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The Lovers
Basel (present-day Switzerland)
1490/1500
- Medium
- Hemp, wool and silk, slit and double interlocking tapestry weave
- Classification
- Coverings and Hangings
- Dimensions
- 105.3 × 78.9 cm (41 1/2 × 31 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Basel
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Textiles
- Credit line
- Gift of Kate S. Buckingham
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In the late Middle Ages, domestic spaces contained relatively little furniture, mostly utilitarian chests, cupboards, and benches. Textiles in the form of cushions, bed hangings, and tapestries provided softening elements of warmth and color. Although Flemish and northern French workshops produced monumental tapestry series for princes and cathedrals throughout Europe, in the cities of Basel and Strasbourg, on the upper reaches of the Rhine, weavers specialized in more modest tapestries. They included many woman artisans. Their tapestries featured witty, secular subjects—lovers pledging their faith (as here), fabulous animals, and wild men—and often had a gently moralizing tone, indebted to early engravings produced in the same region.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
