Fragment with falconer and attendant in animated lattice, from a robe (mid-1500s): Art, History and Details

Fragment with falconer and attendant in animated lattice, from a robe (mid-1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This velvet of Iran’s Safavid period (1501–1722) displaying a falconry scene is celebrated for its refined beauty and meticulous draftsmanship. A falconer and attendant flank a blossoming plant on a golden ground of lobed medallions. Animated vines display leaves bearing lion’s masks and dragons coiled around larger leaves on the crimson ground. Instead of two or three colors of velvet, Iranian weavers wove with as many as 14 colors, the most colorful velvets ever woven.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment with falconer and attendant in animated lattice, from a robe
• Date: mid-1500s
• Culture: Iran, Kashan, Safavid period (1501–1722)
• Type: Velvet
• Technique: Silk: velvet, brocaded, pile-warp substitution; gilt-metal thread
• Dimensions: Overall: 79.4 x 66.7 cm (31 1/4 x 26 1/4 in.); Mounted: 89.5 x 74.9 cm (35 1/4 x 29 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1944.239

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hennezel, Henri d'. Le décor des soieries dʹart, anciennes et modernes: documents originaux en couleurs du Musée historique des tissus de Lyon. Paris: Éditions Nilsson, 1900.
• Reath, Nancy Andrews, and Eleanor B. Sachs. Persian Textiles and Their Technique from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Centuries, Including a System for General Textile Classification. New Haven: Pub. for Pennsylvania Museum of Art by Yale University Press, 1937.
• Pope, Arthur Upham, Phyllis Ackerman, and Theodore Bestermann. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present. London: Oxford University Press, 1938.

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.