Cleveland Museum of Art

Fragmentary Icon Panel, Christ in Glory (?) and Evangelists

Date

750 – 850

Medium

slit-and dovetailed-tapestry weave; wool

Culture

Egypt, Abbasid period

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

In this extraordinary fragment with a rare background resembling woven silk patterns, two roundels in the corners display the busts of haloed Evangelists holding books and raising their right hands in a gesture of teaching. In the center, the large roundel preserves traces of an enthroned figure, presumably that of Christ in Glory (the jeweled throne is visible on the left). A geometric pattern of zigzags and triangles decorates the border. Woven on a verticle loom, tapestry weave has colorful horizontal wefts that are interlaced only in the area needed for the pattern; slits are formed when the colored wefts turn back around the same vertical warp for several rows. Warp and wefts reference the basic directional patterns of weaving—warp being the longitudinal threads with the transverse weft being drawn over and under the warp.

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