Important Woven Cloth with Lion Frieze and Ornamental Bands. Two-coloured tapestry weave in silhouette style, fine-threaded, dark grey and beige.

Rectangular length of cloth with centred vertical frieze of rampant lions with arching tails inside adjoining octagonal frames on a light-coloured ground, surrounded by a band of dense braiding with inside hatching alternating with flowers. Schematic palmettes in the spaces in between. Outer ornamental band of hanging rhombi. Lined up along the narrow edge at the bottom are four light-coloured, stocky human figures with bird’s feet, some with their left arm raised, set against a dark ground with fringed border below them. Fragment of a hanging

Sewn onto linen and framed. For style, ornamental structure and iconography, cf. Effenberger – 1976, 178, 216 f., 239, 270 f., pls. 119, 121, 125 (of later date, but with the same composition); Cat. Vienna – 2005, 155 f., no. 92 with illus.

REFERENCE #

TX_EG_1001

CIVILIZATION

Egypt, Coptic, 500 C.E. – 700 C.E.

SIZE

L. 99.2 cm, W. 26.5 cm

CONDITION

Fine Condition

PRICE

Price available upon request

PROVENANCE

Coll. A. and E. Offermann, Cologne (1965–2012). – Formerly private collection of Reichskanzler Franz von Papen (1879–1969), from June–December 1932 last but one Reichskanzler of the Weimar Republic, from January 1933 to July 1934 vice-chancellor in Hitler’s cabinet, later ambassador of the German Reich in Vienna and Ankara. Acquitted at the Nuremberg Trials of 1946, but one year later as one of the main culprits condemned to eight years in a labour camp as part of the denazification of Germany. Purchased in 2004 from Roswitha Eberwein, Antike Kunst, Göttingen. Declaration of provenance on back of frame: “Sammlung von Papen”.