Merchants, from diverse nationalities made their homes in other major city ports and their presence was made visible in public festivals. These foreign communities often funded ephemeral structures and decorations. The entry of Philip II of Portugal into Lisbon of 1619 famously had a considerable representation of foreign communities, and despite the complex political context in which it took place, some of these communities also appeared in Philip I of Portugal’s entry in the same city in 1581. 

Images of the temporary structures circulated mostly thanks to the printed books, loose folios and drawings. These festival images also appear in other media, such as manuscripts and textiles, and were often memorialized in permanent architecture. The main façade of the Arch of the Flemish erected in 1619 in the Rua Nova dos Mercadores in Lisbon which was included in João Baptista Lavanha’s Viagem da Catholica Real Magestade del Rey D. Filipe II NS ao Reyno de Portugal… 1622. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional (Fig. 1). This image offers an extraordinary case study of visual and cultural circulations. In the seventeenth century, Indian colchas, or wall hangings, were a central part of Lisbon ceremonial culture. Numerous colchas in the period were made for the Portuguese market, as Barbara Karl and other scholars have studied at length. This Colcha with triumphal Arch (Fig.2) was made in the Hugli region of Bengal.  However, what makes this Colcha unique is that at the centre of the piece there is a representation of an ephemeral structure, a triumphal arch, which is none other than the temporary arch that the community of Flemish merchants had erected in Lisbon on the occasion of the ceremonial entry of Philip II of Portugal and III of Spain into the capital in 1619. 

Bengali artists adapted and re-imagined the imagery to the art of embroidery in their colchas. The Colcha with Triumphal Arch displays portraits of kings and other scenes which were present in Habsburg festivals in Lisbon in 1581 and 1619. At the centre of the piece, the Arch of the Flemish Merchants in Lisbon erected in the Rua Nova in 1619 can be seen clearly outlined. While the Arch has been reimagined in the Colcha, the three levels of the monumental arch and its three arches can be clearly perceived, as well as the main decorative programmes. The Bengali artists have integrated imagery that they had used for generations for the production of quilts in the region, with animals – real or imaginary – and mounted figures. In this Colcha we can see the arch topped by representations of the Moon and Sun as they appear in some images from festival books. In addition to the medallions that encircle the portraits of kings, we find processions in the outer areas, some of them reflective of Bengali traditions, but we also find hunting scenes deriving from Portuguese visual culture. 

Transoceanic communication enabled the image of this arch to travel across regions in the world and to be represented in an array of media this case study thus illuminates the journeys of ‘globetrotting images.’

Para saber más:

Laura Fernández-González, Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire, Penn State University Press, 2021; see chapter 3. 

Laura Fernández-González, Bengali Colcha with the Triumphal Arch of the Flemish Mid-17^th Century, EMPIRE LINES podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Ez8ey26S52JB5kopCvNFn?si=362ae9cbc9f945ef 

Pedro Moura Carvalho. Luxury for Export: Artistic Exchange between India and Portugal around 1600. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2008), pp.60-61, no. 15. (as 17th century)

Elena Phipps in Amelia Peck (ed.) Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800. Exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013), pp. 148-49, no. 8. 

John Irwin and Margaret Hall, Indian Embroideries (Calico Museum of Textiles, India, 1983).

Barbara Karl, Embroidered Histories: Indian Textiles for the Portuguese Market during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Gmbh & Co, 2016).

Cómo citar:

Laura Fernández-González, «Colcha- Wall Hanging with Triumphal Arch», Iconoteca CIRIMA: Circulación de la imagen en la geografía artística del mundo hispánico en la Edad Moderna, 2024. Consultado el FECHA. URL: https://cirima.web.uah.es/iconoteca/colcha-wall-hanging-with-triumphal-arch/