Elephant, New Indies series

The tapestry is part of the New Indies series, a group of six cloths donated in 1786 by Louis XVI of France to Archduke Ferdinand III of Austria and to his wife Maria Beatrice d'Este. As replicas of figurations woven several times to the Gobelins, taken from the repertoire of the treatise Historia naturalis Brasiliae of 1648, they correspond to the third edition of the series and illustrate the tropical environment of the "New World" with details of plants and animals of extraordinary realism, combined in imaginative compositions and responding to the 18th century taste for exotic subjects.