Sleeved Tunic (1460s–1532): Art, History and Details

Sleeved Tunic (1460s–1532) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Chancay (chan-kai) people of Peru’s central coast created one of the ancient Andes’s best-known textile legacies through artistically elaborate men’s tunics and loin cloths, women’s dresses and headcloths, and shawl-like mantles. Two traits indicate that this tunic is a high-prestige garment: its labor-intensive tapestry-woven technique and its substantial use of alpaca fiber imported from the adjacent highlands.

Object facts

• Title: Sleeved Tunic
• Date: 1460s–1532
• Culture: Central Andes, central coast, Chancay people
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Cotton, camelid fiber
• Dimensions: length back of neck to hem: 40.6 cm (16 in.); width across shoulders: 128.9 cm (50 3/4 in.)
• Collection: T - Pre-Columbian
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2017.193

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bergh, Susan E. “Acquisition Highlights: Pre-Columbian Art.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 58, no. 2 (March/April 2018): 8-9.

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.