Fragmentary Icon Panel, Christ in Glory (?) and Evangelists (750 – 850): Art, History and Details

Fragmentary Icon Panel, Christ in Glory (?) and Evangelists (750 – 850) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In this extraordinary fragment with a rare background resembling woven silk patterns, two roundels in the corners display the busts of haloed Evangelists holding books and raising their right hands in a gesture of teaching. In the center, the large roundel preserves traces of an enthroned figure, presumably that of Christ in Glory (the jeweled throne is visible on the left). A geometric pattern of zigzags and triangles decorates the border. Woven on a verticle loom, tapestry weave has colorful horizontal wefts that are interlaced only in the area needed for the pattern; slits are formed when the colored wefts turn back around the same vertical warp for several rows. Warp and wefts reference the basic directional patterns of weaving—warp being the longitudinal threads with the transverse weft being drawn over and under the warp.

Object facts

• Title: Fragmentary Icon Panel, Christ in Glory (?) and Evangelists
• Date: 750 – 850
• Culture: Egypt, Abbasid period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: slit-and dovetailed-tapestry weave; wool
• Dimensions: Overall: 53.3 x 80.7 cm (21 x 31 3/4 in.); Mounted: 63.5 x 90.2 cm (25 x 35 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1952.256

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

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.