Curtain Fragment with Galloping Horse (500s CE): Art, History and Details

Curtain Fragment with Galloping Horse (500s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Framed with hearts this large roundel displays a saddled horse galloping through a landscape, indicated by the stylized tree. The secondary motif of birds, partially visible in the corners, was repeated with the large roundels to form a colorful curtain. The many shades of color were skillfully achieved from only a few dyes, often the most expensive aspect of production: red and pink made from an insect dye, perhaps Armenian cochineal; blue from indigo; yellow and brown from fustic (a type of tree); green from fustic and indigo; and purple (horse’s mane) from the madder plant and indigo.

Object facts

• Title: Curtain Fragment with Galloping Horse
• Date: 500s CE
• Culture: Egypt, Antinoë, Byzantine period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: plain weave (tabby) with inwoven slit-tapestry weave; wool
• Dimensions: Overall: 45.4 x 31.4 cm (17 7/8 x 12 3/8 in.); Mounted: 54 x 41.3 cm (21 1/4 x 16 1/4 in.)
• Collection: T - Coptic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1948.27

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peirce, Hayford, and Royall Tyler. L'art byzantin ... planches en phototypie, décrites et commentées. Paris: Librairie de France, 1932.
• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "A Sixth-Century Coptic Tapestry Roundel." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 35, no. 4 (1948): 56-57.
• Wadsworth Atheneum, Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, and Charles Crehore Cunningham. 2000 Years of Tapestry Weaving: A Loan Exhibition : Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Dec. 7, 1951 to Jan. 27, 1952 ; the Baltimore Museum of Art, Feb. 27, 1952 to Mar. 25, 1952. Hartford, Conn: Wardsworth Atheneum], 1951.

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.