A LARGE INDO-PORTUGUESE TEXTILE Bengal, India, 17th Century A rare and fine Indo-Portuguese silk and cotton embroidery, the central pale-blue-beige-ground circular roundel with a peacock at the center surrounded by eight mermaids playing lutes amidst floral sprays within another band of running animals including deer, dogs, and hares, all set within a red-ground shaped and canted rectangular panel with blue ground corners, the red ground decorated with kneeling European figures, presumably hunters, on a dense ground of trees and flowers packed with a variety of birds and animals including boars, deer, peacocks, lions, deer and other birds, the blue-ground corners with figures confronting centaurs, the wide beige-ground outer border decorated with numerous animals running amidst leafy tree branches between hunter's with horns. 95in (242cm) x 76in (193cm) Footnotes: 十七世紀 印度孟加拉 大件織品 Published Cohen & Cohen, Think Pink!, Antwerp, 2013, pp. 98-99, no. 65 出版： 倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Think Pink!》，安特衛普，2013年，頁98-99，圖版編號65 The Portuguese established a colony in Bengal around 1537 and by 1570 were exporting quantities of embroidered textiles to Europe. The embroidered designs include decorative motifs borrowed from both the Indian and European tradition. They include features of Italianate Renaissance origin and also motifs from 16th century Spanish and Portuguese art such as the double-headed eagle, as well as hunting scenes. Several styles of the Bengal work are recorded, and this appears to be kashida, worked in chain stitch and using muga or tussur silk. Usually, kashida embroideries are monochrome so this is very rare and unusual in using polychrome silk and cotton panels. Some of the stylistic elements in this design are close to similar Chinese textiles of the period and it has been suggested that Chinese textile workers could have been brought from Macao to Bengal to work there, which would explain the mixtures of styles here. Exhibited: Uma familia de coleccionadores, Poder e Cultura, Casa Museu Dr Anastácio Gonçalves, Lisbon, cat. 63, where it is suggested that they were possibly acquired by D. Frederico Guilherme Sousa e Holstein (1737-1790) Governor of India for 7 years (1779-86). However, another member of the Sousa famiy, Archbishop Braga D. Luís de Sousa (1637-1690), was Portuguese Ambassador to Rome between 1675 and 1682 and is recorded as having Indian textiles in one room in his 'sumptiously furnished palce' (Karl 2016, p. 72)- which might have been these examples? References: Karl, Barbara, 2016, Embroidered Histories, Indian Textiles for the Portuguese Market during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Wien Köln Weimar: Böhlau Verlag) p. 72. 1. Teotónio R. de Souza, 1985, Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions, p. 137.