NASRID SPAIN, 15TH CENTURY

This elegant silk textile fragment shows a lion which would originally have been depicted as a pair of confronting lions on either side of a stylized tree. The lions on this textile have been compared to a Granadan textile bearing Nasrid heraldic emblems and rampant lions, which possibly served as the model. Variants of this pattern, depicting slightly different plant forms or animals demonstrate that these textiles were produced in large numbers although only a handful of fragments have survived today. Similar fragments are found in a number of European museums. Our fragment is the same design as a larger fragment in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv.no.11.23). Further similar textiles in the museum’s collection include inv. no. 25.120.453, 20.94.1, and 1981.372.