September from a set of The Months of Lucas

This tapestry is one from a twelve-piece series known as the Months of Lucas. Updated by the French artists Joseph Yvart and Charles Chasterlain, the core designs are based on a considerably earlier, sixteenth-century Netherlandish cycle, the so-called Months of Lucas, attributed to an artist in the circle of Bernard van Orley. Both the original Brussels-woven series and the Gobelins re-edition proved exceedingly popular and were woven multiple times. The set from which this September comes was made for the comte de Toulouse, son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan.

Credit: Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1944