The Hunts of Maximilian: May, the Assembly on the Heights of Boitsfort
Bernard van Orley (cartoons), Dermoyen workshop (weaving) (c. 1488-1541) · c. 1531
The hunt pauses in the forest on the heights of Auderghem, and behind the ridge of a hill you can just see the tower of the Brussels town hall and the towers of Sainte-Gudule. What is happening here is the assembly, the moment before the chase when the party gathers and eats. Servants lead and unload mules carrying baskets of provisions; far at the back others fill jugs from a barrel. At the right, cooks bustle around spits set before a wood fire. At the left a hunter flirts with a village girl, and in the undergrowth of the foreground the weavers hid tiny wild strawberries. The twins of Gemini sit in the medallion of the upper border, above the usual garlands of fruit and flowers.
The tapestry is the third of the twelve months of the Hunts of Maximilian, woven in Brussels around fifteen thirty-one after cartoons by Bernard van Orley in wool, silk and silver and gilt thread. It bears the Brussels city mark and the mark of the weaver Guillaume Dermoyen. From the French royal collections, it entered the museum in seventeen ninety-seven.
Did You Know? Tiny wild strawberries are woven into the undergrowth at the bottom of the scene.
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