Enfilade

Grande Galerie carpet with landscapes (detail), Savonnerie Manufactory, after designs by Charles Le Brun, 1680; knotted and cut wool pile (symmetrical knot), overall (confirmed): H. 353 × W. 128 inches (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1976.155.114).

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Opening at The Met in September:

A King’s Carpet: Louis XIV and the Savonnerie

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 8 September 2026 — 5 March 2028

Curated by Wolf Burchard and Elizabeth Cleland

In 1668, King Louis XIV of France commissioned the Paris-based Savonnerie manufactory to create the largest carpet ever woven. Composed of 92 individual pieces, the carpet was intended to cover the full span of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, measuring 440 meters, six times the length of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Not only was it a bold and unprecedented undertaking, but a unique chapter in the history of art. The first ever exhibition about the Savonnerie in the United States, A King’s Carpet sheds new light on The Met’s three carpets made as part of this ambitious scheme. Held in the iconic Wrightsman Galleries, it will explore the tumultuous history of these Baroque masterpieces from their conception and the harsh realities of their production to their dispersal after the French Revolution.

A project of unheard-of scale, the weaving of the 92 carpets necessitated the establishment of massive workshops and an expendable workforce of orphans and adolescents with sharp eyesight and nimble fingers. Woven over 20 years, the carpets were never rolled out in the space for which they were intended, Louis XIV having turned his attention away from the Louvre to Versailles. During the Revolution, many were stripped of their royal emblems or sold, some eventually finding new homes with prominent American collectors such as J. P. Morgan and Alva Vanderbilt.

This exhibition will present four complete carpets along with a selection of fragments, attesting to the scheme’s segmentation and dispersal. In addition, visitors will be able to observe textile conservators at work in an in-gallery temporary conservation studio as they repair and strengthen one of these monumental textiles.

As noted in the press release:

A King’s Carpet is curated by Wolf Burchard, Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and Elizabeth Cleland, Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. The exhibition highlights a long-standing cooperative effort between The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Mobilier national in Paris, which mounted a major exhibition on the Grande Galerie carpets for one week at the Grand Palais, Le Trésor retrouvé du Roi-Soleil / The Rediscovered Treasure of the Sun King (1–8 February 2026). The Grand Palais exhibition was curated by Wolf Burchard of The Met and Emmanuelle Federspiel and Antonin Macé de Lépinay of the Mobilier national, the three of who are currently preparing a comprehensive new monograph on Louis XIV’s Savonnerie carpets, to be released in 2027.