Musicians and Dancers

Across an expansive field of golden orange, musicians perform on a stage filled with suspended, gravity-defying objects. This saturated background color—a novelty in the late 1600s—acts as a foil for the blue, green, and red elements, which are arranged with theatrical flair amid columns, trellises, and drapery.



The musicians and dancers are based on characters from the Commedia Dell'Arte (Comedy of Art), a form of Italian burlesque theater performed by traveling troupes. In the street, the performers would act out standard plots with improvised dialogue. The figures here seem engrossed in dancing or playing their instruments: a triangle, panpipes, flute, guitar, and horn.



The tapestry's border is an allegory of the five senses—taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smell. Recurring decorative motifs include floral bouquets, squirrels, parrots, satyrs, sphinxes, and chinoiserie figures.