Brocaded Velvet Panel with Italianate Pattern (1575–1625): Art, History and Details

Brocaded Velvet Panel with Italianate Pattern (1575–1625) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Rarely are four fabric widths preserved together from any culture. This gilt-metal thread pattern combines Turkish and Italian features: the large ogival (curved) lattice clasped by crowns and the velvet structure are Turkish, and the two so-called artichoke designs are enlarged adaptations of Italian motifs. A symbol of wealth and power, this velvet panel was woven during the artistic height of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1500s. It may have covered a divan (sofa) or possibly enhanced a wall during cold winters in the imperial Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

Object facts

• Title: Brocaded Velvet Panel with Italianate Pattern
• Date: 1575–1625
• Culture: Turkey, Istanbul or Bursa
• Type: Velvet
• Technique: Silk: velvet, brocaded; gilt-metal thread and cotton
• Dimensions: Overall: 173 x 241.5 cm (68 1/8 x 95 1/16 in.); Mounted: 175.3 x 245.7 x 8.9 cm (69 x 96 3/4 x 3 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2003.3

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland; New Haven: Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015.

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.