No one was fully prepared for the hullabaloo over “Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence” five years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tapestry? Doesn’t that come under home furnishings? Isn’t it, basically, rugs on the wall? A specialty item?

The show was a sensation. New Yorkers came, they saw, they plotzed, they came back in droves. As word spread, international visitors flew in to take a peek and ended up staying for days. I suspect that the current follow-up, “Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor,” will spur a rash of repeat behavior. The first-time novelty may have passed. The Baroque world may be different from the Renaissance world, at once more grandiose and more ordinary, more like our own. But this exhibition too is stupefying, a king-size display of a space-eating art, awesome in its exacting detail.