This panel’s decoration continues Late Antique traditions of scrolling vines and bunches of grapes attested in objects from the Mediterranean to South Asia. In Iraq, comparisons with stucco paneling from the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon illustrate the local continuity before and after the rise of Islam in the seventh century.
A nearly identical panel now in the Benaki Museum in Athens, also made of teak wood, suggests that they may have formed a two-paneled door. Imported to Iraq probably from South Asia, teak was highly prized in Abbasid monumental architecture of the eighth and ninth century. The value of such objects endured through time, and they were often reused for a variety of purposes in later centuries.
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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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