Threads of Splendour

We tend to regard tapestries as museum pieces, rather than as works of art, partly because modern homes don't need vertical carpets to hide stone walls and to keep out the chill, and partly because they were made by needlewomen. But artists designed them, and in their heyday the best artists would be employed to design tapestries for castles and palaces. This detail from Charles Le Brun's The Battle of Granicus (ca 1663-65) proves the point (title link). It's one of 45 rare works in an autumn exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, opening in October: Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor. This is the first comprehensive survey of high-quality 17th-century European tapestry and follows the Met's critically acclaimed Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, shown in 2002.