XVI
EMBROIDERED ALTAR-FRONT
(Palencia Cathedral)

As in other countries, embroidery in Spain was executed in the bygone time, both by paid embroiderers, and as a domestic occupation by the ladies of the aristocracy. The work of the professional embroiderer consisted principally of paraments or altar-fronts (Plates [xiv]., [xv]., [xvi]., [xvii]xvii.), and ecclesiastical vestments. Among the former of this class of objects, nothing is finer than the frontal of the Chapel of Saint George in the Audiencia of Barcelona. It is believed to have been wrought by Antonio Sadurni, a Catalan embroiderer who flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century. The scene represented is the combat between Saint George (patron of Cataluña) and the dragon. The saint has rescued a damsel from the monster's claws, and her parents are looking on from a mirador of their palace. This central episode is surrounded with borders and arabesques of extraordinary richness.

Riaño gives a list, compiled from Cean, Martinez, Suarez de Figueroa, and other authors, of forty-seven Spanish embroiderers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. More recently, Ramírez de Arellano has discovered, among the municipal archives of Cordova, the names of sixteen others, who resided at that city towards, or early in, the seventeenth century. The craftsmen in question were Diego de Aguilar, Juan Bautista, Bernardo Carrillo, Luis Carrillo de Quijana, Andrés Fernández de Montemayor, Hernán Gómez del Río, Diego Fabián de Herrera, Diego del Hierro, Diego López de Herrera, Diego López de Valenzuela, Antonio de Morales, Gonzalo de Ocaña, Mateo Sanguino, Manuel Torralbo, Cristóbal de Valenzuela, and Martin de la Vega.

Documents in the same archive contain additional particulars respecting two or three of these artificers. Thus, on February 10th, 1607, Hernán Gómez del Río engaged himself to embroider for the convent of the Trinity at Cordova, “a bordering for a chasuble and four faldones for dalmatics, with their collars and sabastros and bocas mangas. The said bocas mangas to be four in number, and the collars two; also the collaretes which may be necessary for the two dalmatics, and which I am to embroider in silk and gold upon white satin. The collaretes also to be embroidered by me in silk and gold to match a bordering of white satin for a cloak in possession of the said convent.” Further, the convent was to supply the artist with the quantity of white satin required, and pay him two hundred and ten ducats, secured by certain of the convent's revenues, for the gold, the silk, and the workmanship.

XVII
EMBROIDERED ALTAR-FRONTS
(Palencia Cathedral)

Manuel Torralbo contracted to embroider a velvet altar-front and its corresponding fronteleras for the parish church of Luque, at a price of three hundred reales; and Cristóbal de Valenzuela (on September 25th, 1604) to embroider two frontals for the altar of the church of Obejo. One of them was to be of purple velvet worked in gold, and the other of “black velvet, with borders and caidas embroidered in yellow satin and white satin, with skulls and bones embroidered in gold.”[38]

Turning our attention to the embroidery which was executed, principally as a recreation, by highborn Spanish ladies of some centuries ago, the romance of El Compte Arnau, quoted by Miquel y Badía and written in Catalan and Provençal, contains the following lines:—

“¿Ahout teniu las vostras fillas—muller leal?
¿Ahout teniu las vostras fillas—viudeta igual?
A la cambra son que brodan—Compte l'Arnau
A la cambra son que brodan—seda y estam.”