page_title: Tapestry
section_title: List of famous tapestries
hierarchical_section_title: Tapestry / List of famous tapestries
caption_attribution_description: view of the Tapestry of the Apocalypse in Angers, France
context_page_description: Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike cloth weaving where both the warp and the weft threads may be visible. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous; the artisan interlaces each coloured weft back and forth in its own small pattern area. It is a plain weft-faced weave having weft threads of different colors worked over portions of the warp to form the design.
  Most weavers use a natural warp thread, such as wool, linen or cotton. The weft threads are usually wool or cotton but may include silk, gold, silver, or other alternatives.
context_section_description: The Trojan War tapestry referred to by Homer in Book III of the Iliad, where Iris disguises herself as Laodice and finds Helen "working at a great web of purple linen, on which she was embroidering the battles between Trojans and Achaeans, that Ares had made them fight for her sake." Though the composition of the Iliad spanned a period of approximately 700 years, it is worth noting that this method of weaving was in common use in or before the eighth century BC.
  The Cloth of St Gereon – second oldest European tapestry still extant.
  The Överhogdal tapestries - the oldest European tapestry still extant.
  The Sampul tapestry, woollen wall hanging, 3rd–2nd century BC, Sampul, Ürümqi Xinjiang Museum.
  The Hestia Tapestry, 6th century, Egypt, Dumbarton Oaks Collection.
  The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth — not an actual tapestry — nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, likely made in England — not Bayeux — in the 1070s
  The Apocalypse Tapestry depicts scenes from the Book of Revelation. It was woven between 1373 and 1382. Originally 140 m (459 ft), the surviving 100m are displayed in the Château d'Angers, in Angers.
  The six-part piece La Dame à la Licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn), stored in l'Hôtel de Cluny, Paris.
  The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, four Flemish tapestries dating from the mid-fifteenth century depict men and women in fashionable dress of the early fifteenth century hunting in a forest. The tapestries formerly belonged to the Duke of Devonshire and are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
  The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald, a tapestry dating from about 1450.
  The Triumph of Fame, a tapestry made in Flanders in the 1500s.
  The Hunt of the Unicorn is a seven piece tapestry from 1495 to 1505, currently displayed at The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
  Les Chasses de Maximilien (The Hunts of Maximilian) is a series of twelve tapestries woven in Brussels after the designs of Bernard van Orley.
  The Life and miracles of St Adelphus, an early 16th-century cycle of tapestries (four surviving parts), total length 20 m (66 ft), in the Église Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, Neuwiller-lès-Saverne.
  The tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, designed by Raphael in 1515–16, for which the Raphael Cartoons, or painted designs, also survive.
  The Jagiellonian tapestries, (mid 16th century) a collection of 134 tapestries at the Wawel Castle in Kraków, Poland displaying various religious, natural, and royal themes. These famous tapestries, created in Arras, were collected by Polish Kings Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus.
  The Valois Tapestries are a cycle of 8 hangings depicting royal festivities in France in the 1560s and 1570s
  The New World Tapestry is a 267 feet long tapestry which depicts the colonisation of the Americas between 1583 and 1648, displayed at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum; this is not (strictly speaking) a tapestry, but is instead embroidery.
  The History of Constantine, a series of tapestries designed by Peter Paul Rubens and Italian artist Pietro da Cortona in 1622.
  The Death of Polydorus, one of a set of seven tapestries showing a scene from the Iliad by Homer.
  The biggest collection of Flanders tapestry is in the Spanish royal collection, there is 8000 metres of historical tapestry from Flanders, as well as Spanish tapestries designed by Goya and others. There is a special museum in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, and others are displayed in various historic buildings.
  The Pastoral Amusements, also known as "Les Amusements champêtres", a series of 8 Beauvais Tapestries designed by Jean-Baptiste Oudry between 1720 and 1730.
  The Prestonpans Tapestry is a 104 metres long embroidery which tells the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Battle of Prestonpans.
  Le Bouquet  (1951) by Marc Saint-Saens is among the best and most representative French tapestries of the fifties. It is a tribute to Saint-Saens’s predilection for scenes from nature and rustic life. 
  Triumph of Peace (1953) by Peter Colf
caption: The Apocalypse Tapestry in the Château d'Angers, in Angers, France
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