Opus Anglicanum, XIII. Century
British Museum
The term “opus Anglicanum” is first recorded in the thirteenth century, and is supposed simply to mean “English work.” But there is also good authority for its having been applied, on the Continent especially, to a particular style of stitchery, of which the Syon cope in the Kensington Museum is the best preserved great example known. Its peculiarity consists in its fine split-stitch being moulded so as to give the effect of a bas-relief; and this appears to have been generally reserved for the medallions representing sacred subjects, and especially employed in modelling the faces and the nude parts of the figures delineated. The effect of this work has often been destroyed, as time has frayed and discoloured the parts that are raised, exhibiting the canvas ground, reversing the high lights, and causing dark spots in their stead. This reversal of the intended effect is an additional practical argument for the flatness of embroidery.[592]
From the Librate Roll of Henry III. one can form an estimate of the value of the “opus Anglicanum” in its day.[593] In 1241 the king gave Peter de Agua Blanca a mitre so worked, costing £82. This would be, according to the present value, £230.
The finest specimens of this English work are to be found on the Continent, or have been returned from it. [594] They had either been gifts to popes or bishops before the Reformation, or they had been sold at that time of general persecution and pillage. Among the most remarkable are the pluvial (called) of St. Silvester at Rome, the Daroca pluvial at Madrid, the great pluvial at Bologna, and the Syon cope, of which I have already spoken. The general idea and prevailing design of these three great works are so singular, and yet so alike, that they must have issued from the same workshop, and that was certainly English.
In the Daroca cope the cherubim, with their feet on wheels, which are peculiar to English design, and the angels (in the vacant spaces between the framed subjects from the life of our Lord) have their wings carefully done in chain split-stitch representing peacocks’ feathers, of which the silken eyes are stitched in circles, and then raised with an iron by pressure, so as to catch a light and throw a shadow. The ground is entirely English gold-laid work. This cope, so markedly national in design and stitches, probably drifted to the Continent at the time of the Reformation.[595]
Pl. 77.
Characteristic English Parsemé Patterns for Ecclesiastical Embroideries.