This panel is nearly identical to a piece in the Benaki Museum in Athens, suggesting that it may have formed half of a two-paneled door. Its decoration has striking stylistic affinities to architectural ornament on Sasanian buildings, pointing to a continuous tradition of architectural decoration in Mesopotamia before and after the rise of Islam. The tightly coiled loops made from vines and cone-shaped acorns that adorn the surface of this panel are found on stucco panels from Ctesiphon, a Sasanian site in Iraq, for example.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Panel from a Door
Date:late 8th–first half 9th century
Geography:Made in Iraq
Medium:Wood (teak); carved
Dimensions:H. 70 3/4 in. (179.7 cm) W. 15 1/2 in. (39.4 cm) D. 1 1/2 in. (3.8 cm) Mount: H. 75 1/2 in. (191.8) W. 20 1/4 in. (51.4 cm) D. 6 in. (15.2 cm) Wt. 79lb. (35.8kg)
Classification:Wood
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1931
Object Number:31.63
[ Hagop Kevorkian, New York, until 1931; sold to MMA]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 14, 1970–June 1, 1971, no. 124.
The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Nature of Islamic Ornament Part II: Vegetal Patterns," September 10, 1998–January 10, 1999, no catalogue.
New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Pattern, Color, Light: Architectural Ornament in the Near East (500–1000)," July 20, 2015–January 10, 2016, no catalogue.
Dimand, Maurice S. "An Arabic Woodcarving of the Eighth Century." Museum of Metropolitan Art Bulletin vol. 26, no. 11 (1931). pp. 271–74.
Dimand, Maurice S. "Studies in Islamic Ornament: I. Some Aspects of Omaiyad and Early 'Abassid Ornament." Ars Islamica vol. IV (1937). pp. 294–6, ill. figs. 1, 2, 3.
Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammadan Art. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944. p. 109, ill. fig. 61 (b/w).
Lukens, Marie G. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide to the Collections: Islamic Art. vol. 9. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965. p. 3, ill. fig.1.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1970. no. 124, p. 156, ill. (b/w).
Ettinghausen, Richard, and Oleg Grabar. The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650–1250. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1987. p. 107, ill. fig. 84 (b/w).
Ḥamīd, Isā Salmān. "al-Tuhaf al-khashabiyya." Mawsū‘at madīnat Tikrīt vol. 2 (1996). p. 204, ill. fig. 4.
Baghdad : Eye's Delight. Milan, 2022. p. 290.
Hunt, Lucy-Anne. "Stuccowork at the Monastery of the Syrians in the Wādī Naṭrūn: Iraqi-Egyptian Artistic Contact in the 'Abbasid Period." Christians at the Heart of Islamic Culture: Church Life and Scholarship in 'Abbasid Iraq (2013). p. 106, ill. figs. 17–18.
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