1931.46: Roundel: Personification with Candelabra Plants
Textile ArtsThe woolen tapestry-woven textile fragment has a multicolored design on an off-white ground. In the center, a small roundel depicts a saint with a halo in a blue robe on a red ground. It is surrounded by a border of multicolored stripes. The roundel is surrounded by a pattern of yellow and blue flowers and birds, then a red circle and another multicolored striped circle. Around the edge are yellow and red vines.
Identification and Creation
- Object Number
- 1931.46
- Title
- Roundel: Personification with Candelabra Plants
- Classification
- Textile Arts
- Work Type
- textile
- Date
- 7th-8th century
- Places
- Creation Place: Africa, Egypt
- Period
- Byzantine period
- Culture
- Byzantine
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/213655
Physical Descriptions
- Medium
- Wool and linen
- Technique
- Woven, tapestry weave
- Dimensions
- 20.32 cm (8 in.)
Acquisition and Rights
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Charles Bain Hoyt
- Accession Year
- 1931
- Object Number
- 1931.46
- Division
- Asian and Mediterranean Art
- Contact
- am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
- Permissions
-
The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
Descriptions
- Description
-
Tapestry woven roundel (orbiculus). The small medallion at its center contains a female figure, likely a beneficent personification, with a green nimbus against a bright red background. Her breasts are distinguished in yellow against her dark blue torso. She wears a skirt with many folds and may be seated. The woman raises one arm and possibly holds up a leaf in a gesture common to depictions of personifications of the earth. Thin white supplementary threads above the woman’s right hand may be an unreadable interpretation of the inscriptions that often identify personifications. Eight thick, gold plant forms outlined in black surround the central medallion in a symmetrical arrangement; these plants are of the jeweled candelabra type often featured in textile medallions in the later part of Late Antiquity. Four of the vine-like plants contain birds, and the other four have leaves/flowers of various colors. Small birds and red dots fill the empty space within the main field. The borders of the central medallion and the larger design field are formed by interlocking color segments outlined in black. The outermost border is formed of red and yellow tendrils and blue dots.
Undyed warps run parallel to the orientation of the figural design. - Commentary
-
Matches MFA 16.313 from the Denman Waldo Ross Collection
Belongs to a certain style favoring bright primary colors, red backgrounds, borders of interlocking color segments, and compositions with female earth personifications at the center of roundels surrounded by a symmetrical arrangement plants, animals, and sometimes nereids. This style of textile is often dated to the 7-9th centuries.
Publication History
- Ioli Kalavrezou, Byzantine Women and Their World, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2003), p. 271/fig. 161
Exhibition History
- Byzantine Women and Their World, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 10/25/2002 - 04/28/2003
- 32Q: 3740 Egyptian, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/01/2022 - 11/28/2022
Verification Level
This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator; it may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu