Charles-Antoine Coypel painted this scene from the story of Don Quixote’s travels in 1751. It completed a famous series of twenty-eight cartoons for tapestries made by the Manafacture Royale des Gobelins. Commissioned in 1715 by the Bâtiments du Roi (the Royal Household) Coypel painted the majority of the cartoons between 1725 and 1740. The Histoire de Don Quichotte represented the first and most important commission of Coypel’s working career.