| 介绍（英） | One of a group of textiles whose production is attributed to the area of Satgaon in Bengal¹, coverlets such as this were made primarily for the Portuguese market, hence the Portuguese term (colcha) by which they are known. In the early seventeenth century they also fetched high prices at auctions in England and seem to have influenced the production of embroidery there (see MMA 34.104.1 and MMA 1970.173). Characterized by the use of yellow tussah silk embroidery on a white cotton ground, they typically depict a combination of classical, biblical, and Hindu themes, although a few draw from other sources (see e.g. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, no. T20e4).
This colcha is embellished with a selection of vignettes found on several others, including an almost identical example in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.² Successive bands around the border depict a hunt, the Labors of Hercules, and the story of Arion, while the center panel features the Judgment of Solomon surrounded by stories from the book of Judith: the siege of Bethulia (bottom right), Judith before Holofernes (top right), Judith beheads Holofernes (top left), and the severed head of Holofernes displayed from the walls of Bethulia (bottom left). Vignettes from classical mythology include Actaeon transformed into a stag by Diana (above the Solomon scene), Hercules shooting the Lernean Hydra (detail), and the story of Phaeton, who drove the chariot of the sun too close to Earth, scorching the planet and causing the animals to die (in the triangular panel below Hercules).
While the themes of these coverlets can be generally related to contemporary European tapestries and textiles, which also mix biblical and classical tales, the depiction of the protagonists in seventeenth-century Portuguese garb and the addition of Hindu imagery (such as the story of the Vishnu avatar Matsya, the fishtailed figure in the second band from the center) must represent the traditions and imagination of the embroiderers who created them. The circulation of northern European prints and illustrated Bibles at the Mughal court is well documented, but the sources available to the Bengali embroiderers remain obscure and probably represent an entirely different category of material.
The inventiveness of the embroidery is further underscored by comparison to those made for the local market. Two pieces that likely date to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century are embroidered in multicolored silk, and their design is composed of circular medallions enclosing lotus patterns, interlocking star shapes, and bands of human figures and animals.³ Here, then, the switch to an almost monochrome yellow and white palette, the composition of concentric panels and bands, and the addition of foreign iconography were innovations for this particular type of export, which was produced only until the mid-seventeenth century.
[Melinda Watt, adapted from Interwoven Globe, The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800/ edited by Amelia Peck; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: distributed by Yale University Press, 2013]
Footnotes
1. Irwin, "Indo-Portuguese Embroideries of Bengal," pp. 65 ・ 73.
2. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (no. 3692).
3. These are in Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire (see Crill, "The Earliest Survivors": The Indian Embroideries at Hardwick Hall," pp. 245 ・ 60), and in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (no. 3413) (Mendonca, Embroidered Quilts from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga Lisboa, no. 6). |