Medieval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries

by Linda Woolley

The four magnificent tapestries in the V & A known as the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries are the only great fifteenth-century hunting tapestries to survive the ravages of time, and they depict a lost chivalric world in rich and fascinating detail.
These tapestries, once owned by the Dukes of Devonshire, provide a vivid picture of the hunt in all its forms - falconry, hunting for otter, boar, bear and deer, the robbing of a swan's nest for its eggs - and are packed with rich and entertaining human detail.
They also tell us a huge amount about medieval which textiles and patterns were in favour, what style and shape of headdress, of collar, of belt and gown was going in and out of fashion, how clothes were worn and by whom. They are a rich repository of costume and textile history, and Linda Woolley mines them for all they have to tell us about the fashions and customs of the time.
All four tapestries are illustrated in full in lavish fold-out pages, and in carefully chosen details; together with an illuminating text they offer us a window onto the vanished world of the Late Middle Ages.

Genres: Art, History

128 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2002

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is highly, highly recommended to anyone with an interest in tapestry, medieval art, hunting, the history of the nobility and the leisure class, medieval clothes and fashion, etc. I was drawn to this book because of my fascination with the life of medieval nobility, as well as my fondness for the 11th Duke of Devonshire, Andrew Cavendish, who sold these tapestries to the V&A Museum (publisher of this book) in 1957 to help fund his and Deborah Mitford's renovation of Chatsworth after Andrew became Duke. I didn't know exactly what to expect, but my initial interest was rewarded and multiplied by this work! Featuring large foldouts of the tapestries themselves, the book is full of very readable text covering virtually every aspect of the tapestries -- their surface-level appearance and "stories," their subtext and symbolism, and their manufacture and history. Many close-ups of the tapestries are included throughout, as well as a useful bibliography and many illustrations from other works that draw parallels and connections to other areas of medieval art and life. I learned an enormous amount from this book, and recommend it to anyone with even a glancing interest in its topic.

[Rachel G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tapestries in medieval times were decorative draft barriers in the castles & manor houses of the royal and wealthy. The four that are known as the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries are no different. These very expensive and huge wool wallhangings are windows into the leisure lives of the richest of the rich. You can get a hint of the scale and complexity of them on the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) website.

I am in awe of the time and talent it took to create these tapestries. They show us a lot of detail of a 15th century royal court as they participate or observe in the hunt of Deer, Boar & Bear, Otter & Swan, and Falconry. In this book, Woolley lays out the history of these tapestries, both what is know and the conjecture behind their origins. They vary in age and quality, and appear to be from different tapestry workshops.

One of the best things about the book, is how it is laid out. There are five chapters in this book, and they cover not only the history of the tapestries themselves, but also the content of them. I learned a bit about how hunting in the 15th Century worked, courtly fashion and even a bit about the mores of the time (and I felt sorry for the Miller in the Deer Hunt). I also loved how many closeups there are - each page has one or more full color pictures of some piece of the wall hangings. The last four pages are pull-outs of each tapestry. The scale still boggles my mind!

One of the weakest things about this book is the lack of other material. The reader gets to see pretty much every square inch of these four tapestries in good detail, but there are very few pictures of anything else to compare them with. For example, the text mentions a different falconry tapestry held by the Minneapolis Institute of Art more than once, but it does not have any pictures of it. It would have been nice to have it for reference here instead of having to look for it on the MIA website.