Signed in Silk: Introducing a Sacred Jewish Textile

This exhibition occurred in the past. The archival exhibition summary below describes the exhibition as it was conceived while on view.

In 2019 the Museum acquired this splendid Torah Ark Curtain (Parokhet), an 18th-century Italian tour de force of needlework and rich metallic embroidery on a shimmering azure-blue silk ground. This artwork is the centerpiece of and the inspiration for the exhibition Signed in Silk: Introducing a Sacred Jewish Textile, which brings together a selection of devotional textiles used in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim contexts as well as highly fashionable secular textiles made in or imported to Europe.

The Torah Ark Curtain’s teenage artist embroidered her name across the lower edge of the textile in Hebrew: “made by the young woman Simhah Viterbo in the year ha-yashar ve-ha-tov [5515 (Hebrew) or 1755].” Viterbo lived in Ancona, a port city on the Adriatic coast of Italy and home to a large community of Jews with roots across Europe and the Mediterranean. Ancona was located at a major crossroads on the East–West trade route, allowing Viterbo to draw on a range of multicultural influences. The selection of textiles on view in this exhibition illuminates Viterbo’s impressive synthesis of designs, ranging from stylish Indian palampores, a popular 18th-century cotton textile, to the late Baroque and early Rococo ornaments that embellished fashionable dress, textiles, and silver.

Signed in Silk is curated by Genevieve Cortinovis, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts and Design.

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