Cope with peacocks

The history of the cope is complexe[1]. It comprises six pieces, some of them sewn together, and three other small pieces now in museums[2].

The decoration is organised in six superposed rows. Outlined in black, it stands out against the dark blue ground. Resting on a studded pedestal containing the inscription supported by two small birds, on either side of a line of plants coming out of a small triangular base ending in a bouquet of palmettes, two peacocks in profile face each other, their ocellated tails raised, thus forming a complete wheel. Under the breast of each peacock nestles a small caprid (a unicorn?) and in the space between the back foot and wing tip a small dog (?) frisks about. Studded collars encircle the necks of the peacocks, and the joints of their clawed feet are marked by a half-palmette. A line of plants separates each group.

From one row to another, the decoration is predominantly red, with yellow and light blue highlights (heads and aigrettes) or yellow with light blue highlights.

The studded collars around the necks of the birds date back to Sassanid Iran, perhaps even earlier, and marked the animals of royal hunts. This detail, which had become purely ornamental, travelled down the ages. The half-palmette that highlights the joints of the feet and that had already appeared, in a more stylised version, on the fabrics of Khurasan in the tenth century, was passed on to the West and is found on the animals of thirteenth-century Limousin enamels.

The theme of the peacock made the wheel a recurrent theme in Islamic art. It is difficult, outside textual references, to affirm that, apart from its aesthetic qualities, it had a symbolic value in the twelfth century. It appears, however, all over the Islamic world, on princely objects. Later, in a fourteenth-century Iranian mystical poem by Farid al-Dīn Attar, The Conference of the Birds, the peacock describes itself as the bird of paradise[3].

The affronted peacocks making up the wheel, their necks sometimes intertwined, are found on Būyid and Seljukian textiles from Iraq and Iran. In Spain, during the caliphal period, they appeared on several ivory objects intended for the court[4], as well as on the large embroidered silk of Burgos de Osma, said to have come from Baghdad.

The peacock theme antedates Islam, and its use in Greco-Roman mythology and Christian art is known. In the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, it appeared on art works using various techniques and of diverse origins, such as painting on wood, stone sculpture, textiles and ceramics. A dish from the caliphal period found in Madinat al-Zahra is decorated with a single peacock[5]. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Egypt and Syria produced several examples: painted in one or two colours under glaze[6], Rusafa ware[7] and lustreware with blue and turquoise highlights[8].

In the past, the Saint-Sernin cope was thought to have been made in Sicily. Of course, the motifs of affronted peacocks, tails raised, on either side of a tree, is found on one of the painted wooden panels of the ceiling with muqarnas of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo (c. 1143) and on the ceiling (mosaic on a gold ground)of the Sala della Fontana in the Palazzo della Zisa (1180) in the same city. But, according to W. F. Volbach (1969), no textile of this type has been definitively attributed to Sicily. It seems that the Toulouse textile was produced instead by one of the Almoravid Spanish manufactories (Almeria in particular) whose luxurious silks are praised in several texts, particularly in that of Yāqūt. The predominant colours, dark blue, red and yellow are characteristic of Spanish fabrics and the written form of the inscription is similar that that used for other objects − ivories, copperware, textiles – of the same origin. The treatment of the heads of the peacocks is similar to that of the birds in the talons of the eagle on the renowned tunic of the Infante Don Garcia (first half of the twelfth century) of the parish church of Oña, Burgos.

Finally, it was during the Almoravid period that the layout of the decoration inside the wheel began to evolve and that, as in the Middle East a century and a half earlier, it was challenged by striped decoration[9]. The craze among important Spanish Christians for these masterpieces from Islamic workshops should also be noted.

[2] Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée National du Moyen Âge et des Thermes de Cluny, Paris, inv. 12869; Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

[3] Its plumage was formed by the jinns, with the help of a brush given to them by the “painter of the invisible world”. It also admits to having been chassed out of the earthly paradise for having formed a friendship with the serpent there.

[4] For example, the lid of the pyxis of al-Mughira, 968, Musée du Louvre, Department of Islamic Art, inv. OA 4068, or the lid of the pyxis in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

[5] Museo Arqueológico de Córdoba.

[6] The bowl with two affronted peacocks with intertwined necks, National Museum of Qatar, Doha; the bowl featuring a circle of three peacocks, painted in black under transparent glaze, Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo; bowl with two peacocks with undulating shapes, painted in blue-black under turquoise glaze, seem to fit together, making a Chinese yin-yang motif, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 56.185.6.

[7] Such as the renowned vase in the National Museum of Damascus (inv. A 7016) on which a lovely bird painted in blue, black and red struts about.

[8] A stunning composition, which seems to come straight out of a Byzantine sculpted stone cul-de-four in the courtyard of the archaeological museum of Istanbul, is found on a lustreware bowl with blue and turquoise highlights in Berlin: the body and head of the bird, which look minuscule, are located in the centre of the circle, entirely framed by ocellated feathers.

9 The chasuble of San Juan de Ortega (m. 1163), from the treasury of the parish church of Quintanaortuño, Burgos, is a fine example.