Textile Panel with Birds amid Flowering Vines
Not on view
The interlocking pattern of this silk panel features a popular bird-and-flower motif that alternates direction in each repeated row. The effect of achieving a borderless repeat is a challenge confronting textile designers in the planning phases of the design, and indicates great skill when executed as flawlessly as in this panel. Enhanced with foil-wrapped metal threads covering the ground cloth, bird-and-flower textiles produced in the seventeenth century feature a soft palette of pistachio green and safflower orange that was highly susceptible to fading. The overall shape of this piece indicates that it was used as a chasuble, a sleeveless Christian vestment, attesting to the popularity and status of this type of textile in Europe.
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