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Towel

A work made of linen, bands of weft-float faced diamond twill weave; weft-faced, warp-ribbed plain weave with supplementary patterning wefts.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of linen, bands of weft-float faced diamond twill weave; weft-faced, warp-ribbed plain weave with supplementary patterning wefts.

Date:

15th century

Artist:

Perugia, Italy

About this artwork

This complete towel entered the collection in 1899. The design is formed of addorsed and confronted animals specifically to be identified as wyverns. According to The Oxford English Dictionary a wyvern is a “chimerla animal imagined as a winged dragon with two feet like those an an eagle, and a serpent-like barbed tail”. It is the same animal which one also finds, however, with its wings spread, in the lower part of the Borghese coat-of-arms. Towels of this kind can be found in Early Renaissance paintings and manuscript pages where they were used either as table covers or as overtowels.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Textiles

Title

Towel

Place

Perugia (Object made in)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1401–1500

Medium

Linen, bands of weft-float faced diamond twill weave; weft-faced, warp-ribbed plain weave with supplementary patterning wefts

Dimensions

231.6 × 58.2 cm (91 3/16 × 22 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Antiquarian Society

Reference Number

1899.8

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/56658/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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