Wild Boar Hunt with Spears, from Hunting Scenes in Ornamental Frames

This engraving of a wild boar hunt is based on one of a series of six tapestry designs that Stradanus made for the Florentine Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s villa in Poggio a Caiano. In addition to this series, Stradanus made enough cartoons, or full-scale preparatory drawings, to decorate twenty rooms in the villa. Hunting boar was an activity limited to the aristocracy, and here we see the members of Cosimo’s court mounted on horseback, assisted by various servants on foot. A second engraving from the series shows the hunters catching the boars in nets.

Credit: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949...