PROPERTY FROM THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM, NEW YORK, SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITIONS FUND

A RED-GROUND SILK BROCADE COVERING

LATE QING DYNASTY

Details

A RED-GROUND SILK BROCADE COVERING
LATE QING DYNASTY
The textile is finely woven in gold threads with a large stupa decorated with lines from the Dharani Sutra, and surrounded by smaller circular and square panels of further text, both in Chinese and Sanskrit, interspersed with lotus blossoms and Buddhist symbols, all within four bands of vajra and lotus, fire scroll, and further panels containing text or single characters.
77 ¾ x 50 1/8 in. (197.5 x 127.3 cm.)

Provenance

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John P. Lyden, TL1986.410.1.

Lot Essay

A very similar covering in the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, was a tribute to the Xuantong Emperor, offered in the first year of his reign (1909) and is illustrated by Wan Yi, Wang Shuqing, and Lu Yanzhen, Daily Life in the Forbidden City, 1985, p. 262, pl. 407. According to the authors, these coverings were for the exclusive funerary use of “the emperors, empresses dowager, empresses, and imperial concubines of the first four ranks,” and would have bestowed merit on the deceased. See, also, another Dharani Sutra covering sold at Christie’s New York, 4 June 1992, lot 165.

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