March - July 1742

Tapestry showing the Abandonment of Psyche

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.