Cleveland Museum of Art

Chasuble

Date

1700s

Medium

Silk and metallic threads: embroidery

Culture

Italy, 18th century

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Sheaves of wheat and bunches of grapes, symbols of the bread and wine of the Mass, are embroidered with silver-metal thread amid scrolling leaves on the green silk-damask ground of this chasuble. Liturgical colors—white, red, green, and black, purple, or blue—mandated by Pope Innocent III in the late 1100s were widely ignored by the 1700s, replaced primarily by a lavish use of gold, silver, and pastel silk thread embroidered on white silk fabrics. Long matching stoles were worn under chasubles in styles that identified deacons, priests, and bishops.

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