Tunic

1100–1532

Tunic, 1100–1532. Peru, Chimú or Chimú-Inka, 12th-16th century. White cotton; plain weave with supplementary weft brocading; overall: 57.2 x 151.1 cm (22 1/2 x 59 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2011.111.1 This garment embodies an important principle of the Chimú textile aesthetic: a love of combining different textures, some dense and sculptural and others so open and airy they are nearly invisible. (The hand-spun yarns are only .1 to .2 millimeters in diameter.) It also elegantly articulates the simplified, spare visual vocabulary that the Chimú favored, here geometric motifs. The Chimú forged an empire that thrived until the 1460s, when the Inka incorporated it into their own imperial domain.