Leopard Hunt tapestry, unknown maker from Belgium

Exhibition Label: “Four Flemish Tapestries,” Dec-2009, Susan Earle
This richly detailed tapestry depicting a leopard hunt is closely related to a similar but borderless piece that is now housed in the Harvard Art Museum. The imagery is connected to medieval bestiaries-books containing fantastic descriptions of exotic animals that were legendary to Europeans. The menagerie portrayed here includes a giraffe, a basilisk (a mythical bird/reptile hybrid that could kill a man with a single look), a serpent, and leopards, who, according to the bestiaries, must be beguiled by a glass ball before being caught. The border of this piece, which is populated by allegorical figures and grotesques, resembles that of a Flemish tapestry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, possibly indicating that the two tapestries originated from a common regional school, likely near Brussels.