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A historic tapestry illustrating the “Banquet of Cleopatra”

390 x 285 cm 12,7 x 9,3 ft

Workshop of AUBUSSON or AUBUSSON-FELLETIN

France

1640/50 circa

Woven in silk and wool  

Cleopatra and Mark Antony, richly dressed, attend an opulent banquet in a garden, surrounded by soldiers and servants. An elegant border richly adorned with flowers and foliage frames the scene.


Tapestries were used to richly decorate a house and keep the heat inside a room by diminishing the cold radiation of the stones. It could be quickly and easily disassembled to be transported to another house. From a millefleurs decor at the beginning of the art of tapestry, the weavers have managed to increase the woven surfaces allowing the narrative unfolding of a story (biblical, mythological or literary stories) through hangings, set of tapestries on the same subject.