Vestment fragment with stars in staggered squares (1200s): Art, History and Details

Vestment fragment with stars in staggered squares (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Alternating rows of two different forms of interlacing stars set within square frames convey a jewel-like brilliance with gold and contrasting colors. This fragment was reused in an ecclesiastical vestment that made its way to the cathedral at Lleida in Catalonia, in northeastern Spain. A document dated 1275 records that the Bishop of Lleida and his companions brought “[A] complete set of vestments, of Muslim manufacture, which ornaments they dedicated to San Valero.”

Object facts

• Title: Vestment fragment with stars in staggered squares
• Date: 1200s
• Culture: Spain, probably Almeria
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk and gold thread: lampas weave with areas of double cloth
• Dimensions: Overall: 28.6 x 26.7 cm (11 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.); Mounted: 38.7 x 36.8 cm (15 1/4 x 14 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1928.648

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Underhill, Gertrude. "Two Hispano-Moresque Silks from the Vestments of San Valero." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 16, no. 4 (1929): 68-75.
• Los Angeles County Museum. 2000 Years of Silk Weaving: An Exhibition Sponsored by the Los Angeles County Museum in Collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. 1944.
• Weibel, Adèle Coulin. Two Thousand Years of Textiles; The Figured Textiles of Europe and the Near East. New York: Published for the Detroit Institute of Arts [by] Pantheon Books, 1952.

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.