An Italian velvet panel

Circa 1450-1500

The burgundy silk velvet of ferronerie design with stylised pomegranate and thistle motifs. Consisting of joined panels, and bordered with a 16th/17th century braid of silk and metal thread and backed with a blue linen of similar date. The term “ferronerie” - usually employed to denote this class of velvets - is due to the resemblance to ironwork of the voided patterns within which the pomegranates and thistles are arranged. The design varied slightly within the basic template, but a dalmatic on view in the Long Gallery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, accession no. T27W4, is closely related. There is a similar fragment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 18.24.1, and a comparable panel in the V & A, accession number circ.346-1911. Ferronerie velvets were sometimes employed as a sumptuous backdrop in depictions of the Madonna, as in a work by Carlo Crivelli in the Pinacoteca Brera, inventory no. 155-350-351. The painting bears the date 1482; at the heart of the period in which the current velvet would have been woven.

With some small damages.

Provenance: The collection of Rafaello Amati.

152cm (59⅞”) high and 101cm (39¾”) wide.