ABSTRACT
A carpet in the Munich Residenz (Figure 4.1.1) is a rare example of an early modern West Asian textile in a European collection for which the specifics of commission, making, and dispatch can be convincingly traced. Several clues make it possible to reconstruct this context with a high degree of certainty. First, the emblem of White Eagle in the center of the carpet's design points to Sigismund III Vasa, king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania (r. 1587–1632), on whose orders the object was likely acquired in the Persian city of Kashan. Second, this provenance rests on surviving seventeenth-century documents that list carpets procured specifically for Sigismund and containing his personal arms. Third and fourth, several other sources allude to a transfer of armorial carpets with Polish heraldic bearings from Warsaw to Neuburg, and later to Munich, strengthening still further the link between the object in the Residenz and the Polish king's acquisitions in Persia (modern-day Iran). Piecing all these clues together allows for the Persian carpet's fuller provenance, from its making in seventeenth-century Kashan to its reification as a museum object in the modern Bavarian capital city.
