Banner with a Quartered Royal Arms of Spain and the Madonna and Child (1500s): Art, History and Details

Banner with a Quartered Royal Arms of Spain and the Madonna and Child (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This banner is quartered or broken into four parts. Two sections contain embroidered images of the Virgin and Child. The other two are devoted to the royal arms of Spain. On the arms are representations of the kingdoms of Spain in the 1500s. A three towered-castle represents the Kingdom of Castille; the rearing lion is a symbol for the Kingdom of León; two eagles stand for the Kingdom of Sicily; and at the bottom is the pomegranate for Granada. Below this appear a yoke and a bundle of arrows which have been seen on Spain's coat of arms since the union of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.

Object facts

• Title: Banner with a Quartered Royal Arms of Spain and the Madonna and Child
• Date: 1500s
• Culture: Spain
• Type: Velvet
• Technique: red and dark brown velvet, embroidered; fringe
• Dimensions: Overall: 109.2 x 138.4 cm (43 x 54 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1885

A detail from the museum

This banner was hanging in the armor court when it first opened in 1916.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gilchrist, Helen Ives. A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms & Armor Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Long Severance; 1916-1923. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1924.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms & Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.