The Cope of Saint Mexme

Like many textiles that are Islamic or Byzantine in origin, this large textile was re-used to make a sacerdotal vestment, possibly in the thirteenth century, judging by the band that runs along the upper section.

The decorative elements, arranged in alternate rows, are organized on a dark blue background in six rows one above the other. It comprises sets of two leopards linked together, facing each other and adjoined by a vegetal axis. A bird of prey blends in with the backs of the felines and a small quadruped is sitting under its belly. There is a composite decorative element in the upper section between each set of animals, which serves as an anchorage point for the chains fixed to the pearl collars around their necks. The felines’ coats, which are represented by discs, change in colour from one row to the next: yellow with green spots or green with yellow spots on one, white with red spots on another, and so on. Ocelli highlight the joints of the paws, from which emerge large claws.

Decorations comprising animals facing each other on a symmetrical axis had been used in Middle-Eastern countries (Iran and Iraq) since Antiquity, particularly on cylinder seals. The vegetal axis symbolized—at least during the Sassanid period in Iran—the tree of life associated with the primordial waters; it is part of Persian cosmogony, which influenced—and still influences—Iranian art. Weavers enjoyed working with this symmetrical composition, as their looms weren’t very large. They could compose a design using dots, which enabled them to invert a motif and hence produce a densely patterned composition of mirror images. This type of decoration spread rapidly throughout the East and was also adopted in the West.

The weaving technique (samite) was used, together with its variant taquete, to make figured silks up until around the eleventh century, a period that saw the emergence—particularly in Iran—of new techniques such as lampas.

The arrangement of the animals, the vegetal axis that separates them, and even the composite element, to which the chains are attached, follow the tradition of Sassanid Iranian productions, which spread—via the Silk Route—from Japan[1] to the shores of the Mediterranean[2]. The collars, the ocelli that highlight the joints, and claws have already been found on textiles from the ninth and tenth centuries in the Bukhara region[3]. However, the wheel arrangement, which was very common under the Sassanids and was sometimes used in the twelfth century, hasn’t been employed here. Certain textiles from the tenth and eleventh centuries, with decorations on an equally monumental scale, already attest to a progressive break with Sassanid tradition[4].

The specks on the leopards’ coats are very similar to the circular notches used for the coats of animals that ornament cameo glass and rock-crystal pieces from Fatimid Egypt[5]. The use of ocelli for an animal’s coat can still be found on works more than a century later[6].

The tamed leopards evoke one of the favourite themes of oriental artists: the prince’s hunting exploits, the symbols of his power, which were crowned with a banquet and music. In the Umayyad period, treatises on hunting mention animals used for hunting: dogs, falcons, and leopards—highly prized animals which required specialist training. Certain sculptures in the round from China (Tang Dynasty), which depict a huntsman carrying a leopard on the croup of his horse, suggest that this type of hunting is Chinese in origin. It quickly spread throughout Islamic countries and appeared on luxury objects, such as ivories, and was combined with hunting using a falcon: in Spain during the caliphate period[7], Sicily in the eleventh and twelfth centuries[8], and Fatimid Egypt[9]. It spread to the West through Muslim Spain.

This magnificent textile was made for an important person, probably a prince or a high official, who may have been a master of the royal hounds.

[2] E.g. in the Vatican Museum.

[3] E.g. textiles depicting a simurgh or peacock dragon, and the famous ‘shroud of saint Austremonius’, a Byzantine silk (from the eighth or tenth to eleventh centuries) from Mozac Abbey (Puy-de-Dôme) in the Lyon Textile Museum (inv. 27.386). It is interesting to note that this also depicts a small hound in the area under the lions’ bellies.

[4] This is the case, for example, with the famous ‘shroud of Saint Josse’, woven in the middle of the tenth century in Transoxiana or Khorasan (Department of Islamic Art, the Louvre Museum, Paris, OA 7522), and the textiles  ‘of eagles’ (also Iranian) in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. 62.264), and the Museum of Islamic Art in Teheran.

[5] Examples of glassware include: the fragment of the ‘goblet with ibexes’ in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo (inv. 2463) and the ‘lion bowl’ from the Treasury of Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice (inv. No.117); examples of rock-crystal pieces include: the ‘ewer with ibexes facing each other’, also from the Treasury of Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice (inv. No. 86), the ewer ‘with lions facing each other’ from the Palazzo Pitti (Florence), in the Museo degli Argenti, in Florence (inv. No. 1917), and the ‘bottle with parrots’ from the Treasury of Fermo Cathedral.

[6] E.g. on the piece of linen cloth embroidered with wool and linen and decorated with a horse, from the Bouvier collection (cf. Egyptian textiles 1993, No. 178).

[7] Pyxis of al-Mughira, 968, Department of Islamic Art, the Louvre Museum, Paris, inv. OA.4068.

[8] Pyxis with painted decorations, Department of Islamic Art, the Louvre Museum, Paris, inv. MAO.441.

[9] Fragment of plaquette with hunters, Department of Islamic Art, the Louvre Museum, Paris, inv. OA.6265/2.