Cushion of Doña Berenguela

Berenguela was the eldest daughter of King Alfonso VII of Castile and Queen Leonor of England, founders of the monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos. On the death of her brother Enrique in 1217, she inherited the crown which she would later pass on to her son, the infante Fernando. Towards the end of her life, Doña Berenguela withdrew to the Monastery of Las Huelgas, where she died on 8th November 1246, and where she is buried. The cushion was used to support the head of the deceased in her grave. Between 1942 and 1943, the National Heritage Commission opened the tomb and found the cushion.

It is made of red taffeta silk, the front adorned with a tapestry of gold and coloured silk threads. The red taffeta on the back is made of thinner silk and is undecorated.

A band of inscriptions surrounds the oval-shaped central medallion. Two figures stand facing each other on either side of what looks like a tree. The long-haired lady on the right holds a stringed instrument or tambourine; the figure on the left is wearing a turban and holds a goblet. Four eight-pointed stars complete the composition, and it is framed at the sides by two bands, the lettering forming arches. Several small pompoms hang from the cushion’s yellow trim.

The headdress of infante Fernando of Castile and the cushion of Queen Leonor of Aragon, which are kept in the museum of the Las Huelga monastery, appear to come from the same workshop as Doña Berenguela's cushion. The remnant of King Fernando III's cloak in the Royal Armoury in Madrid, and Archbishop Don Sancho's cloak in Toledo's cathedral museum are contemporary pieces. San Velero's cloak (presumably late thirteenth century) preserved in the Museo Textil y de Indumentaria in Barcelona, apparently dates from the transitional period between Almohad traditions and the Nasrid art of Granada, a crossroads of craft techniques.

These examples support the theory that there were active Nasrid or Mudéjar workshops in the towns recently conquered by Christians, which would have worked for the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, imitating Al-Andalus techniques.

The miniatures in the Cantigas de Santa María and the Libro de los Juegos clearly show the Muslim influence in the thirteenth century Castile court on fabrics, designs and fashions.

This remarkable piece, with its figures holding musical instruments separated by a stylized 'tree of life', shows particularly exceptional craftsmanship. The warp weave for the stars has been sewn into the fabric with astonishing skill, as M. Gómez Moreno points out in his study of the creation of the Panthéon fabrics of the Kings of Castile.

Motifs set inside circles are frequent features on Sassanid fabrics, used subsequently by the Coptics and in Islamic countries. Dancers or figures facing one another inside a circle are common in Coptic art[1]. Eight-pointed stars are also widely used[2].

Two female tambourine players sitting opposite one another are also depicted on an Al-Andalus fabric from the Nasrid era[3]. Different fabric but from the same era was discovered in the tomb of Arnaldo de Gurb, with a medallion insert adorned with an epigraphic decorated band, inside which two turbaned figures face one another on either side of a vertical line.[4] A contemporary garment of San Valerio bears an inscription in knotted Kufic, its arched strokes very similar to those on the bands of this cushion[5]. The wide, almond-shaped, oriental-style eyes of the figures are not unlike those seen on Al-Andalus ceramics from the tenth century onwards[6].

[1] Ref. E.g. Textiles from Egypt 4th-13th centuries, 1980, n°66, n° 95; Martiniani-Reber, M., 1991, n° 221, 234, 235, 334, 356 & 387.

[2] Ref. E.g. Martiniani-Reber, M., (1991), n° 6, 7, 13, 16, 22, 23, 49 & 50.

[3]Paris, Musée national du Moyen Âge. Cf. Desrosiers, S., 2004, n° 158, inv. Cl. 21962 a, b, c and d. The motif  here can be compared with other fabrics where several figures are shown face to face, such as the fragment of Wadsworth Atheneum  in Hartford (Lewis May, F., 1957, fig. 91, ref. also fig. 90 et 92).

[4] Barcelona, Collection Capmany. ref. for example Lewis May, F., 1957, p. 65, fig. 41-42.

[5] Athens, Benaki Museum. ref. e.g. Lewis May, F., 1957, p. 71, fig. 44.