In the spring of 2002, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted the groundbreaking exhibition “Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence.” That staggeringly opulent exhibit (which was, in a sense, the long-overdue sequel to the Met’s 1974 show of medieval tapestries) presented an extensive survey of European tapestry production between 1460 and 1560. The show, curated by Thomas Campbell, then associate curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Met, refocused and redoubled our interest in a long-overlooked medium, shifting our sights away from the supposedly higher arts of painting and sculpture, to the supposedly lower, decorative art of weaving, and whetting our appetites for a sequel.

Now we have it: Mr. Campbell, who has since been promoted to curator in the Met’s department of European sculpture and decorative arts, has brought us “Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor,” a thrilling survey of tapestry production between 1590 and 1720. A total immersion in colorful court spectacle, Oriental mysticism, religious, historical, and mythical narrative, “Tapestry in the Baroque” is as mesmerizing and overwhelming as its predecessor.

Before “Tapestry in the Renaissance,” many of us had seen tapestry cycles in museums, castles, cathedrals, and palaces, including the masterful series at the Cloisters, “The Hunt of the Unicorn,” one of the miraculous works to have survived from the late Middle Ages. But the Renaissance show, more than any other in recent memory, blew the minds of artists, scholars, critics, and the public alike. It brought tapestries center stage, allowing us to experience the dazzling drama without distraction. “Tapestry in the Baroque” — which brings us an overabundance of life-size tumbling noblemen, horses, warriors, saints, and putti; tightly woven gardens and hyperrealist topiary, flora, and fauna; sweeping air-and-light-filled panoramas; a glittering gold cope; a throne canopy made for the king of Denmark; a spectacular wall-size naval battle, and woven light, pooling on drapery in biomorphic shapes of pure gold — continues the theatrical legacy.

We usually experience tapestries — many of which, more than 20 feet wide and woven of wool, silk, gold, and silver, are parts of grand cycles — as secondary or decorative works. Today, they are often poorly lit backdrops hung in claustrophobic period rooms or in grand halls, and they have to compete with architecture, painting, furniture, and sculpture. Yet tapestry was one of the highest, most ostentatious and sought-after art forms for popes and princes alike from the Middle Ages through the late 18th century. Tapestries were used as visionary documents of victories, alliances, and sacred events. They were unfurled and displayed during the grandest of spectacles. Many of our greatest artists, including Raphael and Rubens, both of whom are among the stars in “Tapestry in the Baroque,” designed tapestry cycles. And those artists’ tapestries, requiring numerous skilled weavers and countless hours (a weaver could only produce a half-square-yard of fine tapestry each month), cost many times more than paintings or cycles of paintings of comparable size and scope.

During the French Revolution, however, the market for tapestries all but died. Many tapestries, especially those that contained royal insignia, were destroyed, or they were left to fade and rot, or they were cut up for rugs and pillows. (The “Unicorn” tapestries were used for a time to protect potatoes from freezing.) The tapestries’ value — which is a reflection of their themes’ majestic narratives, as well as of their owners’ wealth and power — decreased in direct proportion to the increasing popularity of the easel picture and the rise of the middle class.

The Arts and Crafts Movement, spearheaded by William Morris, revived the interest in all things handmade and medieval, including tapestry (and artists such as Matisse, Annie Albers, and Raoul Dufy reinvented the art form in the 20th century). But the 18th century marked the end of the medieval workshop approach to tapestry, which allowed for so many artisans, under the direction of a design or designer, to come together to produce magnificent works of monumental scale — some of which, as a complete cycle, measured hundreds of feet long.

There are no complete cycles in “Tapestry in the Baroque,” but that is not a pitfall for this resplendent collection of more than 40 large weavings. Tapestries can confound us: At times the size of cinema screens, they combine elements of history painting, of the decorative expanse of rugs and wallpaper, and, with their woven text and ornamental borders — which are often transformed into full-scale, allegorical jazz riffs on the tapestry’s theme — of the intimacy of illuminated manuscripts blown up to mural scale. They are so big that they demand distance. Yet the best tapestries are so finely woven and hypnotically detailed that the magic of their atmospheric effects, shimmering impressionist light, realist verisimilitude, decorative patterns, and sculptural forms can only be explained at nose-length. Looking at the stunning tapestries in this show, yo-yoing near then far, I found that I was constantly torn between getting as far back and as up-close as I possibly could, to unravel their miraculous effects. Pushing my face to the fabric, I could see each thread and color change: Still, their facture eluded me.

The exhibition is divided by region of manufacture into nine sections, but its stars are individual designers, including Rubens, Raphael, Charles Le Brun, Jacob Jordaens, and Philippe de Hondt, the surprise master of this exhibit. The first thunderclaps in the show are the tapestries designed by Rubens, whose figures, drive, and drama enliven the medium, shifting it forcefully out of the realm of decoration into the full charge of the Rubenesque machine. One of the fascinating issues in “Tapestry in the Baroque” is that of translation, from the artist’s oil sketch, through cartoon, to tapestry — from one medium to another. Here, for once, process is almost as tantalizing as finished product. The show offers us artists’ studies, including amazing oil sketches by Rubens for the tapestry “The Triumph of the Church Over Ignorance and Blindness” (1626–1633), from a 20-piece set of “The Triumph of the Eucharist.”

Compared to the small Rubens oils, or the oil sketches of Le Brun, the tapestries have lost something in translation. The Rubens tapestry does not fall completely into sync and fuse through light the way that oil painting can, and colors and compositional emphasis are changed dramatically. The tapestry is also not as atmospheric and lush. The insistent threadto-thread beat overplays the painterly effects that the tapestries emulate. Figures can feel staged, and larger rhythms can appear to be slowed, exaggerated, or fixed by the medium. But there is much to be gained. And once you free yourself from comparison — from seeing tapestry in terms of painting — and, instead, focus on the medium for the wonders it offers, you realize that the artisans who translated the sketches were geniuses equal to their designers. In “The Triumph of the Church Over Ignorance and Blindness,” they have limited the palette to an atmospheric sepia wash, punctuated by silvery whites, pinks, greens, and electric, velvety blues, to create a newfound unity that makes the most of the medium.

Not every tapestry in the show is an absolute masterpiece from edge to edge, but in every work there is something astounding and absolutely hypnotic and unbelievable, especially when the weavings portray rugs, silk, gold, and velvet — producing a kind of double trompe-l’oeil. Seeing gold jewelry, a rug, or a velvet cloak woven into the tapestries out of the very materials with which they are made, produces the kind of double take experienced in the Cubist collages of Braque and Picasso, in which a particular material, imitating itself, transforms the thing depicted and the material out of which it is made, into a surreal, hyperrealist conflation that, entirely new, transcends both image and material.

The Baroque period — highly mannerist, bluntly naturalistic, classically staged, and ornately bombastic — is marked by its complete lack of a coherent style. The 17th century encompasses artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Bernini, Rubens, Caravaggio, Ruisdael, Velázquez, and Poussin. “Tapestry in the Baroque” mirrors this variety.

I was astonished by the gloss on a leaf, the shimmer of wind in the trees, and the density of leopard’s fur in “Leopard Over a Pond” (c. 1611–14), from an 11-piece set of “Landscapes With Animals”; the reflections of sky, limbs, and birds in “The Miraculous Draft of Fishes” (c. 1625 and c. 1639), from an eight-piece set of the “Acts of the Apostles,” designed by Raphael, and the amazingly naturalistic, panoramic expanse in de Hondt’s “The Siege of Bouchain III” (c. 1714–15), from an 11-piece set of the “Victories of the Duke of Marlborough.” This tapestry, along with de Hondt’s equally staggering nearly life-size “A Naval Battle” (c. 1722–24), from a set of the “Art of War II,” is one of the showstoppers in “Tapestry in the Baroque.” Thankfully, these two phenomenal works, which engulf you in both land and sea, are in the last gallery of the exhibition. By then, I had lost my bearings. I realized that I was no longer able to take them in; the tapestries had long-since woven me into the spectacle. But I made the promise to return to the show when I had more stamina. I look forward to getting my mind blown again and again.

Until January 6 (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).