European Decorative Arts and Sculpture

Tapestry showing the Toilet of Psyche
La Toilette de Psyché
From a set of five tapestries called "The Story of Psyche"

December 1741 - February 1744

Designed by François Boucher, French, 1703 - 1770. Woven by the Beauvais tapestry manufactory, France, 1664 - present.

Wool and silk
9 feet 9 5/16 inches x 18 feet 15/16 inches (298 x 551 cm)

* Gallery 265, European Art 1500-1850, second floor

1939-41-30a

Label

This tapestry is part of the first complete set of tapestries telling “The Story of Psyche” woven by the Beauvais tapestry manufactory. Its elegant and sensuous style is a superb example of the fashionable compositions designed for the factory by Francois Boucher from the mid-1730s to the 1740s. The tapestries illustrate scenes from the myth of Psyche and derive from seventeenth-century adaptations of the literary work of the Roman poet Lucius Apuleius (A.D. 125-180).

The Story of Psyche was Boucher’s second commission for the Beauvais factory, and the designs, which went on the looms in 1741, continued to be woven until 1770.