8651.
The “Vernicle,” embroidered in silk, and now sewed on a large piece of linen. Flemish, middle of 15th century. 9½ inches by 7½ inches; the linen, 2 feet 10½ inches by 2 feet 9 inches.
To the readers of old English literature, especially of Chaucer, the term of “Vernicle” will not be unknown, as expressing the representation of our Saviour’s face, which He is said to have left upon a napkin handed Him to wipe His brows, by one of those pious women who crowded after Him on His road to Calvary. It is noticed, too, in the “Church of our Fathers,” t. iii. p. 438. This piece of needlework seems to have been cut off from another, and sewed, at a very much later period, to the large piece of linen to which it is now attached; for the purpose of being put up either in a private chapel, or over some very small altar in a church, as a sort of reredos; or, perhaps, it may have originally been one of the apparels on an alb: never, however, on an amice, being much too large for such a purpose. One singularity in the subject is the appearance of crimson tassels, one at each corner of the napkin figured with our Lord’s likeness, which is kept with great care still, at Rome, among the principal relics in St. Peter’s, where it is shown in a solemn manner on Easter Monday. It is one of those representations of a sacred subject called by the Greeks ἀχειροποίητος, that is, “not made by hands,” or, not the work of man, as was noticed in the Introduction to the present Catalogue.