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SAVONNERIE CARPET
SHOWN AT MUSEUM
9-18-55

  A royal Savonnerie carpet, made during the seventeenth century at the order of King Louis
XIV of France, has been placed on exhibit in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue nad Eighty-second Street.

  Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Wrightsman of Houston and Palm Beach lent the carpet for display. They purchased it recently in Europe.

  Described by museum officials as a work of great rarity, the carpet is one of less than a dozen of the original set of ninety-three
to be identified on the basis of royal inventories. It is twenty-nine by ten feet, similar in size to a Savonnerie carpet from the
same series that the museum owns.

  The Wrightsman carpet is said to have been given by the King of France to the King of Spain, and by the latter to the Chapter
of the Cathedral of St. James of Compostella. It is in an excellent state of preservation.

  According to Edith A. Standen of the museum's Renaissance and Modern Art staff, the new
loan has the vigorous design and vivid colors of the ninety-two companion pieces.

  "The realistic landscapes in oval frames at the two ends of the carpet are particularly fine
in drawing and composition, showing astonishing depth of perspective," she says.

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