A pair of Sino Portuguese silk damask hangings

Circa 1580-1640

A rare example of two bands of colour, red on the left and yellow on the right, incorporated into a single integral width of silk damask, each colour woven with a repeat of the crowned and displayed double headed eagle of the Habsburg dynasty, here adapted to show an arrow grasped in each talon and plunged into a lotus blossom.

Portugal, following several more hostile attempts, leased Macau as a trading post from China in 1554 prior to establishing a more permanent arrangement in 1557. Following the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580 the Iberian Union, or Hispanic Monarchy, ensured that the Habsburg rulers of Spain also had sovereignty over Portugal, and, by extension, her overseas territories, including Macau. The symbolism here of the eagle asserting a forceful piercing control of the Chinese lotus blossom is expressive of the widening reach and global power of the Habsburg empire. Their nominal control of the colony remained until the coronation of the Duke of Braganza as King John IV of Portugal in 1640.

These lengths of damask are part of a group of related examples made for the Portuguese and Spanish markets during the period of the Iberian Union. Barbara Markowsky illustrates and describes a short length of the same silk in ‘Seidengewebe - Kataloge des Kunstgewerbemuseums Koln’, publ. Cologne 1976, plate 730, while another is held in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, inv. no. T 3421. Five fragments are in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York, acc. nos. 1902-1-963-a to e (donated by John Pierpont Morgan in 1902), with another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, object no. 36.90.425. Seven pieces were sold from the Mayorcas Collection, Christie’s King Street, 12th February 1999, as lot 327.

A silk lampas of similar design, also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, object no. 12.55.4, was included as cat. no. 15 in the exhibition ‘Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800’, publ. Thames & Hudson, 2013), and is discussed at length in the exhibition catalogue.

With marks and small repairs. One of the two lengths cut along the centre line and rejoined.

Provenance: Mayorcas

Each 326cm (128⅜”) high and 52.5cm (20¾”) wide.