Needlework As Art Part 44

(Plate 26.)

[508] Rock's "Introduction," p. liii.

[509] This date is a.s.signed to it by Monsignor Clifford.

[510] Kindly supplied to me by the Father Superior of San Clemente in Rome.

[511] In the cathedral of Aix, Switzerland. Bock's "Liturgische Gewander," i. taf. ii.

[512] One of these mitres has, it is said, been brought to England.

[513] Bock, "Liturgische Gewander," ii. taf. xii. This is dyed in Tyrian purple (rosy red), and is simply the cross, representing the tree with twelve leaves, "for the healing of the nations."

[514] Bock, "Liturgische Gewander," i. taf. iii. pp.

157-160.

[515] Bock, _ibid._, p. 158, quotes the Jesuit Erasmus Frohlich, (1754).

[516] See Bock's "Liturgische Gewander," i. taf. iv. pp.

165, 166. "One of three costly garments."

[517] Modifications of the "wheel pattern" ("wheel and plate"). Of these works of the tenth and eleventh centuries the fine Roman lettering in the borders is a marking characteristic.

[518] See Bock's "Liturgische Gewander," i. p. 214.

[519] There was no guild of embroiderers in England that we know of till that incorporated in the reign of Elizabeth. See chapter on English embroidery.

[520] Bock, i. 214, says that the splendid stuffs and embroideries were entirely consecrated to the use of the Church, till the luxurious arts invaded European domestic life from the seventh to the twelfth century.

[521] See the cross on the Rheims cope (plate 63).

[522] There is no doubt it was only used for church work.

[523] At Aachen, in Switzerland, there is a very remarkable pluvial of one kind of opus Anglicanum, which has been already alluded to. The border, of splendid gold embroidery, has the pattern completed in fine flowers of jewellers' work. (See Bock, "Liturgische Gewander," ii. p. 297, taf. xli.-xliv.) Rock, "Textile Fabrics," Introduction, p. x.x.xi, cites from Mon. Angl.

(ii. 222), the vestments given to St. Alban's Abbey by Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Clarence, A.D. 1429, as being remarkable for pure gold in its texture and the splendour of the jewels and precious stones set into it, as well as for the exquisite beauty of its embroideries.

These are some of the characteristics of the opus Anglicanum.

[524] Appendix 6.

[525] Mrs. Bayman, of the Royal School of Art Needlework.

[526] If it is true that in the days of the Greeks and Romans the art of acupictura or needle-painting copied pictorial art, so likewise in the Egyptian early times, painted linens imitated embroideries. This we learn by specimens from the tombs. Painted hangings and embroideries appear to have been equally used for processional decorations. In the Middle Ages painted hangings imitated embroideries and woven hangings, and were considered as legitimate art.

[527] See Bock, vol. i. p. 10.

[528] Exhibited in the "Esposizione Romana" in 1869, in the cloisters of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

[529] See Woltmann and Woermann, who quote evidence as to works in painted gla.s.s as early as the ninth and tenth centuries in France and Germany ("History of Painting," vol. i. pp. 316-339). They remark that the character of painted gla.s.s is nearly akin to textile decoration, that it is essentially flat and unpictorial.

And doubtless there is an a.n.a.logy between the two, but rather suggesting patchwork or cut work than legitimate embroidery.

[530] "Vasari," ed. Monce, taf. v. p. 101.

[531] See plate 69, which is a fine altar-frontal of the plateresque Spanish.

[532] The dress of the "Virgin del Sagrario" at Toledo, embroidered with pearls, and the chasuble of Valencia, worked with corals, show how profusely these costly materials were employed.

[533] See "The Industrial Arts of Spain," pp. 250-264, by Don Juan F. Riano, and catalogues of Loan Exhibition by him for the South Kensington Museum series, 1881. The works of Spanish Queens and Infantas are to be seen at the Atocha, the church of the Virgin del Pilar at Madrid.

[534] There are most interesting examples of Scriptural subjects in Bock's "Liturgische Gewander," i. taf. x.

pp. 207, 208; taf. xi. pp. 239-278. These are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and we have some good fifteenth century bead-work in the South Kensington Museum.

[535] The splendid embroideries from Westminster Abbey, sold to Spanish merchants at the Reformation, now at Valencia, and the cope in the Museum at Madrid, are instances of these exportations. The Syon cope also was returned to England, after its long wanderings, about sixty years ago. I give its history by Dr. Rock in the Appendix 6.

[536] For examples of this ornate and graceful, but frivolous style, we may remember the mosaic altar frontals throughout the basilica of St. Peter's at Rome.

[537] See Dr. Rock's "Catalogue of Textile Fabrics,"

South Kensington Museum, Introduction, p. cx.x.xvi.

[538] Bock's "Liturgische Gewander," i. taf. vi., vii., pp. 385-392. The emblematic meanings of stones is constantly alluded to in the Old Testament. Their symbolism has, therefore, a high authority and most ancient descent. In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford is an illuminated copy of Philip de Than's Bestiarium, composed for Adelais, second wife of Henry I.

[539] "Cyclopaedia of Bible Literature," vol. vii. p.

477.

[540] See Clapton Rolfe, "The Ancient Use of Liturgical Colours." (Parker, 1879.)

[541] See "Indian Arts," by Sir G. Birdwood, i. p. 97.

He says this [Ill.u.s.tration] form is the sign of the Buddhist or Jainis, and that the [Ill.u.s.tration]

fire-stick form was that of the Sakti race in India.

[542] See chapter on patterns, p. 103-4, _ante_.

[543] Revelations chap. xxii. v. 2.

[544] In mediaeval times the cross in a circle was sometimes called the "clavus" [Ill.u.s.tration]. It was the same as an Egyptian sign, meaning "land" (plate 25).

Donelly fancifully claims the sign as being that of the garden of Eden, and of the four rivers flowing from it (see "Atlantis").

[545] See plate 70, No. 1. In the upper part of the Halberstadt diptych, No. 1, the "gens togata" are sitting on Olympus, clothed in such purple garments embroidered with the chrysoclavus.

[546] I would instance the little church of St. Mary, built and adorned by the late W. E. Street, at Feldy, in Surrey.

[547] The art of illumination had in general kept a little in front of that of the painter, and illumination and embroidery went hand in hand.

[548] The fine brocades of velvet and gold, of which we find examples in the centres of palls, and a notable one in the celebrated Stoneyhurst cope, are still reproduced to order at Lyons, Genoa, Florence, and in Spain. The Florentine is distinguished by the little loops of gold thread which pervade it.

[549] In the English ritual gold was permitted wherever white was enjoined. This shows a true appreciation of the effect of the metal, separating and isolating all colours, and being of none.

[550] The purple is not one of the five mystic colours named; it is included in blue, and therefore the most ritualistic critic need not object to it.

[551] Under the Carlovingians, priestly garments were often enriched with splendid fringes, trimmed with bells. A Bishop of Elne, who died in 915, left to his church a stole embroidered with gold and garnished with bells. So rich were the fringes at that epoch, that King Robert, praying one day in the church, became aware that while he was lost in meditation a thief had ripped off part of the fringes of his mantle. He interrupted his proceedings by saying, "My friend, suppose you content yourself with what you have taken, and leave the rest for some other member of your guild." See "Histoire du Tissu Ancien," Union Central des Arts Decoratifs. For a fringe with bells, see the beautiful example in Bock's "Liturgische Gewander" (plates xli. xlii. xliii. vol.