Detail of Mise-en-carte for Woven Brocade with a Bouquet with Flowers and Pearls
Spanish School, 18th Century Spanish
Not on view
Detail of mise-en-carte (weaving pattern) for woven brocade, with a design motif typical of the the second half of the 18th century, when textile designs were often decorated with colorful garlands of flowers and leaves, as well as other naturalistic motifs and garden trophies.
This detail, possibly of a related mise-en-carte (38.98.24), contains a bouquet with a large stylized flower with pink petals and yellow pistils that stands on a green stem and is surrounded by smaller flowers, one of them also with pink petals but with green pistils, the rest with yellow petald, flower buds and green branches with leaves. The pistils of the yellow flowers consist of pearls of various colors: pink, purple and green, some of them also surrounded by small gray pearls. Some of the flower buds are also made up of pearls colored with yellow and purple. The bouquet is held together by a yellow ribbon bow that scrolls to the lower-right of the design. The design contains instructions written in ink in Spanish, suggesting the use of gold thread and other materials. It is likely that the pearls seen in the drawing were actually embroidered onto the finished textile.
The bouquet is outlined with graphite on verso.
