Belonging to ourselves is an old English chasuble, the broad cross, at the back of which is figured with “The Resurrection of the Body.” The dead are arising from their graves, and each is wrought in satin, upon which the features on the face, and the lineaments of the rest of the body, are shown by thin lines worked with the needle in dark brown silk; and the edge, where each figure is sewed on the grounding, is covered with a narrow black silk cord, after much the same fashion as the lectern-veil here, [No. 7468], p. 141, of silk and gold cut work. Instances there are wherein, instead of needlework, painting was resorted to; [No. 8315], p. 189, shows us a fine art-work in its way, upon which we see the folds of the white linen garment worn by our Lord, marked by brown lines put in with the brush, while the head and extremities, and the ground strewed with flowers, are wrought with the needle. No. [8687], p. 258, gives us a figure where the whole of the person, the fleshes and clothing, are done in woven silk cut out, shaded and featured in colours by the brush with some little needlework here and there upon the garments. In that old specimen, No. [8713], p. 270, such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left uncovered upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines.
Perhaps in no collection open anywhere to public view could be found a piece of cut-work so full of teaching about the process, and its easy way of execution, as the one here, [No. 1370], p. 76; to it we earnestly recommend the attention of such of our readers as may wish to learn all about this method.
For the invention of cut-work or “di commesso,” as Vasari calls it, that writer tells us we are indebted to one of his Florentine countrymen: “It was by Sandro Botticelli that the method of preparing banners and standards in what is called cut-work, was invented; and this he did that the colours might not sink through, showing the tint of the cloth on each side. The baldachino of Orsanmichele is by this master, and is so treated,” &c., and this work serves to show how much more effectually that mode of proceeding preserves the cloth than do those mordants, which, corroding the surface, allow but a short life to the work; but as the mordants cost less, they are more frequently used in our day than the first-mentioned method.[333]
However accurate such a statement may be regarding Italy in general, and Tuscany in particular, it is, nevertheless, utterly untrue as applicable to the rest of the world. In this collection may be seen a valuable piece of this same cut-work—or as Vasari would call it “di commesso”—by French hands, fraught with a story out of our English Romance, and done towards the end of the fourteenth century, [No. 1370], p. 76. Now, as Botticelli was born A.D. 1457, and died A.D. 1515, he came into being almost a whole century too late to have originated such a process of ornamental needlework, which was well known and practised in these parts so many years before the birth of that Florentine painter.
[333] Vite de’ piu Eccellenti Pittori, &c., di G. Vasari, t. v. p. 121; English translation, t. ii. p. 239.
There are some accessories, in mediæval embroidery, which ought not to be overlooked here.
In some few instances,
Gold, and Silver gilt,
in very many more, wrought after the smith’s cunning into little star-like flowers—broader, bigger, and more craftily fashioned than our modern spangles—are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the embroidery in the specimens before us, particularly those from Venice and its main-land provinces in Italy, and from Southern Germany. At [No. 8274], pp. 168-9, we have a part of an orphrey embroidered on parchment, and having along with its coral, gold beads, and seed pearls, small bosses and ornaments in gilded silver stars; it is Venetian, and of the second half of the twelfth century. [No. 8307], pp. 185-6 is a linen amice, the silken apparel of which has sewed to it large spangle-like plates in gilded silver struck with a variety of patterns, showing how the goldsmith’s hand had been sought by the Germans of the fifteenth century to give beauty to this silken stuff. The fine piece of ruby-tinted Genoa velvet, which was once the apparel for the lower hem of an alb, is sprinkled somewhat thickly with six-rayed stars of gold and silver; but those made of the latter metal have turned almost black: here we have a sample of Lombard taste in this matter, of the ending of the fifteenth century. Silver-gilt spangles wrought to figure six-petalled flowers on a fine example of gold tissue, under [No. 8588], pp. 222-3, present us with a German craftsman’s work, in the fourteenth century. [No. 8612], p. 233, is not without its value in reference to Italian taste. All over, this curious now fragmental piece of silk damask, has at one time been thickly strewed with trefoils cut out of gilt metal, but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many of these leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black.
From among these examples a few will show the reader how the goldsmith had been tasked to work upon them as jeweller also, and gem the liturgical garments to which these shreds belong, with real or imitated precious stones. In the orphrey upon the back of that very rich fine crimson velvet chasuble, [No. 1375], pp. 81-2, the crossed nimb about our Lord’s head is gemmed with stones set in silver gilt; and the sockets still left on the piece of crimson velvet, [No. 8334], p. 199, unmistakably speak for themselves.