# The Unicorn Tapestries > Unknown designers, cartoons French, woven in the southern Netherlands - c. 1495-1505 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unicorn-tapestries-workshop/the-unicorn-tapestries/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown designers, cartoons French, woven in the southern Netherlands - **Date:** c. 1495-1505 - **Medium:** Wool warp with wool, silk, silver and gilt wefts - **Dimensions:** Seven hangings across eight accession numbers. 37.80.1, 368.3 x 315 cm; 37.80.2, 368.3 x 378.5 cm; 37.80.3, 368.3 x 426.7 cm; 37.80.4, 368.3 x 401.3 cm; 37.80.5, 368.3 x 388.6 cm; 37.80.6, 368 x 251.5 cm; and the two fragments 38.51.1, 168.9 x 64.8 cm, and 38.51.2, 198.1 x 64.8 cm, which are remains of a single seventh hanging. - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** South Netherlandish, late fifteenth century - **Current location:** The Met Cloisters, New York, Gallery 17 - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary Seven hangings woven in the southern Netherlands around 1500, of which one survives only as two narrow fragments. They were given to the Metropolitan Museum by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1937 and 1938 and they are the reason the Cloisters looks the way it does.They are also a set whose titles have changed. The Met now calls the last one The Unicorn Rests in a Garden; the world calls it The Unicorn in Captivity. Six of the seven are catalogued under names different from the ones in most books. Anyone citing a plate has to say which accession number they mean. ## 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. - **c. 1495-1505** Unknown patron `[unknown]` (origin) No commission document is known. The AE cipher on every hanging is the only evidence of ownership at the point of manufacture and the Met records it as unidentified. - **c. 1505-1680** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) Roughly 175 years with no documented owner. The Met states that no documentation sheds light on the early history of the tapestries, including either their commission or their sequence of hanging. - **1680-1728** Francois VI de La Rochefoucauld, Paris `[documented]` (first documented appearance) The earliest documentary trace of the set. The Met records that the tapestries are first documented in 1680, when they hung in the Paris home of Francois VI de La Rochefoucauld, the author of the Maximes. This is a record of possession, not of acquisition: how the family came by them is unknown. - **1728-1793** The La Rochefoucauld family, Chateau de Verteuil, western France `[documented]` (descent) By 1728 the set had moved to the family chateau at Verteuil, where five of the hangings decorated a bedroom. The other two are not located by the Met's summary at this date. - **1793-1850s** Lost. Looted during the French Revolution `[documented]` (loss) The Met states that the tapestries were looted during the French Revolution and recovered in the 1850s. Where they were in the intervening decades is not documented by the museum. The widely repeated story that they were used in a barn to cover vegetables or to protect fruit trees from frost is family tradition and is deliberately not asserted in this record. - **1856-1922** The La Rochefoucauld family, Chateau de Verteuil `[documented]` (recovery and return) By 1856 the tapestries had been restored and rehung in the chateau's salon. They remained with the family until the sale to Rockefeller in the early 1920s. - **1923-1937** John D. Rockefeller Jr., New York, bought from Comte Aimery de La Rochefoucauld through the dealer Edouard Larcade `[documented]` (purchase) The Metropolitan Museum's provenance now names the seller, the dealer and the year: Comte Aimery de La Rochefoucauld, chateau de Verteuil, until 1923, then Mr and Mrs John D. Rockefeller Jr., in 1923 through Edouard Larcade, until 1937. Margaret B. Freeman, in the museum's own catalogue, dates it more closely: six of the hangings, not the fragmentary one, were shown at the Anderson Galleries in New York in 1922 under Larcade, and the sale was officially consummated in London in February 1923. The two fragments came separately from comte Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld, until 1938. The PRICE is still not stated by the museum or by Freeman. A figure of 1.1 million dollars is reported by a Paris Review essay and is carried in this record as a magazine account only. Corrected 2026-09-27: this note previously said the museum stated none of this, which was true when written and is no longer. - **1937-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters `[documented]` (gift) Six hangings, 37.80.1 to 37.80.6, gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937. The two fragments of the seventh, 38.51.1 and 38.51.2, gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1938. All eight are in Gallery 17 and all eight are flagged public domain in the museum's open access data. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The set has never been sold at public auction. It passed by private sale to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and by gift to the Metropolitan Museum. Any price attached to it in print is a reported private figure, not a hammer and not a premium, and this record carries none until one is cited to a source. ## Exhibitions - Permanent display, Gallery 17, The Met Cloisters, New York, 1938-present ## Literature - 2020, A Blessing of Unicorns: The Paris and Cloisters Tapestries. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Listed by the Met against this object and free to download. It treats the Cloisters set together with the Musee de Cluny Lady and the Unicorn, which is the comparison most often made badly. - n.d., The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture. Metropolitan Museum of Art, free to download. The standard museum handbook for the building the tapestries anchor. - n.d., Creating the Cloisters. Metropolitan Museum of Art, free to download. The account of how Rockefeller's gifts became the museum. ## Open questions - Who commissioned the set? The AE cipher appears on every hanging and the Met says it alludes to original owners who remain unknown. - Is this one set or several? The Met records that striking differences in dimension and composition have prompted scholars to question whether the hangings constitute one set or are from multiple sets. - Was The Unicorn Rests in a Garden made for this series at all? The Met records the possibility that it was a single image. - Who designed the cartoons, and in which workshop were they woven? The Met gives Paris for the design and the southern Netherlands, probably Brussels, for the weaving, and no names. - How did the La Rochefoucauld family come to own them? The 1680 Paris record is one of possession, not of acquisition, and nothing earlier is documented anywhere. - Where were the tapestries between the looting of 1793 and the recovery in the 1850s? Freeman records that there is no account of the damage they suffered while they were away. The barn stories are family tradition: Freeman's authority for the old curtains covering vegetables is a letter written to her by the La Rochefoucauld family in 1968, and the potatoes and espalier trees come from a later account she quotes rather than from a record. Neither is asserted here. - What happened to the rest of the seventh hanging? Two strips survive out of a hanging that would have been comparable in size to the others. - What did Rockefeller pay? The Metropolitan Museum and Freeman both name the seller, the dealer and the year and neither states a price. The only figure traced is 1.1 million dollars in a Paris Review essay of 2020, which gives no source of its own. Freeman's own notes point at the New York Times coverage of 27 February, 2 March and 7 March 1923, which this record has not yet read. - How many plant species have actually been identified? The Met's object page says 85 of 101; the audio guide on the same page says over 85 per cent, and the two do not agree. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Hunters Enter the Woods (from the Unicorn Tapestries), accession 37.80.1, object 467637. Carries the medium, dimensions, date, culture line, credit line and gallery. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (from the Unicorn Tapestries), accession 37.80.6, object 467642. Carries the museum's reading of the pomegranate, the plants, the red marks and the possibility that this hanging was a single image. - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records for The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden, accessions 38.51.1 and 38.51.2, objects 467653 and 467654. The two fragments, their dimensions, and the 1938 credit line. - [4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Unicorn Defends Himself, accession 37.80.4, object 467640. Records the AVE REGINA COELI scabbard inscription. - [5] The Metropolitan Museum of Art public collection API, object records 467637, 467638, 467639, 467640, 467641, 467642, 467653 and 467654. Queried directly for this record: it is the source of the accession numbers, current titles, dimensions, culture line, gallery number and the public domain flag on all eight objects. - [6] Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1976, chapter 8, The Tapestries in the Inventories, Their Treatment During the French Revolution, and Their History in Later Years, pages 219 to 228. The museum's own published catalogue of the set, free to download from its site. It is the source for the 1680 and 1728 inventories, the directive of the Comite de Surveillance of Ruffec, the looting of 1793 by peasants of the village, the family account of the barn, which rests on a letter written to Freeman by the family in 1968, the search by Count Hippolyte and Countess Elizabeth in the 1850s, the 1856 rehanging, the reading of the losses to the fifth hanging, the 1922 Anderson Galleries showing under Edouard Larcade, the February 1923 sale in London and the 1938 purchase of the two fragments from Comte Gabriel de La Rochefoucauld. - [7] Danielle Oteri, The Secret of the Unicorn Tapestries, The Paris Review, 18 November 2020. Tertiary. A magazine essay by a former lecturer at The Cloisters. Cited here only for the reported purchase price of 1.1 million dollars, which the museum's own records and catalogue do not state. Its account of the 1793 taking and of the 1922 showing differs from Freeman and from the museum, and is not followed here. --- 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.