Devonshire Hunting Tapestries — Porkopolis Art Museum

Devonshire Hunting Tapestries - Boar and Bear Hunt

Boar and Bear Hunt
[from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries]
(ca. 1425-30), woven tapestry with wool warp and weft
33.5 x 15.9 ft. (10.2 x 4.85 m.)
Victoria and Albert Museum
1000 x 362 (103 KB)

Click on the numbered thumbnails below image map
to view details of these three sections of the tapestry.

About the Artist

Anonymous, Southern Netherlands, (ca. 1425-30). This is one of a set of four tapestries, all with a hunting theme, commissioned from a workshop, probably in Arras or Tournai, and crafted by a group of unknown designers and artisans. The tapestries are woven from wool and colored with natural dyes.

The importance of the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries is that tapestries of this scale and quality of design have actually survived to the present day. While many magnificent hangings or tapestries were supplied to the courts of Europe, most all are known to us now only from records in accounts and inventories.

The interests of the time are reflected in the hunting activities these tapestries depict. The elaborate rituals of the hunt were an integral part of court etiquette, and skill in hunting was regarded as the peacetime equivalent of prowess in chivalric wars.

Depicted here is the “Boar and Bear Hunt. The other three from the set are: 'The Deer Hunt,' 'Falconry,’ and 'The Otter and Swan Hunt.’

Additional information

Woolley, Linda. Medieval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2002.