Opus Consutum (or cut work).
This is “Patchwork,” or “Appliqué” (“inlaid” and “onlaid”). Vasari calls it “Di commesso,” and says that Botticelli invented it for the use of Church banners, as being much more effective than any other style of work, or even than painting, as the outlines remained firm (non si stinguano), and were not affected by the weather (as in painted cloths) and were visible on both sides of the banner. Botticelli drew with his own hand the baldachino of Or San Michele, and the embroideries on a frieze carried in procession by the monks of Santa Maria Novella; he died 1515. Perhaps he may have revived the art of application in his own day.
There are, however, much earlier examples of patchwork, of which the first and most remarkable is the Egyptian funeral tent of Queen Isi-em-Kheb, mother-in-law of Shishak, who besieged and took Jerusalem three or four years after the death of Solomon, B.C. 980. It may be described as a mosaic, or patchwork of prodigious size, made of thousands of pieces of gazelles’ skins, dyed, and neatly sewn together with threads of colour to match, resembling the stitching of a glove, the outer edges bound with a cord of twisted pink leather, sewn on with stout pink thread (pl. [44]). The colours are described as being wonderfully preserved, when it is remembered that they are nearly as old as the Trojan War; though perhaps their preservation is less surprising than that the flowers wreathed about several royal mummies of the same period should have shown their colours and forms when the cases were first opened, so as to be recognized as blue larkspur, yellow mimosa, and a red Abyssinian flower, massed closely together on the foundation of a strong leaf cut in zigzags. Among the flowers lay a dead wasp, whose worthless little form and identity were as perfectly preserved as those of the mighty monarch on whose bosom it had completed its short existence. The tent itself consists of a centre or flat top, divided down the middle, and covered over one half with pink and yellow rosettes on a blue ground; on the other half are six large vultures, each surrounded with a hieroglyphic text which is really an epitaph. The side flaps are adorned first with some narrow bands of colour; then with a fringe pattern; then with a row of broad panels, red, green, and yellow, with a device or picture and inscription in the two other colours; on this border there are kneeling gazelles, each with a pink Abyssinian lotus blossom hanging to its collar. The rest of the side flaps and the whole of the front and back flaps are composed of large squares, alternately pink and green. This, for its antiquity, its style, its stitchery, materials, and colours, is a most interesting work of early art, and an example of the perfection to which it had attained. It is remarkable how much variety of effect has been produced with only four colours, by the artistic manner of placing and contrasting them. To our more advanced taste, however, the whole effect of the contrasting colours is inharmonious and gaudy, though certainly striking and typical.[345]
Another piece of Egyptian application, from the Museum at Turin, is a pretty leaf pattern cut out in red stuff, laid on a white ground, and worked down with a darker outline of the same colour.[346]
Fig. 22.
Piece of appliqué in red stuff and red outlines from Egypt.
Pl. 44.
