Month of May: Scene of May Day Festival (1723–1774): Art, History and Details

Month of May: Scene of May Day Festival (1723–1774) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gobelins Manufactory (France, Paris, est. 1662); Michel Audran (French, 1701–1771).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Seated spectators and splendidly clothed ladies and gentlemen on horseback watch May Day festivities in this tapestry. In the middle distance, archers prepare to shoot at a bush and bird placed atop a maypole, while more spectators congregate in the receding landscape. A border of rolled acanthus leaves and flower garlands frames the scene. This scene is one of twelve so-called Months of Lucas tapestries, each depicting activities that coincide with a month of the year. The original “Months of Lucas” was a sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry set that was owned by the French monarchy and mistakenly attributed to Lucas van Leyden during the 1600s. To this day, they continue to be known as the “Months of Lucas.” This original set was burned in 1797 so their gold and silver metal threads could be used to replenish the depleted French coffers. Beginning in the 1600s, the popular Months of Lucas were reproduced in several different versions under various masters at the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris, the famous royal production center for French tapestries since Louis XIV (1638–1715). The lower right hand corner of this tapestry bears the signature of Michel Audran (1701–1771), director of the Gobelins high-warp loom workshop from 1732–71, who produced this tapestry for a private patron in addition to the other royal commissions of the set.

Object facts

• Title: Month of May: Scene of May Day Festival
• Date: 1723–1774
• Creator attribution: Gobelins Manufactory (France, Paris, est. 1662); Michel Audran (French, 1701–1771)
• Culture: France
• Type: Tapestry
• Technique: tapestry weave: linen warp, wool and silk wefts
• Dimensions: Overall: 2841.9 x 454.3 cm (1118 7/8 x 178 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1944.133

Collection credit

The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fenaille, Maurice, Fernand Calmettes, and Jules Guiffrey. État général des tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins depuis son origine jusqu'a jours, 1600-1900. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, Hachette, 1903.
• Ffoulke, Charles Mather, Sarah Cushing Ffoulke, Glenn Brown, and Ernest Verlant. The Ffoulke Collection of Tapestries. New York: Priv. Print, 1913.
• Hunter, George Leland. "The Loan Exhibition of Tapestries." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 5, no. 8/9 (1918): 63-87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25136215

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.