Tray Portraying Courtly Pleasures (1240s): Art, History and Details

Tray Portraying Courtly Pleasures (1240s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This tray features images of courtly life interspersed with astronomical symbols. The scenes contained within large multilobed medallions display an enthroned prince with lions at his feet, a banquet, a hunt, dancers, and musicians. Contained within the concentric circles there are also references to solar and lunar motifs, including figures holding sunbursts and lunar crescents. This tray is made of a single sheet of brass and the silver inlay, which is best preserved on the tray’s inner curve, suggests its original brilliance.

Object facts

• Title: Tray Portraying Courtly Pleasures
• Date: 1240s
• Culture: Syria, Ayyubid period (1171–1260)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: sheet brass inlaid with silver
• Dimensions: Diameter: 53.8 cm (21 3/16 in.); Overall: 5.8 cm (2 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Islamic Art
• Department: Islamic Art
• Accession number: 1945.386

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard. "Two Inlaid Brasses." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 4 (April 1946): 39-40.
• “Part II. Annual Report Issue for the Year 1945.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 33, no. 6, 1946, pp. 103–130.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.