# Julius Caesar (from the Heroes Tapestries) > Unknown South Netherlandish (or French) tapestry workshop - ca. 1400-1410 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/south-netherlandish-heroes-tapestries-workshop/nine-heroes-julius-caesar-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-01 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown South Netherlandish (or French) tapestry workshop - **Date:** ca. 1400-1410 - **Medium:** Wool warp, wool wefts (tapestry weave) - **Dimensions:** 165 1/2 x 93 11/16 in. (420.4 x 238 cm) - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** South Netherlandish or French, early fifteenth century (Late Gothic) - **Current location:** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, New York, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Normally on view in Gallery 18; as of this record's research the panel is off view, undergoing an intensive conservation treatment in the Museum's Department of Textile Conservation. - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A wool tapestry of about 1400-1410 showing Julius Caesar enthroned under a Gothic architectural canopy, crowned, armed with a falchion, and flanked by musicians and soldiers whose shields carry the double-headed eagle of the Roman empire. It is one of only five surviving figures from a set of Nine Heroes tapestries commissioned for an unidentified patron around 1400, a set scholars have proposed, without proof, belonged to Jean, duke of Berry.The panel's own history is a reconstruction as much as its subject's empire was. At some undocumented point the set was cut into pieces; by the early twentieth century the fragments had been resewn as curtains in a French household. The Metropolitan Museum acquired the surviving material in two campaigns fifteen years apart, a 1932 purchase and a 1947 gift, and four tapestry restorers spent nearly 6,700 hours piecing ninety-four fragments back into the hangings now on view. The Julius Caesar panel came entirely from the 1947 gift.The panel is currently off view again, mid-treatment in the Museum's own Department of Textile Conservation as part of a long-term study begun in 2018. Analysis of its dyes published in 2024 identified a lichen source never before confirmed in a historic textile, the first evidence that lichen dyes prepared by boiling water, rather than fermentation, were in use before the eighteenth century. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1400-1410** Unidentified commissioning patron; South Netherlandish or French workshop `[unknown]` (origin) Style and weave place manufacture in South Netherlandish or French hands around 1400-1410. The Museum's own 2024 dye-analysis study of this panel states plainly that it remains unclear exactly where, when, or for whom the Heroes tapestries were woven. Scholars have proposed Jean, duke of Berry, as the original patron, resting on the observation that ten of fourteen heraldic banners on the related Joshua and David hanging carry his coat of arms, with the remaining four split between the royal arms of France and those of his brother Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Against that reading, inventories of the duke of Berry's own collection do record Nine Heroes tapestries in his possession, but describe them as woven with gold and silver thread; the Cloisters set is wool only. The Museum treats the identification as suggestive, not proven, and this record follows that grading. - **-early 20th century** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No owner or location is documented for roughly five centuries between the panel's presumed weaving in the early fifteenth century and the reappearance of the Heroes tapestry fragments, cut apart and resewn as window curtains, in a French household in the early twentieth century. Which household, and when or why the tapestries were dismembered, is not stated in any source this research could verify. - **early 20th century-1947** An unnamed French household, then the New York art market `[documented]` (dispersal, reuse as curtains, and sale) Fragments including pieces later identified as the Julius Caesar panel were photographed on 28 August 1947, before restoration, still stitched together as functioning curtains. How the fragments moved from the French household to the market that supplied the Metropolitan is not documented in the sources this record could verify. A possible connection to the New York and Paris dealer Joseph Brummer, whose personal collection the Museum did acquire in 1947, surfaced in secondary search results but could not be traced to a citable primary source; it is not asserted here and is flagged for a researcher with access to the Cloisters Archives or the Brummer Gallery records at Duke University. - **1932** The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Munsey Fund purchase) `[documented]` (acquisition, first campaign (does not include this panel)) A first tranche of Heroes tapestry fragments entered the Museum in 1932 through the Munsey Fund, a purchase fund built from Frank Munsey's bequest, not a personal gift. This tranche did not include any part of the Julius Caesar panel. Caesar's own accession number, 47.101.3, is a single 1947 number with no 1932 component, unlike the King Arthur panel (32.130.3a; 47.101.4) and the Joshua and David panel (32.130.3b; 47.101.1; 47.152), both of which combine fragments recovered across both the 1932 and 1947 campaigns. This record notes the distinction because it is the only one of the four surviving named-hero panels, along with the uncertainly identified 47.101.2d, whose accession history is not split across the two campaigns. - **1947-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. `[documented]` (acquisition and restoration) The Julius Caesar panel entered the Museum's collection in July 1947 as a gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., accession number 47.101.3. Curators James Rorimer and Margaret B. Freeman reconstructed the fragmentary set on paper from black-and-white photographs; four tapestry restorers, Mathilda Sullivan, Helen O'Brien Burke, Aline von Arx, and Olga Wangen Larsen, then physically pieced the fragments back together, together logging 6,670 hours between July 1947 and the completion of the work on 15 May 1949, four days before the new Heroes Tapestries gallery opened at The Cloisters. The panel has remained in the Museum's collection since, and since 2018 has been the subject of a long-term Museum conservation and technical-study project; treatment and dye analysis of this specific panel began in September 2022. ## Open questions - Who commissioned the Heroes tapestries and for what building. The Jean de Berry hypothesis rests on heraldry on a different panel and is contradicted by the duke's own inventories, which describe his Nine Heroes tapestries as woven with gold and silver thread, unlike this wool-only set. - Exactly where the tapestries were woven. The Museum's own 2024 technical study of this panel could not decide between France and the Southern Netherlands. - When, and by whom, the tapestries were originally cut into fragments. The gap between the presumed early-fifteenth-century weaving and the fragments' early-twentieth-century reuse as curtains in a French household is entirely undocumented in the sources this record could verify. - Whether object 47.101.2d depicts Hector of Troy or Alexander the Great. The Museum's own catalogue title keeps a question mark on the identification. - What became of the four Heroes that do not survive in any recognized form (Judas Maccabeus, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon, and whichever of Hector or Alexander is not 47.101.2d). - How the tapestry fragments moved from the French household that used them as curtains onto the market that supplied the Metropolitan Museum, and whether the dealer Joseph Brummer was involved, as an unconfirmed secondary lead suggested. - What the promised separate publication on Julius Caesar's own conservation and acquisition history, flagged as forthcoming in the 2024 dye-analysis paper, will add once it appears. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Julius Caesar (from the Heroes Tapestries),' Collection object page, object number 47.101.3. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access API, object record 468233 (Julius Caesar). Note: this API's own primaryImage field for object 468233 returns a filename beginning 'lc-32-130-Arthur', i.e. a King Arthur file misattached to the Caesar record; this record does not use that image and instead uses a Commons-hosted file whose own filename embeds the correct accession number, cross-checked against the Museum's live object page and its own caption. - [3] Amelia Roche Hyde, 'The Heroines of Heroes,' The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Perspectives, March 4, 2022. - [4] Rachel M. Lackner, Solenn Ferron, Joel Boustie, Francoise Le Devehat, H. Thorsten Lumbsch, and Nobuko Shibayama, 'Unraveling a Historical Mystery: Identification of a Lichen Dye Source in a Fifteenth Century Medieval Tapestry,' Heritage 2024, 7(5), 2370-2384. - [5] The Field Museum, 'Identifying a Dye Source in a 15th Century Medieval Tapestry' (blog report on the Lackner et al. study). Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the primary Heritage paper wherever both are cited for the same fact. - [6] The History Blog, 'Conserving the Met's King Arthur tapestry,' December 10, 2022. Tertiary source reporting on the Museum's own conservation video of a different panel in the set; flagged for replacement with the Museum's primary conservation record if published. - [7] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access API, object record 467528 (King Arthur, from the Heroes Tapestries). - [8] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access API, object record 468232 (Hector of Troy (?), from the Heroes Tapestries). - [9] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access API, object record 468230 (Joshua and David, from the Heroes Tapestries). - [10] Wikimedia Commons, File:Julius Caesar and Attendants (from the Nine Heroes Tapestries) MET h1 47.101.3.jpg, licence and description metadata read via the Commons API. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.