Still from our Saturday visit to The Cloisters: There is a gallery that houses the late 14th / early 15th century Nine Heroes Tapestries, depicting Pagan heroes Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; Christian heroes Charlemagne, King Arthur and Godfrey of Boullion; and Hebrew heroes Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus. I was quite taken with good old Julius Caesar, with his handle-bar mustache and a divided, curly beard, and his crown!
This link opens to a full size and description, with the following citation: “Nine Heroes Tapestries [South Netherlandish] (47.101.3)”. In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/anti/hod_47.101.3.htm (October 2006)
For JSTOR users, there is the well illustrated Met Museum Bulletin article The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters, James J. Rorimer; Margaret B. Freeman, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin > New Series, Vol. 7, No. 9 (May, 1949), pp. 243-260.
An adjacent gallery displays the 15th century Unicorn Tapestries, “The Hunt of the Unicorn,” with this excellent site from the Met, with text, photos, and a video with David Rockefeller.
The New Yorker has a related article in its archive: CAPTURING THE UNICORN by RICHARD PRESTON
How two mathematicians came to the aid of the Met. Issue of 2005-04-11.
In book form: The Unicorn Tapestries in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications), Author: Adolfo Salvatore Cavallo.
I also enjoyed a set of Playing Cards (in such good condition that the assumption is they were never used).
