The Lovers (1490/1500): Artwork and History

The Lovers (1490/1500) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Basel (present-day Switzerland).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

In the late Middle Ages, domestic spaces contained relatively little furniture, mostly utilitarian chests, cupboards, and benches. Textiles in the form of cushions, bed hangings, and tapestries provided softening elements of warmth and color. Although Flemish and northern French workshops produced monumental tapestry series for princes and cathedrals throughout Europe, in the cities of Basel and Strasbourg, on the upper reaches of the Rhine, weavers specialized in more modest tapestries. They included many woman artisans. Their tapestries featured witty, secular subjects—lovers pledging their faith (as here), fabulous animals, and wild men—and often had a gently moralizing tone, indebted to early engravings produced in the same region.

Object facts

• Title: The Lovers
• Date: 1490/1500
• Artist attribution: Basel (present-day Switzerland)
• Place of origin: Basel
• Medium: Hemp, wool and silk, slit and double interlocking tapestry weave
• Dimensions: 105.3 × 78.9 cm (41 1/2 × 31 1/8 in.)
• Type: Coverings and Hangings
• Department: Textiles
• Reference number: 1922.5378

Collection credit

Gift of Kate S. Buckingham

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.