Textile Fabrics / A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum

by Daniel Rock

2443.

Tapestry; subject, a landscape, the foreground strewed with human and animals’ bones, and a living figure sitting among rocks. French, early 17th century.

This is one of a short series of tapestries setting forth, but sometimes laughing at, the ideas of the ancient cynics. Before us here we have a wild dell clothed in trees on one side, on the other piled with rocks capped, in some places, by ruins. Seated on a stone, with a book held in his hand, is Diogenes in meditation, with human bones, animal skulls, and monster things about him. The work is well done, and shows how perfect was the loom that wrought it. On a blue tablet at top runs this inscription,—“Diogenes derisor omnium in fine defigitur.”