Louis XIV of France’s former mistress Madame de Montespan (1641 -1707) commissioned for her personal use a set of embroidered wall hangings depicting the Elements and Seasons, with herself, Louis, and six of their children taking the parts of the personified elements. The embroideries were worked at the Parisian convent of Saint Joseph de la Providence in the 1680s. Four of the set, with silver gilt and silver grounds, are now in the Metropolitan Museum, but a small number of the other versions are known with slight variations, including this piece and the V&A’s, Jupiter or Air (T.106-1978), which is from the same set. This hanging is an allegory of Autumn, probably depicting Louis’s second child, Louis César de Bourbon (1672 -83), comte de Vexin, as the young Bacchus or Autumn.