Set of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1704–31): Art, History and Details

Set of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1704–31) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gobelins Manufactory (France, Paris, est. 1662).

The work and its context

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

Each tapestry illustrates a scene from Metamorphoses, written by the ancient Roman poet Ovid. The poem is comprised of fifteen books and contains more than 250 myths. These tapestries were produced in Paris by the royal Gobelins Manufactory during the 1700s. Gobelins was founded in 1662 for the purpose of furnishing French royal homes with the highest quality textiles. Gold and silver thread and silk were woven together to create luxurious tapestries like these.

Object facts

• Title: Set of Ovid's Metamorphoses
• Date: 1704–31
• Creator attribution: Gobelins Manufactory (France, Paris, est. 1662)
• Culture: France
• Type: Tapestry
• Technique: tapestry weave
• Dimensions: Average: 327.7 x 322.6 cm (129 x 127 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1956.325

A detail from the museum

During the French Revolution, Gobelins tapestries were sometimes disassembled to harvest the gold threads.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Matthias Plum

Further reading listed by the museum

• Malloy, Katherine R. “Three Eighteenth-Century Gobelins Tapestries.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 2 (1957): 24–27.
• Standen, Edith A. “Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’: A Gobelins Tapestry Series.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 23 (1988): 149–191.

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.