Among the many splendiferous objects in the Met's blockbuster exhibition on the art of the Tudors is an enormous 15th century tapestry, the only survivor of a set of ten stretching 300 feet, showing the Trinity creating the world. Over six days of creation and the seventh of rest, that makes twenty-one identical scepter bearing figures, doing their thing, and quite upstaging the celestial and terrestrial objects they're calling into existence! Here's Gen 1:11-12:
And God said "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. (NRSV)
The tapestry's sun and moon and plants and fish and animals are lovely but tiny compared to these engaging triads, each in a different moment of almost ludic divine sociality; only the humans created in their image are big enough to catch the viewer's eye. 'Tis a sight behold, and towers suitably over (it's 14 feet high) an exhibition whose narrative tells of the divinization of an upstart royal line.
There are too many other splendors to mention, but other tapestries remind us of royals as destroyers as well as creators. Henry VIII apparently specially commissioned this scene of St. Paul directing the burning of heathen books, billowing smoke meticulously woven.
