Page 240 - Bonhams Catalog Cohen and Cohen Jan 24, 2023 New York

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A LARGE INDO-PORTUGUESE TEXTILE The Portuguese established a colony in Bengal around 1537 and by
Bengal, India, 17th Century 1570 were exporting quantities of embroidered textiles to Europe. The
A rare and fine Indo-Portuguese silk and cotton embroidery, the central embroidered designs include decorative motifs borrowed from both
pale-blue-beige-ground circular roundel with a peacock at the center the Indian and European tradition. They include features of Italianate
surrounded by eight mermaids playing lutes amidst floral sprays within Renaissance origin and also motifs from 16th century Spanish and
another band of running animals including deer, dogs, and hares, all Portuguese art such as the double-headed eagle, as well as hunting
set within a red-ground shaped and canted rectangular panel with blue scenes. Several styles of the Bengal work are recorded, and this
ground corners, the red ground decorated with kneeling European appears to be kashida, worked in chain stitch and using muga or
figures, presumably hunters, on a dense ground of trees and flowers tussur silk. Usually, kashida embroideries are monochrome so this
packed with a variety of birds and animals including boars, deer, is very rare and unusual in using polychrome silk and cotton panels.
peacocks, lions, deer and other birds, the blue-ground corners with Some of the stylistic elements in this design are close to similar
figures confronting centaurs, the wide beige-ground outer border Chinese textiles of the period and it has been suggested that Chinese
decorated with numerous animals running amidst leafy tree branches textile workers could have been brought from Macao to Bengal to
between hunter’s with horns. work there, which would explain the mixtures of styles here.
95in (242cm) x 76in (193cm)
Exhibited: “Uma familia de coleccionadores, Poder e Cultura”, Casa
$20,000 - 30,000 Museu Dr Anastácio Gonçalves, Lisbon, cat. 63, where it is suggested
that they were possibly acquired by D. Frederico Guilherme Sousa
十七世紀 印度孟加拉 e Holstein (1737-1790) Governor of India for 7 years (1779-86).
However, another member of the Sousa famiy, Archbishop Braga D.
Published: Luís de Sousa (1637-1690), was Portuguese Ambassador to Rome
Cohen & Cohen, Think Pink!, Antwerp, 2013, pp. 98-99, no. 65 between 1675 and 1682 and is recorded as having Indian textiles in
one room in his “sumptiously furnished palce” (Karl 2016, p. 72)- which
出版： might have been these examples?
倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Think Pink!》，安特衛普，2013年，
頁98-99，圖版編號65 References: Karl, Barbara, 2016, Embroidered Histories, Indian Textiles
for the Portuguese Market during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries (Wien Köln Weimar: Böhlau Verlag) p. 72. 1. Teotónio R. de
Souza, 1985, Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions, p.
137.
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