Design attributed to the Master of the Months of Lucas (Netherlandish, active ca. 1535), ca. 1535; later additions by Pierre Josse Perrot (French, active 1724-35) and others, woven under the direction of Michel Audran (French, 1701-1771) at the Manufacture Royale Nationale des Gobelins (French [Paris], established 1662), 1732-37.
This tapestry was part of a set of twelve celebrating courtly pastimes, each dedicated to a month of the year. Here, courtiers enjoy the mild mid-spring weather of April; they venture out of the castle to go boating, gather flowers, and make music with a recorder, a lute, and a dulcimer. In contrast to these leisurely dalliances, a shepherd leading his flock to the fields and a maid milking toward the left hint at busy agricultural life reawakening after an atrophied winter.
Though woven in eighteenth-century Paris, these hangings were designed after a sixteenth-century Netherlandish tapestry set (now lost) in the French royal collection. The resulting works winningly combine a Renaissance sensibility in subject matter, compositional style, and clothing fashions with a lush Rococo border, a rainbow palette, and virtuosi weaving techniques more typical of 1730s France.