Rich in scenery and anecdote, this tapestry illustrates with cartoonlike immediacy part of the story of <i>Der Busant</i> (The Buzzard), a romance from Alsace. It recounts the love affair of an English prince with a French princess and dates from the early 14th century. This piece shows six scenes of the story, while seven other fragments depicting the same story are preserved in other European museum collections.
The Buzzard is unusually long and narrow in height for a tapestry, and would have been called <i>Rücklakan</i> in German. This term denoted a long strip of textile which was placed above the seating area, or covering the seat back. The tapestry production of Strasbourg was not far behind Flanders in quantity, yet fewer have survived to the present day - possibly becaue they were generally small in size. Documents reveal that the majority of the commissions came from members of the social elite who were active in finance, politics or the Church.