The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of January 31, 2023

Chasuble Fragment with Realistic Animals

c. 1420

Italy

Silk, gold thread; lampas weave

Overall: 115.6 x 33.7 cm (45 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.); Mounted: 120.7 x 36.8 cm (47 1/2 x 14 1/2 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1947.294

Location

not on view

Description

Around 1400 an emerging interest in the bucolic world of nature encouraged a new trend among textile designers, as seen in the lions, hawks, dogs, and ducks on this luxury silk fragment. The continual influence of Chinese asymmetry, however, is evident in the prominent undulating palmette trees, enlarged from sinuous vines frequently seen in Italian silks and velvets from this period.

Provenance
(Dikran G. Kelekian, New York).
1947-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Shepherd, Dorothy G. "A Fifteenth-Century Italian Textile." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 35, no. 3 (1948): 46-44. p. 46-48 www.jstor.org
Weibel, Adèle Coulin. Two Thousand Years of Textiles; The Figured Textiles of Europe and the Near East. New York: Published for the Detroit Institute of Arts [by] Pantheon Books, 1952. p. 139, no. 124
Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts. Aspects of Late Mediaeval Art; The Mediaeval Conference, the Ohio State University. 1958. no. 5 (under textiles)
Bunt, Cyril G. E. Venetian Fabrics. Leigh-on-Sea: F. Lewis, 1959. figs. 5-6
"Gothic Art 1360-1440." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 7 (1963): 174-215. no. 102, pp. 190, 215
Müller, Kathrin. Musterhaft naturgetreu: Tiere in Seiden, Zeichnungen und Tapisserien des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2020. Reproduced: P. 166, farabb. 25
Exhibition history

Aspects of Late Medieval Art, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, OH (October 31-November 22, 1958).

Gallery 216 installation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (June 1991).

Gothic Art 1360-1440. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 6-September 15, 1963).

Renaissance Textiles (Textile Rotation) - Gallery 115. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 14, 2012-December 10, 2013).

Liturgical Textiles and Manuscripts from Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy (Manuscript and Textile Rotation) - Gallery 115. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 5, 2018-December 2, 2019).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1947.294