Textile Fragment with Birds

Made with silk and metallic threads, this textile fragment was once part of a larger length of fabric. Rows of large, circular medallions interlace with rows of small, oval-shaped ones, and each medallion encloses a pair of birds. The birds in the larger medallions turn towards each other, their heads woven with golden thread. The bodies of the birds, the medallions, and the surrounding negative spaces were originally formed with bright, contrasting red and green threads. Kermes—an insect-based dye—creates the red color, while an unidentified dye was used for the green. Due to the presence of iron, the green dye oxidized much faster than the red and can no longer be seen by the naked eye.

This textile was found in the tomb of Saint Daniel in the Church of Santa Anna in Barcelona. Daniel, sometimes referred to as Daniel Fasanella, was one of seven thirteenth-century Franciscan friars who were granted permission to travel to Ceuta, a city on the North African coast bordering modern-day Morocco. Upon their arrival in the Muslim-controlled city in 1227, the friars publically preached the Gospel and denounced Islam. They were sent to prison and soon beheaded. At an unknown later date, Daniel’s remains—which may have been granted the status of relics—were brought to the Church of Santa Anna and he was eventually canonized. The presence of the textile in Daniel’s tomb implies the fabric was either used as a grave cloth or to wrap the saint’s relics.

The Saint Daniel textile is part of a group of Andalusi lampas weave textiles that share structural characteristics, and Dorothy Shepherd was the first to describe these similarities. Consisting of a unique structure of ground warps in groups of 2-2-4 and a binding system that causes the metallic threads of the wefts to form honeycomb patterns, Shepherd notes this lampas weave occurs nowhere else in the medieval world. She specifically suggests Almería, on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, as the place of production. This group, termed the "Almería Group" by Karel Otavsky and Muhammad ʻAbbās Muhammad Salīm, includes the Lion Strangler and Griffin textiles from the tomb of Bernat Calbó, the so-called Baghdad textile from the tomb of a bishop of Burgos de Osma, the Saint Daniel textile, and the San Juan de Ortega textile from Quintanaortuña, among others. Due to an inscription in its design, the San Juan de Ortega textile is confidently dated to the reign of the Almoravid emir Ali b. Yusuf (1107-1143) and thus provides a key to the group’s dating.

Rosa Maria Martín i Ros notes another textile similar in both technique and design to the Saint Daniel fabric, the so-called Textile with Birds in the collection of the Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil (CDMT) in Terrassa, Spain. Together, the CDMT fragment (dated by Martín i Ros to 1147) and the Saint Daniel fabric represent a shift in Almería textile design. With its design of interlocking oval medallions, the Saint Daniel textile suggests an evolution from large, tangent roundels (such as the textiles from the tomb of Bernat Calbó) to more fluid, organic shapes. This development in design suggests a date of production in the mid to late twelfth century.

This means that the textile was most likely produced several decades before Daniel was martyred. Because the fabric was already quite dated by the time it was used to wrap Daniel’s remains, this implies the textile was considered exceptional in its own right. Andalusi textiles were desired commodities throughout the medieval Mediterranean world. Textiles from Almería were especially renowned; al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi wrote at length about Almería’s prestigious silk trade. Its heightened status as an Andalusi product—in addition to its use of luxurious materials of gold, silk, and precious dyes—marked the textile as an object worth collecting, treasuring, and saving. Tradition holds that Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, received the Saint Daniel fabric as either payment or as a gift for participating in the conquest of Almería in 1147 alongside Alfonso VII of León and Castile. It is worth noting that the church of Santa Anna was founded by Berenguer a year earlier in 1146.

Re-constructing the history of medieval textiles is challenged by the fact that they survive in fragmentary states in museum collections around the world. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, museums sought to expand their collections. Surviving in European and North American collections, thirteen fragments believed to come from the original Saint Daniel fabric are roughly the same size and survive in similar states of deterioration. While we know that, in order to meet high demand for artworks and to increase their profits, it was common for art dealers to cut an original length of a medieval fabric into several smaller fragments and sell them separately, this does not seem to have been the fate of the Saint Daniel fragments. Their edges have decayed organically, suggesting the fragments were not formed deliberately with a modern knife or pair of scissors. This could imply that the Saint Daniel textile had already been divided long before it was sold on the art market, perhaps indicative of a particular former use. A significant clue to the history of the Saint Daniel fabric can be found in the sister fragments of the Abegg-Stiftung and the CDMT. These two fragments bear circular indentations of the same size, which has led the Abegg-Stiftung to suggest the two fragments were used to line the body and lid of a circular pyxis, perhaps a reliquary that held Daniel’s remains.

The very nature of textiles—their materiality and portability—often make their histories complex and fragmented, and the Saint Daniel textile is no exception. The precious silk and dyes used in the fabric have been subject to centuries of deterioration and leave us with relatively few clues to its original design and production. In part, however, it was this preciousness of materials that made the textile treasured by both medieval and modern collectors. The textile’s portability further complicates its history and prohibits any confident provenance. But these complications of the textile’s history reflect the complexities and nuances of its original cultural, political, and economic contexts. While we do not know exactly how and when the fabric arrived at the Church of Santa Anna in Barcelona, the practice of enclosing a Christian relic within an Islamic object speaks to a complex yet lively exchange of artistic ideas that transcended political and religious borders in the medieval Mediterranean.

Selected References:

Dorothy G. Shepherd, "Hispano-Islamic Textiles in the Cooper Union Collection." Chronicle of the Museum for the Arts of Decoration of the Cooper Union 1, no. 10 (1943): 355-401.
Dorothy G. Shepherd, "A Dated Hispano-Islamic Silk." Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 373-382.

Cristina Partearroyo, "Almoravid and Almohad Textiles." In al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, edited by Jerrilynn D. Dodds, 105-13. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992.

Karel Otavsky and Muhammad Abbas Muhammad Salim. Mittelalterliche Textilien I: Ägypten, Persien und Mesopotamien, Spanien und Nordafrika. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 1995.

Rosa Maria Martín i Ros. "El pas de la decoració naturalista a la decoració geomètrica en els teixits andalusins." Quaderns del Museu Episcopal de Vic 1 (2005): 115-38.



Catalogue entry by Amelia Roché Hyde, Research Assistant, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, September 2021

Church of Santa Anna, Barcelona; José Gudiol, Barcelona (sold 1930)

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

Sheperd, Dorothy G. The Hispano-Islamic Textiles in the Cooper-Union Collection. New York: Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, 1943. p. 367.

Otavsky, Karel, and Muhammad abbas Muhammad Salim, ed. Mittelalterliche Textilien 1: Ägypten, Persien und Mesopotamien, Spanien und Nordafrika. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 1995. p. 159.

Martín i Ros, Rosa M. "La dispersió dels teixits medieval: un patrimoni trossejat." Lambard: estudis d'art medieval 12 (1999-2000). p. 173.

Saladrigas Cheng, Sílvia. "L’estudi tècnic dels teixits com a recurs en la recerca històrica. El cas dels teixits medievals del Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil. Terrassa." Barcelona, 2017. p. 105.

Perratore, Julia. "Spain 1000-1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n. s., 79, no. 2 (Fall 2021). pp. 28–9, fig. 34.