The Offering of the Heart
Unknown · c. 1400-1410
Against a stylised ground of flowering plants, a lady sits with a falcon on her gloved left hand while a young man walks toward her holding out a tiny heart. The falcon does not make this a hunting scene; it is a conventional sign of the aristocratic world. The gift of the heart, one of the favourite themes of courtly imagery, is a poetic image of a declaration of love, the moment that opens a life of adventure and exploits, as in the Romance of the Rose. Both figures wear the fashions of around fourteen hundred: wide mantles lined with ermine, and for the man a short fitted doublet, hose of two different colours and long pointed shoes called poulaines. Look for the small animals among the plants.
The tapestry is one of the very few surviving secular hangings of the years around fourteen hundred and was probably woven in Arras, then the great centre of the craft. It belonged to Baron Jean-Charles Davillier, who bequeathed it to the Louvre in eighteen eighty three; it was deposited at the Musée de Cluny between nineteen forty eight and nineteen eighty six.
Did You Know? The young man's hose are two different colours, the height of fashion around fourteen hundred and a detail the weavers took care to record.
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