Luxurious fabrics made in Persian workshops are kept in Munich and Rome. These fabrics bear the coat of arms of the Polish kings of the Vasa dynasty. What did such exotic wares have to do with Polish kings?

Persian textiles
In modern Europe, oriental artefacts from the Near and Far East were valued, especially various forms of mobile handicrafts that could be easily transported, such as textiles, ceramics and metalwork. They were valued for their perceived otherness, even exoticism of form and decoration, and because of the materials used in their manufacture. Mostly textiles were imported to European countries from the Middle East, Persia and Turkey. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the most important Persian centre of textile manufacture and trade was Kashan. It was there that luxurious fabrics for the Shah and his court, but also for the wealthy European clientele, were made in the manufactories patronised by the Safavid rulers. Safavid fabrics (named after the Safavid dynasty that ruled from 1501 to 1736 in what is now Iran) were considered the most luxurious, as they were woven or knotted from silk and woollen threads, often using gold. Carpets, or carpets, tapisseries and silk patterned fabrics were made there, in characteristic oriental patterns, or arabesque braids.

Fabrics with the Vasa coat of arms
What did such exotic and luxurious products as Safavid fabrics have to do with the Polish kings of the Vasa dynasty, and under what circumstances did the Vasa coat of arms appear on these fabrics? Sigismund III was a persistent collector; by the end of the 16th century, the king was interested in Italian paintings and Persian textiles. It is known that the king ordered such luxurious fabrics from Kashan through Sefer Muratovich (d. 1631) in 1601. Muratovich, an Armenian merchant from Lviv, brought 8 fabrics described as carpets at the time. Some of these fabrics were specially commissioned to bear the Vasa coat of arms, for which Muratovich paid extra. They had a characteristic arrangement of decoration and ornamentation. A bordure surrounded the whole, with a rhombus in the centre and a rectangle in the central part, on which was placed a shield of the coat of arms under a crown, and on the shield an eagle with a Vasa sheaf on its breast. The fabrics have light colours and subdued hues of green, beige and white - they are technologically tapestries. In the literature on the subject, Vasa fabrics were referred to as carpets, carpets woven using the so-called tapestry technique, so-called Polish carpets or kilims. The questions of the precise definition of Vasa fabrics were resolved in 2017. Katarzyna Połujan in her article.

Dispersal
The fabrics with the Vasa coat of arms brought to the court of Sigismund III by Muratovich in 1601, and perhaps also during other expeditions, remained in the Republic for only 40 years. Namely, in 1642, the Safanidze fabrics with Vasa ebras were part of the wedding expedition of Anna Katarzyna Konstancja Wazówna (1619-1651), daughter of Sigismund III, who married Filip Wilhelm Wittelsbach (1615-1690), known at the Polish court as Neuburg, the future Palatine of the Rhine. In her dowry, Anna Katherine Constance received money, paintings, objects of artistic craftsmanship such as silver and decorative fabrics. As Jacek Żukowski is quoted as saying, all of this was loaded into "a legender of 50 'Viennese carts'" filling them with "jewels, silver, robes, money and various costly things".

Anna Katherine Constance died childless nine years after her marriage, and her inheritance became part of the Wittelsbach family estate. Tomasz Grusiecki, in his latest publication on Vasa fabrics, cites further records of them in historical sources. He reports that in 1652, the Vasa fabrics were described in the 'Diary of a journey through Europe' by the papal legate Giacomo Fantuzzi (1617-1679) as magnificent carpets richly decorated with gold brought by the duchess. Subsequently, the fabrics were mentioned in the inventory of Philip William's personal effects sent to Düsseldorf, which was compiled in 1653. Then, four fabrics with Polish coats of arms were recorded in the inventory of Neuburg Castle in 1668. On the other hand, in the 1874 inventory of the Munich residence, they were recorded as Turkish carpets.

Today, most of the Safavid fabrics with the Vasa coat of arms are kept in Munich. The Residezmuseum holds a 242 x 137 cm tapisserie and the Ausglechsfonds holds another 245 x 135 cm tapisserie.

The Residezmuseum also holds two more Persian fabrics brought by Anna Katherine Constance, which do not bear the Vasa coat of arms; these are a womaniser with the figure of a "peri" genius, without side borders, made at the end of the 16th century, and a womaniser with a motif of fighting animals - the so-called hunting womaniser.

One tapisserie with the Vasa coat of arms with a dimension of 250 x 134 cm is kept in the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome. While the eagle silhouette is reversed on this fabric, this is the result of a mistake; the tapisserie was mistakenly lined with linen on the right side. It was probably found there as a gift from Prince Ladislaus Vasa (later King Ladislaus IV), who travelled in Europe between 1624 and 1625. He gave the fabric to his aunt Maria Magdalena Habsburg (1589-1631), who was the wife of Cosimo II de Medici, Duke of Tuscany. According to Catherine Polujan, the fabric was entered in the Medici inventory in 1625 as a 'Persian carpet of gold and silk in several colours, in large format, in the middle with the coat of arms of the King of Poland with a large eagle', was kept in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence until 1815, and was sent to Rome in 1874, where it remains today.

On the other hand, the left half of the tapestry with the Vasa coat of arms, measuring 206 x 58.4 cm, is kept in the Textile Museum in Washington. It is known to have been purchased by the textile collector George Hewitt Myers (1875-1957) in 1906, and was added to the Washington museum collection in 1951. The earlier history of this object is unknown.