A tropical menagerie set in a lush landscape surrounds almost imperceptible human characters and architectural structures in the eight tableaux of the "Old Indies", a Baroque tapestry from the French Royal Factory of the Gobelins. Interrogating the sources, provenance, and reception of the visual program that made their success from the 17th century to today, this talk sheds light on the long-forgotten African sources of their iconography and analyzes the long-invisible colonial dimension embedded in their alluring exotic tableaux. Cécile Fromont recently joined Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture as well as accepting the position as the first faculty director of the Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at the Hutchins Center.