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/past-matters/episodes/Three-tapestries---Hever-Castle-e4qd0b
Lucky last from London, my visit to the V&A Museum which is always an absolute treat. This tapestry was made around 1425 in the Southern Netherlands. The events of a hunt are shown from right to left. The tapestry is absolutely beautiful, and HUGE, and also notable for the wide variety of flowers shown in it including daisies, poppies, clover and red campion.