Artwork story
About Hawking Party
The artist and artwork
An unknown South Netherlandish workshop wove Hawking Party around 1500–1530 entirely from wool warp and wool wefts. Nearly nine feet high and more than twelve feet wide, it is a handwoven, weft-faced tapestry rather than embroidery: colored wefts cover the load-bearing warps. European weavers normally followed a full-scale colored cartoon, so both an unrecorded designer and skilled loom workers stand behind this enormous image.
The world around it
Tapestries were portable displays of status in late medieval and Renaissance castles, churches, and courts. By 1500, Low Countries towns, especially Brussels, led a trade that exported woven pictures throughout Europe, although The Met does not assign this work to a specific city. Hawking supplied food but was also aristocratic sport, and noblewomen sometimes practiced falconry alongside men. The scene turns that privilege into an ideal courtly world just as Italian Renaissance designs began reshaping Netherlandish tapestry art.
A detail to notice
The hunt has not yet become a chase. A richly dressed woman on a white horse raises a hooded hawk while an attendant holds her bridle and another mounted group waits at right. A small hound moves below, but the dark field offers no path or horizon. Instead, red, white, and blue flowers rise evenly around the people, horses, dog, and flying birds. This millefleurs, or thousand-flowers, ground makes the figures appear suspended inside a blooming pattern, turning a practical sporting party into permanent spring.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is tapestry made in Wool warp; wool wefts and held in the Medieval Art department.
Recorded dimensions include Overall: 105 x 148 1/2in. (266.7 x 377.2cm).
Subject terms include Birds, Men, Women, Dogs, Horses, and Flowers. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Gift of George Blumenthal, 1941.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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