Towel
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Not currently on view
In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026
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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG
This complete towel entered the collection in 1899. The design is formed of addorsed and confronted animals specifically to be identified as wyverns. According to The Oxford English Dictionary a wyvern is a "chimerla animal imagined as a winged dragon with two feet like those an an eagle, and a serpent-like barbed tail". It is the same animal which one also finds, however, with its wings spread, in the lower part of the Borghese coat-of-arms. Towels of this kind can be found in Early Renaissance paintings and manuscript pages where they were used either as table covers or as overtowels.
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