Object details
Object number
T27w62
Creator(s)
Italian
Title
Furnishing or Garment Fabric
Date
1475-1525
Medium
Silk, cut voided velvet, shot and brocaded with gilt yarn
Description
Leaves, Pomegranates
Dimensions
152.4 x 58.4 cm (60 x 23 in.)
Provenance
Entered Isabella Stewart Gardner's collection by 1888.
Commentary
American painter John Singer Sargent used this Italian voided velvet as inspiration for the background in his portrait of Mrs. Gardner in the Gothic Room on this floor. In his rendering of the textile he enlarged the scale of its pattern some two or three times.
Bibliography
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), pp. 237-38.
Adolph S. Cavallo. Textiles: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1986), p. 167, no. 125.
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt. "Mrs. Gardner's Renaissance." Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy. Fenway Court (1990-1991), pp. 10-30, no. 7.
Catherine M. E. Guth. "Dress, Self-Fashioning and Display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum" in Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice (London, 2015), p. 121, pl. 14.
Diana Seave Greenwald and Erica Hirshler, "The Story Behind John Singer Sargent's Portait of Isabella Stewart Gardner," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 30 November 2023, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/story-behind-john-singer-sargents-portrait-isabella-stewart-gardner
Gallery
Long Gallery
Rights and reproductions
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