1194, 1195.
Orphreys for a Chasuble; ground, crimson silk; design, an angel-choir in two rows amid wreaths, of which the flowers are silver and the leaves gold, some shaded green; on the back orphrey are two heraldic bearings. German, very late 15th century.
This beautifully-wrought specimen of Rhenish needlework, most likely done at Cologne, consists of twenty-six small figures of winged angels robed in various liturgical vestments, and playing musical instruments of all sorts—some wind, some stringed. Of these celestial beings several wear copes over their white albs; others have over their albs narrow stoles, in some instances crossed upon the breast as priests, but mostly belt-wise as deacons: other some are arrayed in the sub-deacon’s tunicle, and the deacon’s dalmatic: thus vested they hold the instrument which each is playing; and no one but a German would have thought of putting into angels’ hands such a thing as the long coarse aurochs’ horn wherewith to breathe out heavenly music. On the front orphrey are ten of such angels; on the one made in the shape of a cross, for the back of the chasuble, there are sixteen. At both ends of the short beam or transom of this cross we find admirably-executed armorial bearings. The first blazon—that to the left—shows a shield gules an inescutcheon argent, over all an escarbuncle of eight rays or, for Cleves; dimidiated by, or a fess checky argent and gules, for Marck; surmounted by a helmet argent crested with a buffalo’s head cabosed gules, having the shut-down bars of the helmet’s vizor thrust out through the mouth of the animal, which is crowned ducally or the attire argent passing up within the crown; and the mantlings gules. As if for supporters, this shield has holding it two angels, one in a tunicle, the other in a cope. The second shield—that on the right hand,—shows gules an inescutcheon argent, over all, an escarbuncle of eight rays or, crested and supported as the one to the left, thus giving, undimidiated, the blazon of the then sovereign ducal house of Cleves.
All these ornaments, armorial bearings, angels, flowers, and foliage, are not worked into, but wrought each piece separately, and afterwards sewed on the crimson silk ground, which is the original one; they are “cut work.” The angels’ figures are beautifully done, and their liturgic garments richly formed in gold, as are the leaves and stems of the wreaths bearing large silver flowers. From its heraldry we may fairly assume that the chasuble, from which these handsome orphreys were stripped, belonged to the domestic chapel in the palace of the Dukes of Cleves, and had been made for one of those sovereigns whose wife was of the then princely stirring house of De la Marck.
As was observed, while describing the beautiful Syon Cope, [No. 9182], the nine choirs of angels separated into three hierarchies is indicated here also; and the distinction marked by the garments which they are made to wear in these embroideries; some are clothed in copes, others in tunicles, the remainder, besides their narrow stoles, in long-flowing white albs only—that emblem of spotless holiness in which all of them are garmented, as with a robe of light. The bushiness of the auburn hair on all of them is remarkable, and done in little locks of silk.
For a student of mediæval music, this angel-choir will have an especial interest; but, to our thinking, neither this, nor any other production of the subject, whether wrought in sculpture, painting, or needlework, hitherto found out on the Continent, at all comes up in beauty, gracefulness, or value, to our own lovely minstrel-gallery in Exeter Cathedral, or the far more splendid and truly noble angel-choir sculptured in the spandrils of the triforium arches in the matchless presbytery at Lincoln Minster. A cast of the Exeter minstrel-gallery is put up here on the western wall of the north court, and among the casts lent by the Architectural Society are those of the angels in Lincoln.
Of the musical instruments themselves, we see several in these two pieces of cut-work. Beginning with the back orphrey, marked No. 1194 at top, the first of the two angels is playing with the fingers of both hands an instrument now indiscernible; the second, the lute; below them one is beating a tabour with a stick; the other is turning the handle of the gita, our hurdy-gurdy. After these we have an angel blowing a short horn, while his fellow angel strikes the psaltery. Then an angel robed as a deacon in alb, and stole worn like a belt falling from his right shoulder to under his left arm, sounding the sistrum or Jew’s harp, and his companion fingers with his right hand a one-stringed instrument or ancient monochord. In the last couple, one with a large bow is playing the viol, a long narrow instrument with several silver strings.
On the orphrey,—made in the shape of a cross and worn on the back of the chasuble, [No. 1195],—the first angel plays the pan-pipes; the second, a gittern, or the modern guitar; the next two show one angel, as a deacon in dalmatic, jingling an instrument which he holds by two straps, hung all round with little round ball-like bells; and his companion, robed in alb and stole crossed at the breast like a priest, ringing two large hand-bells; lower down, of the two angels both vested as deacons, one blowing a large, long curved-horn, like that of the aurochs, the other, the shalmes or double-reeded pipe. Below these, one in alb and stole, belt-wise as a deacon, blows a cornamuse or bag-pipe; the other, as deacon, the aurochs’ horn. Then a deacon angel has a trumpet; his fellow, a priest in alb and crossed stole, is playing a triangle; last of all, one plays a tabour, the other the monochord. So noteworthy are these admirable embroideries, that they merit particular attention.