Shepherds in a Round Dance (around 1500): Art, History and Details

Shepherds in a Round Dance (around 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Late medieval tapestries often use a limited yet contrasting color palette to portray stylized images. The expressions of these figures, for example, are conveyed more by their postures than by their faces. Four shepherds and shepherdesses join hands and dance to the music of a bagpiper at the far right, while a lord and two ladies on the left look on. A dog and sheep amid blossoming plants and trees contribute to the festive pastoral scene in front of a castle.

Object facts

• Title: Shepherds in a Round Dance
• Date: around 1500
• Culture: Netherlands, early 16th century
• Type: Tapestry
• Technique: Wool and silk: tapestry weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 360.5 x 401.1 cm (141 15/16 x 157 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1939.158

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., for the Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "The Coralie Walker Hanna Memorial Collection Gift of Leonard C Hanna." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 26, no. 6 (June 1939): 84-115

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.