This new addition to the museum’s permanent collection, a fragment of a once larger work, required quite a bit of investigation. It was discovered where most surviving Byzantine textiles are found—in the Egyptian desert—and while the climate there ensured its survival, more than 1,500 years later any understanding of its original context and overall composition had been lost to time.
Byzantine; probably Egypt
The Art Institute of Chicago, Belle M. Borland and David P. Earle III endowment funds; through prior gift of Mr. Armen G. Avedisian in memory of Karekin Der Avedisian
However, some clues remained. The size of the fragment’s design and the weaving technique used to make it suggest that it was once part of a large furnishing textile—a wall hanging, most likely. Visible staining points to its ultimate use as part of a burial shroud, which is unsurprising; fabrics used in Byzantine homes were eventually retired and used to wrap the dead. Upon their discovery they were often cut up into smaller pieces—to remove poorly preserved areas or to excise the designs, which held value for art dealers and collectors in particular.
But what does this fragment depict? Answering that question began with a careful analysis of the surviving material evidence.
Despite its age, the fragment retains much of its original vibrant and subtle color variations. Woven with linen warps (vertical threads) and wool and linen wefts (horizontal threads), it features the figural design of a face in plush pile, created by pulling out the colored wool wefts into protruding loops.
The fragment’s design was created using the weft-loop pile technique, in which horizontal threads are pulled out to create protruding loops.
Illustration by the author
This technique, called weft-loop pile, was employed in different ways in Byzantine textile production. Often, the larger undecorated areas of a textile were completed with this technique—as in the example at left below—making for an especially plush feel and adding warmth. In our newly acquired fragment, however, the design itself was created from shorter protruding loops in what appears to have been an aesthetic choice. Early Byzantine artists often manipulated the materials they were working with to resemble other mediums, and the use of weft-loop pile here lends the fabric a mosaic-like appearance, with short, uncut, individual piles mimicking the look of small stone or glass tiles, called tesserae.
Byzantine; Egypt
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Martin A. Ryerson through the Antiquarian Society
In this fragment, the weft-loop pile technique was used to add plushness to background area surrounding the design.
Byzantine; probably Egypt
The Art Institute of Chicago, Belle M. Borland and David P. Earle III endowment funds; through prior gift of Mr. Armen G. Avedisian in memory of Karekin Der Avedisian
The same technique was used in the newly acquired fragment to markedly different effect; shorter loops lend the design a mosaic-like appearance.
Initially I thought the design represented the god Dionysos—as in this example from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the vegetal-crowned figure is identified by an inscription in Greek.
Dionysos (Fragment from a Wall Hanging), late Roman period–Early Byzantine Period, 4th–5th century
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Charles Potter Kling Fund, 1973.290
But after careful technical analysis, I noticed something that made me question my assumption: paired linen wefts (multiple wefts grouped together) and thick purple-colored wool wefts embedded at the bottom of the fragment. This type of construction almost always occurs near the edge of a textile as a means of strengthening its higher stress points. Its use here suggests that the figure occupied a position very near the textile’s edge and was in fact a bust rather than the head of a complete figure.
Paired linen wefts (multiple wefts grouped together) and thick purple-colored wool wefts embedded at the bottom indicate that the fragment was likely positioned near the textile’s lower edge.
I then discovered a textile fragment in the collection of the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, that, like ours, features a head with a vegetal crown. More importantly, it shares the same technical features: the paired linen and thick, colored wool wefts, this time at the top—clues that this bust was positioned along the top edge of its complete textile.
Fragment with Personification, 5th–6th century
Byzantine; probably Egypt
Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece, GE 8494
The evidence that our fragment and the Benaki one originally belonged to complete textiles with busts arranged near either their top or bottom edges gave me further insight into our new acquisition’s identity.
In addition to representing gods like Dionysos, it was common for artists in the late Roman and early Byzantine period to generate representations of things, ideas, or abstractions in human form. One of the most popular concepts to show in this way was time, including the four seasons. Floor mosaic designs of the period frequently included personifications of the seasons, one in each of a composition’s four corners, framing a central design—as in this mosaic from an elite home in Tunisia. Together, the seasons symbolized the harmony and stability of nature and the cyclical movement of time.
Mosaic Floor Apollo and Marsyas Surrounded by Personifications of the Seasons, 2nd century
Roman; El Jem, Tunisia
Bardo National Museum Tunis, 529. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
I began to suspect that the textile’s complete composition may have shared a design motif with contemporary floor mosaics, just as its weave pattern, with its clusters of colored loops, resembled mosaic tesserae. The full textile would have included a bust in each of its four corners—one for each season. The slight turn of the bust’s head to the left in our fragment mimics that of the spring personification in the Tunisian mosaic, suggesting that this figure once occupied the bottom-right corner of the larger textile. I believe it is a personification of spring—or perhaps fall.
Every Byzantine textile fragment in our collection is many times removed from its original ancient context, and it’s been so rewarding to solve the mystery of what this object likely once looked like complete. I look forward to sharing the newly acquired work with you, our members, following its conservation, when it will join other objects from the period in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art.
—Stephanie R. Caruso, assistant curator, Textiles and Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
