Brocade with Djeiran Gazing at the Moon (1115–1234): Art, History and Details

Brocade with Djeiran Gazing at the Moon (1115–1234) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The mysterious image of a deerlike animal gazing up at the moon among clouds has been variously interpreted over many centuries. The animal, lying down with one foreleg extended and looking back, originated as a djeiran, or Central Asian antelope. Commonly appearing on Sogdian silver from the 600s onward, the motif migrated via the trade routes to northern China. There, during the Jin and Yuan (1279–1368) dynasties, it was very popular and always depicted with the moon supported by clouds. Chinese writers often identify the djeiran as the mythical rhinoceros (xi'niu) that is said to gaze at the moon, or as the cow of Wu "panting upon seeing the moon."

Object facts

• Title: Brocade with Djeiran Gazing at the Moon
• Date: 1115–1234
• Culture: China, Jin dynasty (1115-1234)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk and gold thread; tabby, brocaded
• Dimensions: Overall: 109.8 x 38.5 cm (43 1/4 x 15 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1991.4

A detail from the museum

The gold-brocaded pattern is repeated in staggered rows with alternating orientations.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Watt, James C. Y., Anne E. Wardwell, and Morris Rossabi. When silk was gold: Central Asian and Chinese textiles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1997
• Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.
• Komaroff, Linda, and Stefano Carboni. The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, CT: Distributed by Yale University Press, 2002.

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.