Textile Fragment

Textile Fragments, Part of the Tunic of Don Felipe (d. A.D. 1274)

The Cairo Geniza documents (see discussion of no. 32.129.2 in this volume) indicate that medieval Spain was the largest exporter of silk to the Mediterranean countries. Arabic inscribed textiles were also produced in Spain from the tenth to the fifteenth century, but the reconquest in 1492 changed the focus of the textile industry.

Spanish silks have been discovered in royal Christian tombs dating from the thirteenth century. The Metropolitan textile fragments belong to a group found in Palencia in the tomb of Don Felipe, who died in A.D. 1274. The European Christian ecclesiastical appropriation of Arabic inscribed textiles is well documented visually and textually, and includes Spanish silks as well as Fatimid Egyptian exports to Norman Sicily. Arabic inscribed textiles carried twin auras of wealth and sanctity for the Europeans--just as the possession of Oriental carpets would in the upcoming centuries.

The epigraphical style of this inscription, with its sprouting trilobed palmettes, seems to be derived and adapted from later Fatimid foliated kufic. The repetition of the word "happiness" forms a stylized decorative pattern that is mirrored and reversed as it is repeated. The inscription is an artful design juxtaposed with a geometric latticework pattern filled with rosettes.

[Walker and Froom 1992]

Inscription: Arabic inscription: Happiness (mirrored, reversed, and repeated)

Tomb of Don Felipe Infante (d. 1274), Villalcazar de Sirgo, Spain; [ Adolph Loewi, Venice, until 1927; sold to MMA]

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Tiraz: Inscribed Textiles from Islamic Workshops," December 15, 1992–March 14, 1993, no. 27.

New York. The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Spain, 1000–1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith," August 30, 2021–January 30, 2022.

Walker, Daniel S., and Aimee Froom. "Exhibition Notebook." In Tiraz: Inscribed Textiles from Islamic Workshops.. New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992. no. 27, pp. 38–39.