Journal of the History of Collections (2010) pp. 1–13

© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.doi:10.1093/jhc/fhq028

Since early antiquity, textiles have been amongst India’s most valuable trade goods. The Indian prov-inces of Gujarat and Bengal, along with the Coro-mandel Coast, were among the leading textile centres of the then known world, supplying the markets of South-East Asia, China, the Roman Empire, and later the rising Islamic world including Egypt and East Africa, the Near and Middle East and insular South Asia.1 With the arrival of Portuguese and later Dutch and English ships during the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, European powers directly tapped the rich manufacturing centres of Asia. As a consequence of European presence, some aspects of Indian textile pro-duction were gradually adapted to the market needs of Europe.2 The Portuguese were at the forefront of European involvement in Indian textile production: they had been in Bengal, one of the most important textile-producing centres of the subcontinent, for almost a century before the arrival of the Dutch and the British.

Records such as inventories, letters and travel accounts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demonstrate that textiles from Bengal, called colchas, were making their way into European collections by the late sixteenth century.3 Colchas were among the very first artistic objects commissioned by Europeans in India in order to be sold as novelties in Europe and along the sea routes dominated by the Portuguese Estado da India. Demonstrating the internationally connected system of economic and artistic exchanges, these textiles constitute an indigenous product that was

adapted by Bengali craftsmen to appeal to the tastes of Portuguese patrons. The average size of colchas is com-parable to that of a medium-sized carpet of 2 to 3 metres, but instead of being knotted like carpets they were embroidered, often with light yellow tasah silk on a natural white cotton base. Their iconography varies and displays a variety of motifs of both European and Bengali origin. Their iconographic programme evolved significantly over the period in question, with the result that the European component was gradually increased and adapted. The programmes represented on this group of textiles are complex and include depictions from the Bible and from Graeco-Roman mythology, alongside hunting scenes and fantastical creatures. The result was a technically sophisticated hybrid textile with highly original and multicultural content (Fig. 1). 4

A network of private merchants, both Portuguese and Bengali, drove this transformation of the colcha.5 By providing new models for the Bengali embroider-ers, European merchants introduced European forms into a pre-existing set of designs in Bengal, trans-forming colchas into internationally desirable com-modities which were then exported via Goa and Lisbon to the countries of Europe. Their dissemin-ation triggered yet another round of adaptation of local and exotic foreign artistic forms in different media, especially textiles, that were in turn diffused within Europe. Their production and distribution therefore had important consequences on the devel-opment of European consumerism, art production

‘Marvellous things are made with needles’

Bengal colchas in European inventories, c. 1580-1630

Barbara Karl

Indian textiles were among the most important trade goods during the early modern period. This study illustrates the importance of inventories in the context of studying a specific group of Indian embroideries (colchas) from the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The inventories consulted here from Portugal, England, Italy, Spain and Austria provide a variety of information on the textiles themselves and their historical context. In order to enlarge the picture extracted from the inventories, other documents such as letters and travel accounts are examined. This comparison of inventories with other sources, helps to demonstrate how these complex goods where adapted for and utilized by the European market.

Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access published November 8, 2010 by guest on N

ovember 9, 2010

jhc.oxfordjournals.orgD

ownloaded from

b a r b a r a k a r l

2

and technology. Colchas could easily be integrated into pre-existing consumer frameworks:6 beds and tables were covered with valuable textiles and rich tapestries adorned palaces before their arrival, while the fact that colchas came from the Portuguese over-seas empire endowed them with an exotic colonial aura that enhanced their manifold implications.

The study of European inventories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is essential to the study of col-chas, since in India itself hardly any trace – neither ma-terial, nor documentary – is left of these textiles. Departing from the sources mostly written in Europe or by Europeans in India, scholars have been able to iden-tify and date the textiles and to confirm their proven-ance, knowledge of which had been largely forgotten.7

More significantly, this paper shows how inventories provide insight into the value and use of colchas: it exam-ines inventories from Portugal, England, Italy, Spain and Austria, where the presence of colchas illustrates their popularity and wide dispersal. These inventories form telling witnesses to the success of this specific group of textiles as export items, while also providing information on their appreciation within the household context and as gifts. Yet inventories alone cannot tell the whole story: they need to be consulted alongside other primary sources that provide further contextual infor-mation, such as contemporary letters, travel accounts and early historical writing. Whereas inventories con-centrate on the object, these alternative accounts often elaborate on their context. The first part of this study

Fig. 1. Bengal colcha from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (T 3692), 330cm x 280cm. Tasah silk on cotton. Photograph by José Pessoa. © Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Divisão de Documentação Fotográfica – Instituto dos Museus e da Conservação, I. P.

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b e n g a l c o l c h a s i n e u r o p e a n i n v e n t o r i e s , c . 1 5 8 0 –1 6 3 0

3

examines some informative records that first mention colchas in the Indian context, together with the earliest records documenting their arrival in Lisbon. Following this, their distribution and reception within Europe is analysed through a more detailed examination of exem-plary inventories. Finally, inventories are compared with other documents and the descriptions applied to colchas are analysed in an attempt to explain why these complex objects were defined so simplistically in inventories.

Early records dating colchas

Initially the Portuguese were unable to interfere in the design process of Bengal embroidery but bought what was available to them on the market, for instance col-chas that show very flat scrollwork designs with occa-sional hunting scenes, designed for the Islamic world, including the home market. Soon, however, the Portuguese realized the potential of this craft and used the opportune situation to their advantage.8 In order to create an appealing commodity, Portuguese mer-chants combined European iconography with a new form, the Bengali embroideries. The Portuguese were not overly original when it came to selecting printed prototypes for the designs of the colchas, relying pri-marily on some of the best-known stories of the six-teenth century as sources. By providing printed European models, they gradually transformed and adapted the established local vocabulary to include an iconographic programme that focused on themes from Graeco-Roman mythology (such as Pyramus and Thisbe) and from the Old Testament (for example the model ruler King Solomon).9 The colcha designs developed significantly over a comparatively short time-span between 1580 and 1632 in a synthesis as complex as Portuguese colonial society itself. This process of gradual integration of new motifs also illus-trates the growing influence of the Portuguese in the Hugli region. The colchas as discussed in this article ceased to be produced in Bengal by the 1650s, at which time the Portuguese began progressively to lose influ-ence and new British markets had to be satisfied. 10

Perhaps more than inventories that focus on spe-cific pieces, documents, such as historical accounts, travel journals and letters help to contextualize the colchas, providing more information on the circum-stances of production, acquisition and use. Many (but not all) of these documents are less detailed about spe-

cific pieces, due to the fact that their authors were in some instances persons who were more familiar with the original context of the object, often having visited India themselves. This situation differs from that of the courtly administrator who compiled inventories for their masters in Florence, Prague or Vienna: he had the objects in front of him, but all too often knew nothing of their background. The description and thus the use and perception of the colchas often changed within the different written documents (in-ventory, letter or account), from place to place, from owner to owner and over time. The more involved the writer of the inventory or document was – such as a merchant writing about his purchases – the more exact were the descriptions. The further away and less involved the inventory-taker – a courtier of the Medici household, for example – the less detailed the notes.

The earliest European record of a Bengali colcha is found in the Lendas da India of Gaspar Correia (1495-1561). During the sixteenth century, Correia’s writ-ings circulated only in manuscript form and probably were meant to be read by only a limited circle of peo-ple, since the Portuguese initially followed a policy of secrecy concerning their trade with India: there was considerable nervousness that Correia’s detailed account of their activities could have attracted the interest of competitors in an undesirable way. In his work a colcha is included within a list of diplomatic gifts: Correia wrote that during his second voyage to India in 1502, Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) visited the king of Melinde on the East African coast and was pre-sented with rich presents among which was ‘a kind of quilt or bed canopy, worked (stitched) in white, the finest embroidery ever seen, which was made in Bengal, a country in which marvellous things are made with needles.’11 This shows the great importance of textiles as diplomatic gifts within the Indo-Oceanic court milieu and confirms that Bengali embroidery production of high quality for export to Africa already existed prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in Bengal. Correia, who spent most of his life in Portuguese India and would have known the textiles intimately, desig-nates the Bengal embroideries as marvellous, indi-cating not only the high technical quality of these textiles but also evoking their wondrous quality.

Various other sixteenth-century writings provide early evidence of colchas in India. For example, Jan H. van Linschoten (1563-1611), the Dutch commercial spy and protestant secretary to the archbishop of Goa

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b a r b a r a k a r l

4

from 1581 to 1587, wrote several books on India that were published in Dutch, the language of the great northern trade rival of the unified Iberian kingdoms. His books provided valuable information on and pointed out the opportunities of Asian maritime trade and were very soon translated into other European languages. His Itinerario was published in 1596 and served to evoke Dutch interest in Euro-Asian trade, by stressing the positive side of the trade opportun-ities. Only four years after its publication the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) was founded. In the Itinerario van Linschoten comments on the Bengal textile production and materials used in it: ‘It [the tasah silk] is yellowish, and is called the herb of Bengal, wherewith they stitch their coverlets and pavilions [for beds] pillows, hangings, and mantles . . . and make them with flowers and leaves, and all kinds of figures, that can be conceived or used as dec-oration, that is wonderful to see, and so finely done with cunning workmanship, that it could not be bet-tered in Europe.’12 In his text Linschoten stresses the quality of the Bengal embroideries and indirectly compares them to European craftsmanship by stating that no better workmanship could be found in Europe, implying that no European embroiderer could stitch as finely as the Bengalis – a statement that would cer-tainly have provoked the reader’s curiosity.

Another early source providing information on and context for Bengali colchas is an Italian document from 1585 in the Archivio di Stato in Florence. The Florentine merchant and official pepper-collector of the Spanish crown, Filippo Sassetti (1540-88), lived in Cochin and in Goa, where goods from all over South and South-East Asia were collected for ship-ment to Lisbon. Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609), who became Grand Duke of Tuscany, had allocated money to Sassetti for the purchase of Indian curiosities, and a vivid exchange of letters ensued. Ferdinando gave precise orders to Sassetti about what to buy. Then a letter of 1585 to Ferdi-nando was accompanied by a detailed invoice com-menting on the novel objects listed.13 Among the goods that Sassetti sent directly to Ferdinando from Cochin were two ‘coverlets (coltre) from Bengal, embroidered with figures, one small the other large.’14 In his letter Sassetti also explains that two Bengal col-tre are the most beautiful pieces that ever came from that region and, like Correia and van Linschoten, he comments on the fine workmanship of the textile.

Given his location in Goa, he knew the provenance of the goods that he purchased directly from ships com-ing from these regions.15

Sassetti’s description of the colchas may be com-pared with the Medici inventories that list these objects in order to demonstrate the disparity between these documents and the actual collection of these objects. The fact that several corresponding Indian coverlets are listed whereas Sassetti sent only two, indicates that the Medici possessed other sources of supply for these rarities. Many embroidered textiles from Bengal were listed in the inventory of the Casino di San Marco, a collection space and studio for artistic and scientific activities belonging to Ferdinando’s brother Francesco.16 The descriptions of the Bengal colchas in Sassetti’s letters were more detailed than those in the inventories, where they are simply listed as being from ‘India’.17 Since the inventory was com-piled at Ferdinando’s instigation soon after his brother Francesco’s death, we may assume that Francesco himself had earlier ordered the colchas to be stored in the Casino di San Marco, where they may have served as a source of inspiration to the artists working in the Casino. While Sassetti’s letter designates the colchas as from Bengal, the inventory describes them simply as Indian. The Medici princes had records of the tex-tiles in Sassetti’s letter, which described their exact provenance, but apparently this knowledge of the colchas was not imparted to the court secretary com-piling the inventory. This is one of many cases in which details of context have been lost in the inven-tories through lack of knowledge or interest. Neither are sixteenth-century inventories always reliable con-cerning the exact origin of the objects described. A clear geographic distinction was rarely made: an item described as ‘indiano’ in the documents, for example, might be from either Asia or America, a theme further explored elsewhere in this volume by Jessica Keating and Lia Markey.

The records discussed here demonstrate that the textile types called ‘colchas’ by the Portuguese existed prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in Bengal, and some of the main features of the textiles, such as colour, size and iconography, were also well known. Additionally, the documents prove that colchas were available in Europe during the second half of the sixteenth century. These sources were often not ‘pure’ inventories but rather historical letters and accounts that include lists or brief inventories. Given their

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b e n g a l c o l c h a s i n e u r o p e a n i n v e n t o r i e s , c . 1 5 8 0 –1 6 3 0

5

direct access to information and first-hand experience in India, the accounts of Correia, van Linschoten and Sassetti, though each quite different, are surprisingly exact not only about the origins of the colchas, but also about the materials and techniques used to create them and on their iconography.

The surviving colchas are characterized by cultur-ally diverse style and content. This fact is not accounted for in the documents and raises the ques-tion of what was ‘hybrid’ to the sixteenth-century eye. The textiles’ hybridity was of no interest to these authors; the high quality and craftsmanship of the em-broideries was noted instead. During the late sixteenth and the first third of the seventeenth century, trade in colchas grew steadily and, as will be shown, they were mentioned more frequently in documents and by authors that were more distant from the place of pro-duction, both in professional and geographical terms.

Inventories, colchas in India, transport and value

The central purpose of inventories in question was to create lists of goods purchased, inherited, presented as gifts or lost at sea; often they also served to deter-mine the value of a collection. They were written for a very limited readership and remained in manuscript form until their discovery by modern scholars, who have since published many of them. One of the most important functions of inventories for these scholars has simply been to identify the objects on the basis of short descriptions. It should be remembered that their compilation was strenuous work, especially the task of recording all the possessions of a rich prince. They might take weeks, months or even years to com-plete, leaving their authors little time to describe and evaluate single pieces. Few administrators were knowledgeable across the full range of the arts and for this reason the language of descriptions remained es-sentially utilitarian. Sometimes several similar pieces would be described in a single entry using the same wording.

In all languages consulted, the terms used to de-scribe the colchas are similar and rely on a simple no-menclature. Generally, the descriptions first mention the type of the object, as a colcha, coltre, dekhn, or quilt, depending on the language, and then focus on different qualities of the object. Several characteriza-

tions concern the use of the textiles, such as a colcha for the floor (in Portuguese records: colcha do chão), a colcha for the table (in Portuguese records: colcha da mesa), a blanket (in Italian records: coltre), a tapestry or cover (in German records: dappezerey or dekhn) or a quilt (in English records). These are in fact the most telling variations found in the inventories, since they reveal the use of the textile. Most descriptions refer also to the origin of the piece, as discussed above in the context of the Medici inventory; ‘India’ is most often mentioned, but some sources cite Bengal, or even the name of the city Satgaon.18 Reference to material is frequent too, with silk often being men-tioned. Colour and size are mostly limited to ‘yellow’ or ‘white’ and ‘large’ or ‘small’. Similarly simple are qualitative descriptions like ‘fine’, ‘delicate’ and ‘rich’, while the description of the state of conservation is mainly restricted to ‘old’ when this was the case. Quite often the technique used is mentioned in the relevant languages, with ‘worked’, ‘stitched’ or ‘with fringes’. Reference to iconography is provided with descriptors like ‘figures’, ‘birds’ and ‘hunting scenes’. Depending on the type of inventory, their value may also be included.

Because of their increasingly generalized descriptions and the fact that the term ‘Indian’ is omitted in later European inventories, colchas become more difficult to trace with the passage of time. Given the adapt-ability of the term and the often imprecise wording in inventories, many large-sized textiles could be desig-nated as such. Over time, knowledge of the origins of the colchas was largely lost.19

Inventories are vital tools in the documentation of these textiles. Much more than the other sources quoted, they reflect the variety of uses to which col-chas could be put. Due to the shortage of space on ships arriving from Europe, Portuguese officials, sol-diers, missionaries and merchants arrived in India with very little furniture and soon began to use locally produced textiles and other products for the decor-ation of their new palaces, churches and missions. This section demonstrates how inventories provide evidence of the use of colchas within the Portuguese colonial context, their perceived worth and their sub-sequent travels throughout sixteenth-century Europe.

Every new viceroy arriving in Goa would have had to furnish his residence, for he would invariably have found it empty.20 His palace was the administrative centre of the Estado. The reception hall would have

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b a r b a r a k a r l

6

been sumptuously decorated and colchas were used in this context: the eighteenth viceroy of the Estado da India, Francisco da Gama, Conde de Vidigueira (1565-1632), had twenty-seven colchas listed in an in-ventory compiled at the time of his imprisonment. Their description is imprecise: often they are not even designated as being of Indian origin, but it is more than likely that the colchas listed would have origi-nated there. The fact that the descriptions are incon-sistent and that many apparently similar colchas are listed in a single group of ten pieces illustrates the perfunctory nature of this inventory in serving briefly to list the goods in order that a rough valuation of the possessions of the former viceroy could be compiled. Only one entry refers to the quality of the work, call-ing it ‘delicate’. Among the colchas listed are some that might be identified as of Bengali origin, being desig-nated as hunting colchas (de montaria),21 a citation that implies an appreciation of these versatile textiles within the colonial Portuguese context.

Those destined for the European market were col-lected in Goa and Cochin for the annual transport to Lisbon. Usually, merchandise was stored and trans-ported in boxes sealed against dampness at sea. Each merchant had to buy the space for his goods on the ships22 and the value of individual boxes varied according to their contents: the twenty-year-old Italian merchant Francesco Carletti (1573-1636), for in-stance, mentions in his travel account that he had col-lected goods worth a small fortune in only six boxes, mainly loaded with textiles (including colchas) and diamonds; these were to form the basis of his fortune back in Europe.23 Carletti’s account was commis-sioned by Ferdinando I de’ Medici, by now Grand Duke, who was eager to get involved in direct trade with India. First-hand information from insiders was one of the prerequisites for closer involvement, even though by the beginning of the sixteenth century van Linschoten’s detailed accounts were translated and were well known in intellectual circles in Europe. Carletti’s occasionally very personal account praises the textiles as if he were selling them to the Duke:From this country [Bengal] they receive many types of manufactured fabrics, like the most superb colchas and tent coverings, made of cotton, embroidered with much grace-fulness and charm and with animals and other figures and ornaments, made of a certain herb [tasah silk] that has the colour of straw and that they reduce to a fineness more ex-quisitely than [cultivated] silk, and of more strength and more lustrous and better looking.24

Like the aforementioned accounts, Carletti puts most emphasis on the great craftsmanship of the embroi-deries, discussing the delicate nature of the materials and briefly outlining the motifs. Once again their hy-bridity was of little interest to this sixteenth-century mind, but rather Carletti set out to convey the incom-parably fine quality of the textiles and thus their worth.

The extraordinary inventory of the Nossa Sra da Luz, the nau capitânea da India, which was ship-wrecked in February 1616 off the Azores, provides a rare insight into the exact composition of a ship’s cargo on the return voyage from India to Lisbon and gives further evidence regarding the incredible value of the colchas.25 Following the shipwreck, the freight was recovered and inventoried: the document consists of seventy-seven folios on which the merchandise is listed. Large quantities of textiles – hundreds of tow-els, large quantities of loose textiles of various sorts, and a few carpets, mostly from India – formed part of the cargo, among which were 121 colchas. Neither these nor any of the other pieces are described in detail. The colchas are not designated as coming from India, the main supplier of the textiles, but since the ship set sail from Goa one can be sure that those listed also came from there. Moreover, the Chinese textiles listed were specifically designated as being from China. The brevity of the inventory reflects its utilitarian function: it served to enumerate the items carried as freight. It was compiled over a lengthy period and is not organized into types of objects in the way that most estate inventories are. Salvaging the merchandise from the ship no doubt took weeks if not months (depending on the weather) and the items were inventoried at the moment of their recovery; many of the wooden objects, colchas and ivories evi-dently were found at different times. One page, for in-stance, lists ‘a colcha with hunting scenes (de montaria)’ and ‘three white colchas’, while another lists ‘a colcha with hunting scenes yellow’ and ‘a big colcha with hunting scenes.’26 The inventory also lists the people who rescued the objects, stressing additionally the in-stantaneous nature of the production of the document.

In all, the shipwreck inventory describes fourteen pieces as hunting colchas or as yellow in colour: prob-ably they all came from Bengal, since textiles from this area were usually described this way in the documents of the time.27 Many other colchas were listed without further description, while some were described with a single adjective – white, old, embroidered, new, large,

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b e n g a l c o l c h a s i n e u r o p e a n i n v e n t o r i e s , c . 1 5 8 0 –1 6 3 0

7

small, or with colours. Some of these are also likely to have come from Bengal, while the remainder seem to have come from Gujarat: being much closer to Goa, Gujarat provided more textiles than Bengal for the ships plying to Lisbon.28 The document leads us to conclude, however, that about 10 to 15 per cent of the colchas being transported on the Nossa Sra da Luz came from Bengal.

Colchas mentioned in other Portuguese inventories of the time enable us to estimate the value of those transported by the Nossa Sra da Luz and help to ex-plain why their rescue and their documentation was crucial. In his Mobiliário Português, Bernardo Ferrão has published the inventories of Portuguese aristo-crats of the province of Alentejo, drawn from a nar-row time-period between 1601 and 1613; all of these give valuations in reis, the Portuguese currency of the time.29 In all, the descriptions remain brief: the Indian colchas listed are of different qualities, with many designated as new, old or used, providing an explanation for the varying valuations attributed to them. The most expensive Indian colchas in these in-ventories cost about as much as the most expensive carpets listed and much more than pieces of furniture from Asia. For example, in the same inventory an Indian turtle chest was valued at 1,600 reis, a large Indian box 4,000 reis, a carpet 22,000 reis and an Indian colcha at 20,000 reis.30 Just one golden Chinese escry-torio (writing desk) had a value similar to a good col-cha, estimated at 16,000 reis, possibly conditioned by its distant provenance and elaborate fabrication.31 In the parts of the 1601 inventory of Dona Brites quoted by Ferrão, for instance, an Indian colcha is valued at 30,000 reis – by far the most expensive item. To give a comparison, four silver forks in the same inventory were valued 2,000 reis and three pairs of gloves at 200 reis.32 The Alentejo inventories are organized by ma-terial or object groups, usually beginning with gold and silver items and continuing more or less by type. The colchas are found in different groups within these inventories, sometimes amongst the furniture and sometimes within the wardrobe, indicating the differing uses to which they were put within par-ticular households. The inventories also illustrate that high-quality Indian colchas were among the most expensive works exported from India and that very few other pieces of furniture were considered of equal value. The documents show that the estimated average value for Indian colchas in Portugal during

the early seventeenth century was about 10,000 reis. For the above-mentioned 121 shipwreck colchas on board the Nossa Sra da Luz, one can deduce that in all they were worth about 1,210,000 reis. About fif-teen colchas from the shipwreck most probably came from Bengal and generally these were more expen-sive than those from Gujarat. Thus, we can calculate that at an average price of 12,000 reis per piece the value of the Bengal colchas was 180,000 reis in the freight inventory.

The inventories of merchant families further reveal the vital network of exchange by means of which these valuable objects were distributed throughout Europe. Portuguese merchants trading with India naturally owned colchas. So did Luis Alves Soeiro, who was a New Christian Portuguese merchant living in Lisbon in the early seventeenth century. Some members of his family lived in Amsterdam, providing a point of entry to the Northern European markets for Soeiro’s exotic goods.33 Thanks to their international char-acter, such New Christian family networks were im-portant for private trade with India. The textiles in Soeiro’s possession indicate his involvement specifi-cally in colcha trade, since they were listed in his 1616 inventory. Among them was ‘a table colcha with hunt-ing scenes from Bengal with yellow fringes . . . worth seven thousand reis.’34 Soeiro’s inventory lists many more Indian colchas: most were from other parts of the Subcontinent and were valued between 1,000 and 4,000 reis, with a Bengal table colcha forming the most expensive piece.

The 1610 probate inventory of the aristocrat Dona Filipa de Sá, Countess de Linhares, also lists several colchas. As with most Portuguese aristocratic families, her family history is closely linked to the Estado da India. Among the pieces mentioned in the inventory are eight colchas, two of them from Bengal.35 The val-uations given show once more that the Bengali textiles were more highly valued than those from Gujarat. Again, the most expensive colchas cost about as much as a good carpet, a third of the price of a fine tapestry from Brussels and almost half as much as the Coun-tess’s slave Cristovam and one of her horses. The col-chas in her inventory were thus high-quality luxury goods that few could afford.

The selection of inventories discussed here dates from the first quarter of the seventeenth century and illustrates that colchas were used by different strata of society – by the high aristocracy as well as local gentry

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b a r b a r a k a r l

8

and merchants. The inventory of Francisco da Gama and the writings of Francesco Carletti demonstrate the great worth of these exquisite objects in the pal-aces of the nobility, while other sources show that, depending on their state of conservation and quality of execution, a colcha could cost between 1,000 and 20,000 reis (with one quite exceptional piece at 30,000 reis). These prices inform us that the cheaper embroi-deries were affordable by Lisbon’s small bourgeoisie but that the most expensive pieces remained in the hands of the aristocracy. However, the question of how much the intermediary merchants gained from their sale remains unknown, although a colcha surely cost less when bought in Goa than when it was bought in Lisbon or Amsterdam. The inventory of the Nossa Sra da Luz lists only very few pieces of furniture and religious statues, but 121 colchas, confirming what is also reflected in the inventories: compared to other luxury goods the colcha trade was evidently well developed. On the other hand, compared to the trade in Indian bulk textiles (which abound in the ship-wreck inventory), the trade in Bengali colchas remained comparatively small in scale.

Networks of distribution

Once in Lisbon, Indian merchandise – including colchas – entered the distribution networks of mer-chants and aristocrats. Most colchas, especially those of lesser quality destined for a more modest clientele, were sold on the market in Lisbon once they had passed through the customs house, the Casa da India. Whereas the merchants tried to make a profit from their sales, aristocrats often used colchas as gifts in order to cement alliances with their extended families. To-gether with relics, exotic goods were among the most sought-after in the Habsburg family’s gift-giving net-work that extended from Portugal to Vienna and included queens and duchesses in France, Bavaria and Florence. Several colchas were transmitted within this network. Letters and inventories provide a glimpse into this system and enable us to reconstruct the itin-eraries of individual pieces. For example, as early as 1567, a letter informs us that the future Emperor Rudolph II received ‘three embroidered colchas two white (supposedly from Bengal) and the other of taffeta’ from relatives in Madrid.36 Then in 1589 the Empress Maria sent her daughter, Elisabeth, wife of King

Charles IX of France, ‘two Indian colchas’;37 one of these is listed in Elisabeth’s inventory.38 In 1594 ‘a col-cha with yellow embroidery with a small cape (of the type men wore over the shoulder at that time) worked in the same manner’ – very likely from Bengal – was sent from Madrid to the imperial court in Vienna.39

One Bengali colcha and a Bengali cape of the former imperial collection survive today in the Kunsthistor-isches Museum collections at Schloss Ambras: these may be the same colcha and cape sent from Madrid. The textiles that survive today once formed part of the famed Kunstkammer of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol and as such were mentioned in his bequest in-ventory of 1596.40 There they were described as: ‘a big Indian coverlet (dekhn) of fine fabric, with beautiful Indian works embroidered with different animals in raw silk’ and ‘a fine fabric in the form of a combing coat (harmäntele), embroidered on the side for one hand’s breadth in yellow silk with scrollwork with a crossed seam.’41 As described in the inventory, both items were stored in the tightly-packed seventeenth cabinet of the Kunstkammer, the Variocasten (cup-board with various things), alongside other objects of heterogeneous nature. The textiles were more diffi-cult to handle than most other items, since they were folded and could be seen properly only when taken out and unfolded. Their location in the Variocasten makes it clear that they formed part of the encyclo-paedic programme of the collection and were not in daily use. Concerning its contents, this cupboard was probably the most complex of the Kunstkammer. Within the collection, the contents of the individual cabinets were organized according to material – one of them, for example, contained only gold objects. The Variocasten contained two Bengal textiles which were stored together with North African textiles (also still extant and in situ), playing-cards, Schüttelkasten (a curious kind of small box) and the like. In itself it formed in a way a Kunstkammer en miniature within the larger installation.42 Tracking objects via letters and inventories provides important evidence for their individual itineraries and provides proof of their im-portance as gifts.

The inventory of the even more famous Kunstkam-mer of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, drawn up in 1607/11, contains about 2,080 entries of a heterogeneous type and provenance from Latin books to materia medica, from Italian paintings to Indian cutlery; it is thought to list only about half of

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b e n g a l c o l c h a s i n e u r o p e a n i n v e n t o r i e s , c . 1 5 8 0 –1 6 3 0

9

the Emperor’s collections.43 Within the inventory there is a large section of almost thirty folios written on both sides, which is predominantly dedicated to objects attributed roughly to ‘India’. Under the head-ing ‘Indian writing desks and chests and what is found within’, the following embroideries are described as lying in ‘quite a large Indian chest carved with ele-vated scrollwork and gilt . . . one quilted coverlet embroidered with yellow silk and with yellow fringes and buttons. One Indian skirt (or mantle) in yellow and red silk embroidered with figures and animals’;44 given the context and description, both were very likely from Bengal. This specific section of the inven-tory is written mostly in German, but also partly in Spanish (probably revealing the provenance of the pieces concerned) and describes objects that were then considered ‘Indian’. The placement of the colchas within the inventory itself is interesting. The Indian section is placed following a section of objects related to the sea – including fish, crabs and sea-urchins – from which it makes its transition by way of some Indian mother-of-pearl objects and fur-niture (within which the colchas were folded); it is succeeded by the ‘Turkish’ section, which is also dominated by objects of decorative arts. The largest part of the objects designated as such are indeed In-dian but many others surely originate in other places – such as the nine Mexican feather-paintings.

Each of these inventories follows a special order: the Ambras Kunstkammer was organized by material, but Rudolf’s collection, being larger and more com-plicated to handle, was arranged differently, espe-cially with regard to the ‘exotic’ items. This inventory was compiled some ten years later and could have benefitted from the experience gained at Ambras. Apart from the medium, which was also treated as a category, the origin of the objects seems to have formed an important criterion, in which the rather impalpable ‘sea’, an extended ‘India’ and a more con-crete ‘Turkey’ were all given equal weight. Whereas the earlier Ambras inventory lists the colchas in the Variocasten, forming a collection in miniature within the larger collection, in Rudolf’s Kunstkammer the col-chas were located within the geographical section dedicated to India. These collection spaces illustrate different approaches towards the changing subdivi-sions and attributions that eventually led to more and more specialized distributions of objects within col-lections, a development that evolved slowly but which

eventually came to fruition in the fully-fledged mu-seum.

The merchant network is more difficult to un-tangle, but is the more important to understand for the process of production and distribution of the col-chas. After all, it was merchants who adapted the de-sign of Bengali colchas in order to turn them into fashionable and marketable goods. Many sons of Lis-bon’s élite and of merchant families were sent to India to complete their learning and eventually to make their fortunes there; often they stayed for long periods of time, adopting local fashions and customs. On their return to Lisbon, their exotic ways deeply influenced Portuguese tastes and living standards. As Luis Alves Soeiro’s inventory demonstrated, many merchants possessed colchas; contemporary descriptions of Lisbon mention that the houses of rich merchants that were full of exotic objects.45 Yet another merchant in-ventory from the beginning of the eighteenth century – approximately a century later than the Alentejo inventories – proves that colchas were still extant and were perhaps still being traded in Lisbon around that time. The wife of Domingos Maciel, Maria da Cruz, possessed several of them: two were designated as table colchas with hunting scenes (colchas de mesa, de montaria), another as floor colcha (colcha de chão).46 This inventory does not include ‘Indian’ modifiers but the descriptions are similar to those applied to Bengal colchas, such as ‘a colcha with hunting scenes’ – a de-scription frequently used specifically for Bengal tex-tiles. The ‘traditional’ Bengalo-Portuguese colcha production had ended by the time the inventory was compiled at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Other colchas in this inventory were designated as coming from Diu, in Gujarat, a small island city that served more as an entrepôt for goods than as a produc-tion centre. It is very probable that the origin of the piece had been forgotten by the time the inventory was written and that it was therefore described only in terms of its construction and medium. Interestingly, the inventory lists both table and floor colchas, indi-cating their varied use within the household of Maria da Cruz. Two documented cases of merchants as dis-tributors of colchas have already been discussed: the examples of Sassetti and Carletti illustrate how the Medici grand dukes received colchas directly from these merchants residing in India. An exchange via one or more intermediaries was surely more common but is more difficult to document.

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b a r b a r a k a r l

10

Fashion and taste developed in urban centres with important commercial exchanges, such as sixteenth-century Lisbon. The exotic style of decorating interi-ors was copied first within the city itself and then throughout Europe via the established merchant and aristocratic networks. The early modern fashion of collecting also helped to promote this distribution. As early as 1601 a yellow Bengali colcha is listed in the inventory of Bess of Hardwick, an English aristocrat and passionate collector of textiles with her seat at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire: ‘In the wardrop . . . a quilt of yellowe india stuffe imbrodered with birdes and beasts.’47 Given the early date of this inventory, it seems likely that the colcha in question arrived via the Portuguese network. However, by around 1614 col-chas were already appearing in auctions of the East India Company in London.48 Novel objects like these were disseminated quickly within the merchant and the aristocratic networks of Europe and their appear-ance in the inventories of different regions stresses their international appeal.

The reception of the colcha

Once in the possession of the consumer, colchas were used for a variety of purposes, as we have already seen from records dating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While the colonial Portuguese household in India abounded in textiles, in Portugal itself the use of colchas was less conspicuous, though still important. Often they featured in dowries, such as those noted from the city of Castelo Branco.49 High-quality colchas could be used, for example, in the context of the estrado – a common feature in Portuguese palaces con-sisting of a low indoor dais covering a significant part of a room, often beautifully decorated with valuable textiles and small pieces of furniture manufactured exclusively for the space. Many extant paintings bear witness to the luxurious decoration of the estrado. An example can be seen in an anonymous Annunciation of 1549, now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.50 Here the Virgin Mary is depicted sitting on the floor on an estrado with the angel standing before her at room-level. Just like the Virgin in the image, the ladies of the court sat on the floor of the estrado, spending their time reading and sewing while the queen received her visitors there. The summer months could be very hot in Lisbon, during which

season the woollen carpets on the estrado may have been either covered or replaced by the much lighter embroidered colchas.

Apart from decorating interiors, colchas were hung from the windows of houses when processions passed and were even used in processions or festive entries intended to impress official visitors with evidence of the riches of Lisbon.51 As an incentive to household-ers on such occasions, a prize might be given to the most beautifully and inventively decorated façade along the route, as recorded on the occasion of the first entry of Philip II of Spain into Lisbon.52

The Asian splendour of the Portuguese empire was also carried beyond the Estado da India and Portugal. From 1675 to 1682 the Archbishop of Braga, Luís de Sousa, served as Portuguese ambassador in Rome, where he had his palace sumptuously furnished for representative purposes. One room there was described in a letter as including an Indian canopy,53 and it is telling that the ambassador received his guests surrounded by the splendour of his country’s Asian possessions.

In addition to their use in daily life, be it as decor-ation for a palace, a house or a church, once in Europe colchas were frequently incorporated into princely collections: examples have been given already from the Habsburg and Medici collections. In the context of the Kunstkammer or guardaroba, they were gener-ally shown only on rare occasions. At Ambras the col-cha was exhibited in a specially-installed cupboard in the Kunstkammer where it could be admired only by a select public, since it was stored in a box which was opened only on request. In Florence it has been dem-onstrated that several colchas were housed in the court workshops and storerooms of the Casino di San Marco, perhaps serving as showpieces for Florentine artists working there.54 Descriptions of the household demonstrate that for the furnishing of the grand ducal apartments mainly locally manufactured products were used. In the context of collections, the exotic textiles formed an integral part of the underlying en-cyclopaedic concept that aimed to reflect the whole of the known world in miniature. Indian colchas served to convey the knowledge and virtual ownership of this part of the world on the part of the collector: here they served not as objects of daily use but as emblems of the collector’s erudition and power.55

The uses and meanings of colchas, therefore, changed or rather were adapted to their circumstances. What

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b e n g a l c o l c h a s i n e u r o p e a n i n v e n t o r i e s , c . 1 5 8 0 –1 6 3 0

11

was profitable merchandise to a Portuguese merchant in India, was used as a floor-covering in colonial Goa and may have later been used as a wall-hanging or a table-cover in Lisbon; similar colchas used in proces-sions in Portuguese India could become an inspiration for artists in Medici Florence, and act as showpieces with strong cosmological or political implications in princely collections.

With the creation of colchas and similar textiles, Por-tuguese merchants adapted and developed a group of commodities that could be sold internationally. They used the opportune preconditions existing in India to their advantage. The adaptation of European iconog-raphy to Indian artworks went hand-in-hand with the social adaptation of Portuguese merchants to their new Indian surroundings. The colchas represent just one expression of this mixing that cut through all layers of Portuguese colonial culture: they have to be considered within the entangled background that they embody and about which the inventories tell us very little.

In tracing the itinerary of the colchas from produc-tion to consumption, inventories prove indispensible. Their analysis, combined with that of other docu-ments mainly from the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, provides vital information on the context, date, value, use, provenance and his-tory of the objects in question. By comparing and contrasting historical accounts, letters and inven-tories, a picture emerges that places this specific group of textiles within the context of early modern inter-national trade and collecting policies.

The documents studied were written in different languages: Portuguese, German, English, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. Every language found its own ex-pression for the colchas and most found more than one, often reflecting their local use. Meanings change with both language and description, but the signifi-cance of such differences is often imprecise since col-chas were largely standardized products. Descriptions of single items within the documents was seldom very detailed, although the designation colcha, coltre, dekhn or quilt is often complemented by information on their provenance, size and quality, with colour and technique also being mentioned on occasion. Subject-matter is cited only briefly, with mention of ‘figures’ or ‘hunting scenes’, but when compared to other objects in the same inventories, the colchas are often described in greater detail, perhaps indicating their particular appreciation.

Given the complexity of the subject, what consti-tutes an inventory is difficult to define – especially in the case of the shorter documents. This study has shown that Sassetti’s letters and Correia’s historical works include lists of items which mention colchas, which as contextualized short inventories are espe-cially telling. The classic estate inventories, mostly compiled at the death of the owner, are rich sources detailing the possessions and social status of one indi-vidual. Through its notations and organization, the rare shipwreck inventory demonstrates the way in which these objects were transported and valued, while the inventories of nobility illuminate the recep-tion of these textiles through their language and spa-tial arrangement.

It is clear that the closer an author was to the col-chas and the context of the Portuguese expansion, the more detailed was the information provided in his text. A merchant with trading contacts in India or the secretary of a Goan archbishop was naturally likely to be well-informed, since Indian trade-goods formed part of their daily lives. An administrator in Florence or Vienna, on the other hand, saw the tex-tiles in the context of his master’s possessions: he gained his living not from any profit inherent in the textile but from the generosity of his prince. The case of Sassetti’s colchas destined for the Medici demonstrates that even though detailed information on them had been provided to the court by the time the inventory was compiled, the administrator made no use of it. The more de-contextualized from its origins, the less detailed were the descriptions applied to the colchas.

Address for correspondenceDr Barbara Karl, Curator of Textiles and Carpets, MAK – Museum für Angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst, Stubenring 5, 1010 Wien, Austria. barbara.karl@mak.at

AcknowledgementsPrior to her current post, the author carried out a survey of objects from the Islamic world in museum collections in Vienna at the Institute of Iranian Studies/Austrian Academy of Sciences: the project was funded by the FWF Austrian Science Fund. Sev-eral of the textiles discussed in this study formed part of that pro-ject: the author thanks the FWF Austrian Science Fund, Ebba Koch, and Bert Fragner. Unless otherwise indicated, all transla-tions from Italian, Portuguese and German into English are by the author.

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b a r b a r a k a r l

12

Notes and references 1 W. H. Schoff (ed. and trans.), Periplus Maris Erythraei

(London, 1920); R. Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt (Oxford, 1977); J. Guy, Woven Cargoes (London, 1998); R. Thapar, A History of India, vol. i (London, 1966).

2 M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005); idem, ‘In pursuit of luxury’, Past & Present no. 182 (2008), pp. 85-142; idem, ‘From imitation to invention’, Economic History Review 55 (2002), pp. 1-30; B. Lemire, ‘Plasmare la domanda, creare la moda’, Quaderni Storici no. 122 (2006), pp. 481-507; B. Lemire and G. Riello, ‘East & West’, Journal of Social History 4 no. 41 (2008), pp. 887-916; A. E. C. McCants, ‘Exotic goods, popular consumption, and the standard of living’, Journal of World History 18 no. 4 (2007), pp. 433-62.

3 The Portuguese and Spanish word ‘colcha’ (colja) has Latin roots: ‘culcita’ in English means mattress or pillow. One also finds ‘colxa’ or ‘colches’ in the historic Portuguese records: R. Bluteau, Vocabulario portuguez e latino (Coimbra, 1712), vol. 12, p. 367. Colchas are defined as thin bed-covers with quilted layers of cotton.

4 F. Passos Leite, ‘Texteis Indo-Portugueses’, in T. R. de Souza and J. M.Garcia (eds.), Vasco da Gama e a Índia, vol. iii (Lisbon, 1998), p. 361; R. Crill, ‘Angels and elephants’, Apollo 160 no. 513 (2004), pp. 87-91; B. Karl, ‘Flourishing scrolls and strict ornamental geometry’, Bulletin du Centre Internationale d’Études de Textiles Anciens no. 81 (2004), pp. 57-65; L. Varadarajan, ‘Indo-Portuguese textiles – new orientations’, in F. da Silva Gracias, C. Pinto and C. Borges (eds.), Indo-Portuguese History. Global Trends (Goa and Lisbon, 2005), pp. 251-60; T. Pacheco Pereira, ‘À volta de alguns bordados indianos monochromos’, Oriente no. 15 (2006), pp. 44- 57; B. Karl, ‘The narrative scheme of a Bengal colcha dating from the early seventeenth century commissioned by the Portuguese’, in N. Nagy and F. Dorsey (eds.), Textile Narratives and Conversations. Symposium Proceedings, Textile Society of America (Toronto, 2006), pp. 438-48; idem,‘Die Moden der Colcha Roxa des Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga’, Waffen und Kostümkunde no. 1 (2007), pp. 67-76; P. Moura Carvalho, ‘Patriotism and commemoration in a Bengali embroidery’, in P. Moura Carvalho (ed.), Luxury for Export. Artistic Exchange between India and Portugal around 1600 (Boston, 2008), pp. 8-22.

5 H. Mitterbauer and K. Scherke, Ent-grenzte Räume - Kulturelle Transfers um 1900 und in der Gegenwart (Vienna, 2005); M. Gassert, Kulturtransfer durch Fernhandelskaufleute (Frankfurt, 2001).

6 See Lemire, op. cit (note 2), pp. 481-507; Berg, op. cit [Pursuit of luxury] (note 2), pp. 85-142.

7 See J. Irwin, ‘Indo-Portuguese embroideries of Bengal’, Art and Letters. The Journal of the Royal India, Pakistan & Ceylon Society 26 no. 2 (1952), pp.1-9; idem, ‘Indian textile trade in the 17th century, Part 3: Bengal’, Journal of Indian Textile History no. 3 (1957), pp. 59-74; idem, ‘Indian textile trade of the 17th century, Part 4: foreign influences’, Journal of Indian Textile History no. 4 (1959), pp.1-10; M. J. de Mendonca, ‘Alguns tipos de colchas indo-portuguesas na collecção do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga’, Boletim do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga 2 no. 2 (1949), pp. 1-21.

8 See J. J. A. Campos, History of the Portuguese in Bengal (Delhi, 1979); T. Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir (Delhi, 1969); R. M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal

Frontier (Los Angeles, 1993); J. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs (Baltimore, 1993); O. Prakash and D. Lombard (eds.), Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal (New Delhi, 1999); N. Sengupta, History of the Bengali-speaking People (New Delhi, 2001); J. Flores, ‘Entre bandel e colónia’, in Luís Filipe Thomaz (ed.), Aquém e Além da Taprobana (Lisbon, 2002); S. Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History (New Delhi, 2005); R. Mukherjee, Merchants and Companies in Bengal (New Delhi, 2006); R. Davini, ‘Bengali raw silk, the East India Company and the European global market’, Journal of Global History 4 (2009), pp. 57-79.

9 Compare E. Koch, Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (New Delhi, 2001).

10 In the field of directly commissioning textiles in India, the Portuguese private merchants had paved the way for the development of large-scale Indian textile manufacture for the later more successful British market. See Berg, op. cit. [Luxury and Pleasure] (note 2); Berg, op. cit. [Pursuit of luxury] (note 2), pp. 85-142; J. Irwin, Origins of Chintzes (London, 1970); R. Crill, Chintz (London, 2008).

11 Published posthumously: Gaspar Correa, Lendas da India: livro primeiro (Lisbon, 1858-66), p. 287: ‘. . . a mais sutil cousa feita d’agulha, que nunqua outo tal fora visto, que fora feito em Bengala, terra onde se fazem cousas de agulha muy maravilhosas.’

12 H. Kern and H. Terpstra (ed.), Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Itinerario, vol. i (The Hague, 1955), p. 72: ‘is geelachtigh, ende wort geheeten cruijt van Bengalen, waer mede zy besticken seer kunstigh die bedt-dekens, pavellioenen, oorkussens, scheer-doeken, mantilien . . . en makense met loof ende blom-werck, ende van alle figueren, diemen mach dencken ofte versieren, dat een wonder om sien is, ende so meesterlick ghewrocht, van frayen arbeyt, datmen sulcks in Europa niet verbeteren ende soude.’ With the help of Peter Mason the English translation used in the text was adapted from a Hakluyt Society publication based on the first English translation from 1589: A. C. Burnell and P. A. Tiele, The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies (London, 1885), vol. i, p. 96.

13 Archivio di Stato di Firenze (henceforth ASF), Mediceo del Principato 5113, fol. 354 and 651; in A. Dei (ed.), Lettere dall’ India: 1583-1588 (Rome, 1995), pp. 102-7. The separate bill (651) is not published in this book.

14 ASF, Mediceo del Principato, 5113, fol. 651: ‘2 coltre di bengala ricamate a figure una di marca grande e altre di marca piccola.’

15 B. Karl, ‘Galanterie di cose rare’, Itinerario 32 no. 3 (2008), pp. 23-41.

16 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 136.

17 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 136, fol. 139v, 142v.

18 The attribution Satgaon was made in the records of the East India Company not quoted here: W. Foster (ed.), English Factories in India 1618-1621 [to] 1668-1669 (Oxford, 1906-27), vol. i, p. 195, letter of 12 July 1620, and p. 204, letter of 11 November 1620.

19 The Bengal colchas as described in this study ceased to be produced by the middle of the seventeenth century, after which the extant pieces were gradually worn out and thrown away. Only a fraction of what was produced survives today.

20 P. Dias, Arte indo-portuguesa (Coimbra, 2004), pp. 131-71.

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from

b e n g a l c o l c h a s i n e u r o p e a n i n v e n t o r i e s , c . 1 5 8 0 –1 6 3 0

13

21 He was imprisoned in the Colégio dos Reis Magos and subsequently excommunicated and interrogated. For his inventory see Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Reservados, Código 1986, fols. 18v, 73v, 74r, 118r.

22 A. Dei, Francesco Carletti, Ragionamenti del mio viaggio intorno al mondo (Milan, 1987), p. 202.

23 Ibid., fifth and sixth account. The original text was written retrospectively for Ferdinando de’ Medici, the same person for whom Carletti’s compatriot Sassetti had collected items some fifteen years earlier. The merchant travellers did not know each other, Sassetti having died long before Carletti came to Goa.

24 Ibid., p. 183: ‘Inoltre vengono di quel paese molte altre manifatture, come le superbissime coltre e paviglioni, pure di bambagia, ricamate sopra tele con tanta leggiadria et vaghezza di lavori et animali et altre figure et fregi con una certa erba di colore della paglia, la quale riducono a una finezza piú isquisita che non si fa della seta, et di maggior nerbo e piú lustra e di molto meglio apparenza.’

25 Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (henceforth AHU), Açores, Caixa 1, Doc. 12. I thank Celina Bastos for indicating this inventory to me.

26 AHU, Açores, Caixa 1, Doc. 12, fol. 24r. ‘1 colcha de montaria . . . 3 colchas brancas’, fol. 15v. ‘1 colcha de montaria amarela . . . 1 colcha de montaria grande’.

27 AHU, Açores, Caixa 1, Doc. 12: colchas with hunting scenes or yellow: fols. 6r, 15v, 20v, 21v, 22v, 24r, 30v, 44v, 46r, 52r, 62v, 75v.

28 See Boyajian, op. cit. (note 8), p. 67.

29 B. Ferrão, Mobiliário Português (Porto, 1990), pp. 213-24.

30 Ibid., p. 222-3.

31 Ibid., p. 222, from the 1613 Elvas inventory.

32 Ibid, pp. 215-19.

33 For this information I thank Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta. Cards for Antonio Soeiro Gemeente Archief, Notarial Archives, Amsterdam: NA 629 fol. 13-13v, 8 December 1622.

34 IAN/TT, Orfanológico Letra L., Mç 42, Caixa 2520, fols. 5, 6, 11. ‘Hua colcha de mesa de montaria de Bengala com franjas amarelas . . . avaliado por 7000 reis’. I thank Luís Frederico Dias Antunes for drawing my attention to this document.

35 IAN/TT, Jesuitas, Mç 15, no. 43. Celina Bastos kindly brought this document to my attention.

36 Valladolid, Archivo General de Simancas (henceforth AGS), Cámara de Castilla, Libro de Cédulas de Paso, no.360, fol. 116v, 10 May 1567; quoted from A. Jordan Gschwend and A. Perez de Tudela, ‘Luxury goods for royal collectors’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 3 (2001), p. 38: ‘tres colchas pespuntadas dos blancas y la otra de tafetan.’

37 Valladolid, AGS, Cámara de Castilla, Libro de Cédulas de Paso, no. 362, fol. 231v. Madrid, 19 January 1589, quoted from Jordan Gschwend and Perez de Tudela, op. cit. (note 36), p. 68. ‘dos colchas de la India.’

38 See Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 15 (1894), Inventory reg. 12154, p. cxvi, no. 73.

39 Valladolid, AGS, Cámara de Castilla, Libro de Cédulas de Paso, no. 363, fol. 149v. Madrid, 2 May 1594; quoted from Jordan Gschwend and Perez de Tudela, op. cit. (note 36), p. 81: ‘una colcha de puntos amarillos con una mantellina de lo mismo.’

40 W. Seipel (ed.), Exotica (Milan, 2000), p. 216. Similar embroidered capes are in the Museu Nacional do Traje in Lisbon, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City.

41 Quoted from, Seipel, op. cit. (note 40), p. 216. ‘Mer ain Indianische grosse dekhn von zarter leinwant, mit gar schöner Indianischer arbait von allerlai thüeren ausgenäet mit roher gelfleter seiden’, and ‘Mer von zarter leinwant ein tuech, gestalt wie ein harmäntele, ist auf den seiten ainer hand brait mit gelber seiden von laubwerch mit ketennätl ausgenäet’.

42 E. Scheicher, ‘The collection of Archduke Ferdinand II at Schloss Ambras: its purpose, composition and evolution’, in O. Impey and A. MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums (Oxford, 1985), p. 35.

43 E. Fučíková, ‘The collection of Rudolf II at Prague: cabinet of curiosities or scientific museum?’, in Impey and MacGregor, op. cit. (note 42), pp. 47-53. According to Fučíková, who compared the different inventories of the Emperor, this inventory lists only about half of the items of his collection.

44 R. Bauer (ed.), ‘Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II. 1607-1611’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 72 (1976), pp. 30-32, nos. 548, 549. ‘Indianische Schreibtisch und Trühlein und was darinnen gefunden wirt . . . 1 zimlich große indianische von erhebten laubwerckh geschnittene und alles vergulte kistn . . . 1 weiß gestebt und mit gelber seiden gestickhter goltter oder uberdeckh mit gelb seiden frantzen und knöpf. 1 gelb und rot seiden, mit figurn und thier gewirckter indianischer zeüg, zu einem rockh.’

45 Only recently an exhibition at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga ‘The Oriental Carpet in Portugal’, examined the presence of carpets in fifteenth- to eighteenth-century Portugal. C. Bastos, ‘On the utility of the carpet’, in J. Hallett and T. Pacheco Pereira (eds.), The Oriental Carpet in Portugal (Lisbon, 2007), pp. 151-60.

46 Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais / Torre do Tombo, Letra D., Mç. 40 Caixa 871, 18 July 1706, fols. 18, 19.

47 Hardwick Hall Inventory: transcript (1601) Bess of Hardwick, London: the National Art Library, p. 5; see also the article by R. Crill, ‘The earliest survivors? The Indian embroideries at Hardwick Hall’, in R. Crill (ed.), Textiles from India (Calcutta, 2006), pp. 245-61.

48 India Office Archives, Court Book iii, pp. 150, 320, 325, 391, 499; quoted from J. Irwin, ‘Commercial embroidery in Gujarat’, Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art 17 (1949), p. 53.

49 C. Vaz Pinto, Colchas de Castelo Branco (Lisbon, 1993).

50 Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, inv. 932 Pint, Anonymous, 1549. Bastos, op. cit. (note 45), pp. 151-60, image 37.

51 Ferrão, op. cit. (note 29), p. 197.

52 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 3254, fol. 764, 5 July 1582, quoted from the Documentary Sources for the Arts and Humanities, (The Medici Archive Database, Inc., document no. 10245), (consulted 10 October 2009).

53 Archive of the Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon, 54-xi-36 (95), fol. 3.

54 P. F. Covoni, Il Casino di San Marco (Florence, 1892), pp. 230-31.

55 J. von Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (Leipzig, 1908); Scheicher, op. cit. (note 42).

by guest on Novem

ber 9, 2010jhc.oxfordjournals.org

Dow

nloaded from