A pair of wall hangings richly embroidered in silk and metallic thread. This truly spectacular pair of masterfully embroidered wall hangings stand as testimony to the lavish use of metallic thread (flattened silver wire coiled around a silk core) in the decoration of mid-18th century textiles, a period of true splendour in the European and colonial decorative arts. The richness conveyed by the use of this kind of metallic thread in such abundance is evidence not only of a prosperous economic time, but also to a princely, costly commission. The decorative arrangement of the present wall hangings clearly derives from Indian printed textiles, namely chintzes produced in the Coromandel Coast which combine European designs - in the present case almost Rococo in style, and of simple, clear design based on symmetry - with Indian flower motifs, large, boldly coloured flowers such as the ones seen on this mid-18th century chintz below (detail) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 1975.212.1 - see Peck 2013, p. 197, cat. no. 46. The flower motifs were embroidered in silk using a typical stich, the long and short stitch (punto matizado in Spanish), which is used to blend colours and also create a feathery texture This stitch is a way of filling patterns, where the stitches are laid in a bricklike pattern and shading is achieved using a different coloured threads for each subsequent row. In fact, this stich, set with uneven lengths of thread, allows the shades to melt into one another in a paintinglike manner.

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