Getty Museum

Tapestry: L'Entrée de Sancho dans l'Ile de Barataria, from L'Histoire de don Quichotte Series

Date

1772

Medium

Silk and wool

Culture

French

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

In a scene from the Gobelins tapestry series L’Histoire de Don Quichotte (The Story of Don Quixote), based on the enormously popular romance novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Sancho, Don Quixote’s companion, ceremoniously arrives on the fictitious island of Barataria and is carried along the paved street amid a group of citizens. Tapestry weavers rendered the scene as if it were a painting in a gilt-wood frame, hung against a damask-covered wall, which is festooned with thick garlands of fruit and flowers. The picture frame rests on a base piled with armor, an axe, flags, and two cornucopias overflowing with fruit. The tapestry’s title is woven below in yellow thread. The same decorative field, known as the *alentours*, encloses each of the narrative scenes in the Getty Museum’s set of four Don Quixote tapestries.**

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