A 17th century English needlework picture

Circa 1660-1680

Finely worked in silk in tent stitch and couched thread with female figures representing two of the five senses: to the left, ‘Hearing’, playing a lute; and, to the right, ‘Sight’, gazing into an ornate looking glass. These two surrounded by a profusion of flowers, trees and animals, including a leopard, hawk, stag, squirrel and kingfisher, and a butterfly and caterpillars, in a rolling landscape with a wattle and daub house and a castle beneath an anthropomorphized sun.

The allegorical figures have the same source as the two panels on the doors of an embroidered cabinet in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, accession number: T.8-1945, while Colonial Williamsburg has a raised work embroidered picture of similar date, object number: 1962-110 , with two of the other senses - ‘Touch’ and ‘Smell’ - personified.

The needlework 23cm (9”) high and 31cm (12¼”) wide.

Mounted behind glass in a gilt frame 42cm (16½”) high and 48.4cm (19”) wide.