Ornamental Square from a Tunic (400s CE): Art, History and Details

Ornamental Square from a Tunic (400s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Riders dressed in hunting clothes and boots hurl rocks at fleeing lions. The man wears a short tunic and the woman has a fluttering skirt. The border consists of curved acanthus leaves that enclose a chase of alternating lions and hares. This square was sewn onto a tunic rather than woven in. Hunting was a popular artistic theme in pre-Islamic traditions, including Byzantine art, and was then adopted into Islamic art.

Object facts

• Title: Ornamental Square from a Tunic
• Date: 400s CE
• Culture: Egypt, Byzantine period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Linen, undyed; wool, dyed; tapestry weave with supplementary weft wrapping
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 x 20 cm (8 1/4 x 7 7/8 in.); Mounted: 28.6 x 27.6 cm (11 1/4 x 10 7/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Coptic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1916.1980

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Meyer-Reifstahl, Rudolf A.. First National Silk Convention: [Exhibition] City Hall, Paterson, N.J., October 12th, to 21st., 1915. [Paterson, NJ?]: [Chamber of Commerce?], 1915.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• 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, CT: 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.