21-05-2016, 04:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 19-12-2016, 03:20 PM by Koen G.
Edit Reason: Split thread reasons
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[Edit KG: this was originally a reply to this post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but these posts have been split off by popular demand]
Davidsch,
The detail you describe as a fleur-de-lys is easy to read that way, and at first I thought so too, but such a reading is difficult to maintain because - as as with all emblemata - an interpretation has to be consistent with all other details, and in this case, the figure wears a garment of a cut which combines a neck-band of lighter colour with a side opening which runs close by the right armpit, and which apparently joins with knots, or perhaps frogged buttons (i.e. ones made by knotting cord into a button). Those things are characteristic of Asian style, and the quarter which the figure occupies appears, again, to be the eastern, or perhaps the north-eastern. (this assignment after investigating each of the other three in some detail).
Given the dates for the vellum and so forth, I concluded that the dress - including the head-wear - was a reference to the Mongols, (comparative images provided) and thus that the thing which strikes us as being like the European 'fleur-de-lys' wasn't meant for that, but for an emblem used on some coins of the Mongol period, within the same region to which traders and papal emissaries and others went from mainland Europe during the 'Mongol century'.
One commentator even speaks of it (the emblem being a calligraphic version of a tamgar) as looking "Like a graceful fleur-de-lys".
In writing up this matter, I added an image of that coin and of the costume, including the peculiar head-band, so that readers would see that all the details in that little vignette are telling of time and place.
The coin I illustrated dates to 1252-3 AD.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Davidsch,
The detail you describe as a fleur-de-lys is easy to read that way, and at first I thought so too, but such a reading is difficult to maintain because - as as with all emblemata - an interpretation has to be consistent with all other details, and in this case, the figure wears a garment of a cut which combines a neck-band of lighter colour with a side opening which runs close by the right armpit, and which apparently joins with knots, or perhaps frogged buttons (i.e. ones made by knotting cord into a button). Those things are characteristic of Asian style, and the quarter which the figure occupies appears, again, to be the eastern, or perhaps the north-eastern. (this assignment after investigating each of the other three in some detail).
Given the dates for the vellum and so forth, I concluded that the dress - including the head-wear - was a reference to the Mongols, (comparative images provided) and thus that the thing which strikes us as being like the European 'fleur-de-lys' wasn't meant for that, but for an emblem used on some coins of the Mongol period, within the same region to which traders and papal emissaries and others went from mainland Europe during the 'Mongol century'.
One commentator even speaks of it (the emblem being a calligraphic version of a tamgar) as looking "Like a graceful fleur-de-lys".
In writing up this matter, I added an image of that coin and of the costume, including the peculiar head-band, so that readers would see that all the details in that little vignette are telling of time and place.
The coin I illustrated dates to 1252-3 AD.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.