Four Large Figures from a Coptic Tapestry , late 4th/early 5th Century A.D.

originally part of a frieze decorating a large plain linen hanging, in tapestry weave with warp of natural linen and weft of various shades of blue, pink, red, green, and yellow, comprising a dancer holding a basket of fruits and wearing a skirt and tunic, a shepherd(?) leaning on a staff and wearing a long cloak falling down his back and draped over his left shoulder, and two dancers each wearing a skirt and tunic passing over the left shoulder, one holding a sickle(?), the other a hoe(?).

Dr. Ulrich Müller, Zurich, acquired between 1968 and 1978

For related figures see E.D. Maguire, The Rich Life and the Dance, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 1999, B1 and cover illus. (holding a sickle), Sotheby's, New York, December 7th, 2005, no. 24 (carrying a duck), K. Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality, New York, 1979, no. 235 (carrying a ram). For a larger fragment in the British Museum showing two hunters separated by vertical ornamental stripes see K. Wessel, L'art copte, Brussels, 1964, fig. 118. Also see A. Gonosova, Art of Late Rome and Byzantium in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1994, pp. 298-299, no. 104 (holding a branch or garland); the author notes that shepherds, "hunters, dancers, and similar figures from the linen curtains belong to the standard repertory of Roman and early Byzantine domestic art. In addition to a purely decorative role, their iconographic association with Dionysiac themes and seasonal and pastoral activities made them also broad allegories of life's blessings and renewal."