Velvet with Pomegranate Pattern (1450–1500): Art, History and Details

Velvet with Pomegranate Pattern (1450–1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This extravagant Italian velvet with three heights of lush crimson pile is lavishly embellished with gold-thread loops. Large pomegranate patterns such as this were fashionable in Europe for more than a century, about 1420 to 1550, and were often featured in paintings and in large wall tapestries. Variations occurred in pattern details, pile height, and gold thread. Since pomegranates symbolized eternity, fertility, and resurrection, these velvets were often used in Roman Catholic churches. This pomegranate pattern inspired the cope, or cloak, worn by the Archbishop of Canterbury when he officiated the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011.

Object facts

• Title: Velvet with Pomegranate Pattern
• Date: 1450–1500
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Velvet
• Technique: silk, gold thread; velvet: three heights of cut pile, gold thread loops
• Dimensions: Overall: 300.9 x 56.5 cm (118 7/16 x 22 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1973.20

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• McWilliams, Mary, “Ambitious Decoration” Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 36 no. 03, March 1996
• Lisby, Darnell-Jamal, William Griswold, Matteo Augello, Alessandra Arezzi Boza, Massimiliano Capella, Luke Meagher, Stefania Ricci, and Cleveland Museum of Art. Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2025.

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.