Dress to Impress: Reconstructions of Medieval Robes from Nubia
Clothing has often spoken where words fall short. In medieval Nubia, dress functioned as a potent form of non-verbal communication, signalling authority, faith and cultural alignment. Dress to Impress: Reconstructions of Medieval Robes from Nubia brings this visual language vividly back to life through an ambitious interdisciplinary project that transforms two-dimensional wall paintings into fully realised garments.
A painting from the Nubian Faras Cathedral, on which the costume in the lead image (a royal mother from Makuria) is based.
The project centres on the cathedral of Faras, once a spiritual and political heart of the Christian Nubian kingdom of Makuria, which flourished between the sixth and fourteenth centuries in what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. In the 1960s, ahead of the flooding caused by the construction of the Aswan High Dam, a UNESCO-led international effort sought to salvage endangered cultural heritage along the Nile. A Polish archaeological team led by Professor Kazimierz Michałowski selected Faras as a key site, uncovering a cathedral adorned with remarkable wall paintings depicting kings, royal mothers and senior clergy. Today, these murals form the core of the Faras Gallery at the National Museum in Warsaw, a globally significant collection of medieval Nubian art...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Reconstruction of the Byzantine costume of a royal mother from Makuria after a wallpainting in the medieval cathedral of Faras, Nubia (Sudan) © Paulina Matusiak and Eddy Wenting.
All further images as credited in photo captions.