Towel

Textiles

15th century

Perugia, Italy

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

Christa C. Mayer Thurman, Textiles in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1992), 36, 40, 144 (ill.).
The Antiquarian Society of the Art Institute of Chicago, The First One Hundred Years (Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 1977), 190, cat. 250 (ill.).

Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpieces of Western Textiles, Jan. 25–Mar. 2, 1969.
Baltimore Museum of Art, Dec. 4, 1973-Jan. 20, 1974.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Antiquarian Society of The Art Institute of Chicago, The First One Hundres Years, Apr. 23-June 19, 1977.
Art Institute of Chicago, European Textile Masterpieces from Coptic Times through the 19th Century, Sept. 27, 1989-Jan. 22, 1990.
Art Institute of Chicago, Allerton and Cheney Galleries, A Birthday Celebration-100 Years of Antiquarian Society Textile Collecting 1890-1990, Sept. 11, 1991-Feb. 17, 1992.

The Antiquarian Society, Chicago, by Jan 1, 1899 [Old Register 128; memo R5770, Nov. 30, 1935; copy in curatorial object file]; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1899.

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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.

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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.

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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.