Art Institute of Chicago

Towel

Perugia, Italy

Date

15th century

Medium

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

Culture

Perugia

Department

Textiles

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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.

The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.