The colorful splendor of the Lady of Amra
Artwork in need of restoration at Berlin’s Museum of Islamic Art

This fresco of a female figure from the first half of the eighth century (c.730-740 CE) comes from the bathhouse of Qusayr Amra, an extraordinary Umayyad palace complex in present-day Jordan. Figurative wall and ceiling paintings in the audience hall and hammam there were part of an extensive decorative program, and they demonstrate how traditions from late antiquity survived into the early Islamic period. For that reason, the frescoes, including the fragment of a woman now in Berlin’s Museum of Islamic Art, are considered very significant works of art.

Even today, the Lady of Amra fresco remains a topic of keen interest for the fact that it questions still widespread notions that Islamic art does not depict humans. In fact, the Umayyads, Islam’s first dynasty whose realm extended from Spain in the west to Central Asia in the east, dealt intensively with late antiquity art traditions, including figurative painting.

The most recent restoration work carried out in situ at Qusayr Amra revealed the spectacular colors of the frescoes. The rich coloring of the Lady of Amra, however, awaits to be brought back to light. 

The Lady of Amra fresco fragment measures 210 cm in height and 101.5 cm in width.

If you would like to know more about Qusayr Amra and its frescoes, you can read Dr. Stefan Weber’s article, "Having a Bath in the Desert", in: al-Khamis U./ Kamel S./ Weber S. (eds.): Early Capitals of Islamic Culture. The Artistic Legacy of Umayyad Damascus and Abbasid Baghdad (650–950), Munich (2014), pp. 37-38.

The costs of a preliminary study and a sample intervention by a specialist in wall-painting restoration were financed by the members of the Friends of the Museum for Islamic Art in the Pergamonmuseum e.V. 

"I'm going to freshen up!"

The preliminary study of the fresco painting is in full swing. But our "Lady of Amra" has not completely disappeared. In a live performance in an exhibition room of the Museum for Islamic Art, the tape artists from Tape Over put the lady on the wall in a very grand style.