Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Band with Medallion and Dancers
View through Harvard Museums
Tapestry woven band representing a bust portrait and three dancers. The bust portrait is oriented perpendicularly to the orientation of the standing dancers. It is positioned in a medallion with a thick border. The bust, likely a female, stretches out a scarf displaying fruits in front of her chest. This is a common attitude for personifications of the earth or the seasons. The arrangement of the fragments in this area is uncertain.
Below the medallion are two dancers, one with arm raised and wearing a full length tunic, perhaps a maenad. A smaller figure raises his or her hands to his face (playing an instrument?). Both dancers look upwards towards the medallion with the female bust. Vine tendrils fill the interior space of the band. While most of the band features figural decoration woven with dark blue yarns against a white background, this is reversed at bottom. At bottom a white figure stands against a blue-colored square, one arm raised and the other holding an object, maybe a shepherd’s crook (pedum); the figure possibly wears a loincloth. Flying shuttle creates details of the figures. Remnants of a simple border design are visible on both sides of the bands.
Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art & Numismatics
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum Gift of Carroll F. Wales
Title: Band with Medallion and Dancers
Description:
Tapestry woven band representing a bust portrait and three dancers.
The bust portrait is oriented perpendicularly to the orientation of the standing dancers.
It is positioned in a medallion with a thick border.
The bust, likely a female, stretches out a scarf displaying fruits in front of her chest.
This is a common attitude for personifications of the earth or the seasons.
The arrangement of the fragments in this area is uncertain.
Below the medallion are two dancers, one with arm raised and wearing a full length tunic, perhaps a maenad.
A smaller figure raises his or her hands to his face (playing an instrument?).
Both dancers look upwards towards the medallion with the female bust.
Vine tendrils fill the interior space of the band.
While most of the band features figural decoration woven with dark blue yarns against a white background, this is reversed at bottom.
At bottom a white figure stands against a blue-colored square, one arm raised and the other holding an object, maybe a shepherd’s crook (pedum); the figure possibly wears a loincloth.
Flying shuttle creates details of the figures.
Remnants of a simple border design are visible on both sides of the bands.
Related Results
Tunic Band: Dancers in a Nile Landscape
Tunic Band: Dancers in a Nile Landscape
A red crenellated border on this yellow tapestry-woven band surrounds a repeated pattern of stylized red human figures (some of these are dancers), fish, and fantastic two-headed b...
Red Band with Rider, Nereid, and Plants
Red Band with Rider, Nereid, and Plants
This large red band is decorated with multicolored human figures, animals, and fanciful plants inside square compartments. In the lower portion of the band, three such squares are ...
Band with Humans and Animals in Medallions
Band with Humans and Animals in Medallions
An inwoven tapestry band decorated with purple vine circles containing animals and humans. A design of inverted scallops topped with leaves forms a border that runs on both sides o...
Tunic Fragment: Four Dancers under Arches
Tunic Fragment: Four Dancers under Arches
This textile fragment represents the front or back side of a tunic. Monochrome tapestry-woven segments decorate what would have been a garment primarily made of plain woven, undyed...
Dance belt
Dance belt
674-3, 6°Kachina dance sash (in two halves); ta-kun-i-kwi-kya-tsi-napa, or kâkâthléom (TK); cotton, wool, pigments; l. 102 cm. (without fringe), w. 26.5 cm.; ca. 1880.‖ The oldest ...
Joined Tunic Bands: Dancers and Flowering Urns
Joined Tunic Bands: Dancers and Flowering Urns
This pair of tapestry-woven monochrome bands consists of a pattern of repeating kantharoi containing a pair of large grape vines. The left band has a nude female dancer between the...
Corded pendant for an ecclesiastical vestment
Corded pendant for an ecclesiastical vestment
Pendant consisting of embroidered panels of couched metallic yarns and outlined in red silk suspended from a braided cord with black and white chevrons. From top to bottom:
1) ...
Seal of Constantine, Nephew of the Patriarch Cerularius
Seal of Constantine, Nephew of the Patriarch Cerularius
Obverse: Deisis, Saint Nicholas on left and Saint Menas Kallilelados on right, standing with hands uplifted towards a medallion of Christ.
inscribed in Greek, on either side of me...

