Getty Museum

Tapestry: La Poltronnerie de Sancho à la chasse, from L'Histoire de don Quichotte Series

Date

1772

Medium

Silk and wool; modern cotton support straps and lining

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, the armored knight Don Quixote leads a hunt for wild boar while his terrified companion, Sancho, climbs a tree trunk to the left. 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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