Velvet Fragment of Hunting Scene
This velvet fragment, and two other panels in this room, once decorated the interior of a royal tent — defining and enriching the living and meeting spaces used by Persian and Ottoman rulers and their families.
In the lively scene depicted in this panel, a central figure fights off an attacking lion by hand. This imagery of a lion hunt — an act forbidden to all except for the king — reinforced ideas of royal power. Through hunting, rulers surveyed lands, honed martial skills, trained troops, and forged alliances. This fragment belonged to the so-called Vienna Hunting Tent, which may have been a group of several tents with Persian velvet decoration. These textiles were likely part of a gift from Shah Tahmasp (ruled 1524–1574) to the Ottoman ruler of Turkey. The hunting velvets sheltered the Ottoman rulers in the 1600s during their conquest of Eastern Europe, where the tents were captured in battle by members of the Polish-Lithuanian Sanguszko family, who kept them in their personal collection until the 1920s. Now, disassembled and disseminated, the original appearance of the tent, or tents, is unknown.
Sanguszko Collection, Poland, through 1920s;
With V. Isbirian, Paris, by 1928 [1];
Purchased from V. Isbirian, through Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882-1967), by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932 [2].
[1] In a letter from Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss dated April 29, 1928, Tyler wrote of seeing several Persian velvet tent panels in V. Isbirian’s gallery in Paris, Bliss-Tyler correspondence, Dumbarton Oaks (https://www.doaks.org/resources/bliss-tyler-correspondence).
[2] In a letter from Harold Woodbury Parsons to Herbert V. Jones, Nelson Trust Secretary, dated February 15, 1932, Parsons reported purchasing the velvets in Paris. Upon their arrival at the museum, the intake records indicate the vendor was V. Isbirian, Paris, France, NAMA curatorial file.
Michele Valentine, “Illuminated by the Loom,” Hali 209 (Autumn 2021): 64, 67, (repro.).
Kimberly Masteller, “Rarely Seen Asian Textiles on View at Nelson-Atkins,” KC Studio 13 no. 6 (November/December 2021): 93, (repro.).
Kimberly Masteller, “From Court to Marketplace: Persian and Indian Textiles in the Nelson-Atkins Collection and their Foreign Collectors,” Orientations 53, no. 3 (May/June 2022): 50-52, (repro.).
Ling-en Lu, Yayoi Shinoda, and Kimberly Masteller, “'Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles" and the Collections of Asian Textiles at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,” Orientations 53, no. 3 (May/June 2022): 33, (repro.).