Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

This collection is completed by a rare tapestry, The Rape of Europa, from La Hyre's Metamorphoses series, woven in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel workshops between 1650 and 1670. This was one of three major private workshops in Paris before the creation of the royal Gobelins Manufactory, which brought together the finest craftsmen of the time. This tapestry thus bears witness to an important, yet relatively little-known, stage in the evolution of tapestry history.

Associated with the elites as a marker of social status, these tapestries also testify to their interest in Ovid's texts.