Fragment with confronted sphinxes in roundels from the tomb of Saint Bernard Calvo (1200–43): Art, History and Details

Fragment with confronted sphinxes in roundels from the tomb of Saint Bernard Calvo (1200–43) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Composite creatures, such as winged lions and sphinxes, predate the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. Islamic textiles continued to include them for centuries after the Arab conquest of Spain. Pairs of lions with gold faces rear up to bite the haunches of the winged beasts. In between the roundels are pairs of peacocks, motifs traceable to pre-Islamic Persian art that spread throughout the Islamic world, including Spain. The body of Saint Bernard Calvo, the Catholic Bishop of Vich in 1233–43, was wrapped in textiles, including these fragments that still retain traces of his blood.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment with confronted sphinxes in roundels from the tomb of Saint Bernard Calvo
• Date: 1200–43
• Culture: Spain, Almeria
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk and gold thread: lampas, taqueté, and plain-weave variant
• Dimensions: Overall: 54.6 x 65.4 cm (21 1/2 x 25 3/4 in.); Mount: 66.7 x 76.8 cm (26 1/4 x 30 1/4 in.); Framed: 69.2 x 79.4 cm (27 1/4 x 31 1/4 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1950.394

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "Another Silk from the Tomb of Saint Bernard Calvo." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 4 (1951): 74-79.
• New York University. Spanish Medieval Art. Loan Exhibition in Honor of Dr. Walter W.S. Cook. 1954.
• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "A Dated Hispano-Islamic Silk." Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 373-82.

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.