Different media
of Islamic art, mostly objects of luxury art
came to Europe,
medieval Europe, including what is today
Austria.
One important period was the 13th and 14th centuries,
when Mongol rulers had established a vast empire in peace
across Asia that allowed long distance trade.
It was at that time when diplomats, travelers
and merchants like the famous Marco Polo
from Venice explored possibilities of trade
and of political relations with the Mongols.
The trade with Asia made money and large money
with luxury commodities, and the most important was textiles,
highly prized and much sought after in Europe.
Most highly valued were textiles
made of silk and woven with golden metal threads.
The feeling and the visuality
of such silk and sparkling gold made an impression
and needed a weaving technique also that were unknown in Europe
at the time, but were used and produced in large numbers
and extremely high quality in the Mongol Empire.
Such Mongol cloth of silk and gold survived
only in few pieces and mostly in European churches,
strangely, because here they were used only on special occasions.
That means they were rarely used.
They survived.
Another European survival of such textiles is what is attested
in Vienna in a royal burial made into the burial garment
in this case of Rudolph IV,
the king who died in 1365
and was buried in the crypt below,
a very prominent place, below the main
altar of the Cathedral of St Stephen's in Vienna.
We can say that this cloth of silk and gold
and you see here a copy
that this cloth is remarkable
and significant in three fields.
Firstly, textile history in Islamic art.
The Vienna cloth is the only surviving Mongol
cloth of silk and gold that can be securely attributed
to a specific time and place.
The design shows three wide inscription bands
with Arabic writing.
You see such one band framed by narrow strips
with hunting animals and a white pattern of lotus
flowers and small peacocks.
The colors have faded away.
Originally, the golden pattern was on bright green, blue and red.
The inscriptions repeat a text that wishes
well-being and long rule, praise to our Lord,
The glorious Sultan, most glorious King of kings, Highness of world
and religion, Bu Sa'id Bahadur Khan May God perpetuate his rule.
These specific titles for this Sultan, from the Mongol dynasty of the
Il-khans in Iran allow us to say that the texts
must have been made in the years between 1319 and 1335 A.D.
The stripe design with
inscriptions is known from other surviving Mongol textiles.
Unusual is that they are so large,
so readability, and also calligraphy quality are high.
The text is by far longer than the short
formulas in other known textiles.
And there is another peculiarity: the direction
of writing in all three bands of inscriptions turns at a point
that was probably in the middle of the cloth.
We could establish this in our project
with a reconstruction drawing,
so that means the writing in one half of the text that was running
and read from one short side and in the other
half of the text upside down from the other short side.
So this was a very specific type
of design made for a specific function,
and we can only speculate what this function was.
It may have been tailored into, but then very special
specific clothing, or more probably used as a curtain
or a fitting in architecture.
In any case, this textile serves
to clearly communicate praise on the ruler.
So it had a representational quality, a representational function.
Another point is the enormous quality
of the textile compare to other known ones.
This, again points to royal context and production of royal workshop.
The gold metal thread is just one
third of a milimeter in diameter.
It is made of thin metal strips wound around a silk core,
and these strips are of silver
and fully gilded on both sides.
The quality is also evident in the weaving of the long inscriptions.
Normally, patterns on a loom consist of small pre-defined units
that are just repeated to create a larger pattern,
each unit
not much larger than a few centimeters,
such as is the case here in the hunting frieze
and in the repeated unit of the white pattern.
But in the inscription
bands, the entire writing is an amazing one
meter and 17 centimeters long before it starts to become repeated.
So either, no effort was spared to define
and weave such a long text
or a specific technique was used
that so far we do not understand.
The second relevant field for the Vienna Textile is that it
demonstrated a specific European context of use
and one it is entirely different from the use as costume
or fitting at the court of a ruler in Iran.
And that shows how much it was appreciated in Europe.
It was used in a Royal Christian burial.
Why a
textile with Arabic inscriptions was used?
One explanation that has been suggested
is that Arabic lettering was seen as a reference
to the Holy Land or invested with a Christian meaning.
We know of similar phenomena
with pseudo-Arabic letters
in late medieval European painting,
in paintings with Mary or other Christian themes.
Another explanation is simply in that cloth of silk and gold
was considered the most luxurious and precious textile in the period.
The stunning visual appearance of woven gold and intricate
patterns and bright colors fitted a dead king.
Nothing comparable was produced in Europe and only in the 14th century
weavers in the city of Lucca
started to produce similar gold and textiles.
So in Europe, as Mongols were called, Tartars
and the appreciation of Tartar golden textiles is reflected
in literature of the period. The poets Dante,
Boccaccio and Chaucer used the terms drappi
tartari, drappi tartareschi, clooth of Tars
so in Italian or English, to denote rich and extravagant clothing.
Before purple denoted royal clothing
in European literature now it became cloth of gold.
So the Vienna textile, along with other pieces, evidences
a cultural transfer and market change in the princely textile
culture of Europe as the direct result of trade import
lasting impact and appropriation
of golden textiles from the Islamic and other regions of Asia.
And thirdly, the Vienna textile allows to reflect
on modern dealings with objects of Islamic art.
It was in the 18th century that historic objects started
to become recorded and documented and examination
in 1739, in this case,
recorded the burials in the crypt
with drawings and descriptive text,
and that was published in a book so circulated to be read by others.
The early 20th century then saw the textile as a historic artifact.
In 1943, it was taken out of the crypt, transferred
to a museum newly founded for church art, and studied for the first time.
So it was historicized, aestheticized and musealized and the way
it was framed and presented in the museum changed several times.
First, hanging at the wall, then laying flat in the corner of
a dimly lit room that was presented as a treasury chamber,
and today, now, in a huge glass case in the center of a white room
surrounded by historical related objects.
The questions and frames of scholarly inquiry changed.
The first publication in the 1930s situated the textile
quickly in the blossoming historiography of Persian art.
The late 1980s expanded to transregional and cross
Eurasian connections of
textiles and the Mongols rulers, so brought that dimension inside.
And the last step our project with articles published after 2010
turned to a monographical study of the object
and to this double focus of context,
on the original textile in Iran
and on the European use in a princely burial in Vienna.