Curtain Panel with Scenes of Merrymaking (500s): Art, History and Details

Curtain Panel with Scenes of Merrymaking (500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This large panel conveys merrymaking, wealth, and power through its symbolic imagery and deep purple color. It was originally part of a luxurious wide curtain with similar panels alternating with plain linen panels. Although woven in Christian Egypt, the panel is dominated by pagan subjects. A nude male stands beside a dancing female in transparent clothing in each of the three squares, alternating with centaurs (half-man, half-horse creatures) in roundels. In the central square, Dionysus, the god of wine, holds a grapevine and a weary Hercules leans on his club below. The lively animal imagery conveys wealth because few could afford animals such as lions, bulls, and hares.

Object facts

• Title: Curtain Panel with Scenes of Merrymaking
• Date: 500s
• Culture: Egypt, Byzantine period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Linen, undyed; wool: dyed; tapestry weave with supplementary weft wrapping
• Dimensions: Overall: 144.2 x 57.1 cm (56 3/4 x 22 1/2 in.); Mounted: 153.7 x 66 x 3.2 cm (60 1/2 x 26 x 1 1/4 in.)
• Collection: T - Coptic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2000.5

A detail from the museum

The textile industry drove the Egyptian economy, dominated by the flax plant from which linen is derived.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund and Gift of the Textile Art Alliance in memory of Robert P. Bergman

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” March 17, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Mackie, Louise W. "A Coptic Curtain." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 40, no. 10 (December 2000): 4-5.
• Gertsman, Elina and Barbara H. Rosenwein. The Middle Ages in 50 Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

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.