Embroidery with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin

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Embroidery with Scenes from the Life of the Virgin

Place of OriginFlorence, Italy

Dateabout 1330-1350

Dimensions6 3/4 × 48 1/8 in. (17.1 × 122.2 cm)

Mediumsilk, gold, and silver thread on linen

ClassificationTextiles and Fiber

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1954.85

Not on View

Collections

Decorative Arts

Published ReferencesCavallo, Adolph S., "A Newly Discovered Trecento Orphrey from Florence," Burlington Magazine, CII, December 1960, pp. 505, no. 4, p. 510, no. 16.

"Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, Jan.-Mar. 1961," Art Quarterly, vol. XXIV, no. 2, Summer 1961, p. 200, repr. p. 198.

Grönwoldt, Ruth, "A Florentine Fourteenth Century Orphrey in the Toledo Museum of Art," Apollo, vol. 89, no. 87, May 1969, pp. 350-355, repr. p. 351, fig. 1.

Wardwell, Anne E., "A Rare Florentine Embroidery of the Fourteenth Century, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. LXVI, no. 9, December 1979, pp. 322-333, repr. fig. 12, p. 323, 324, 325.

Martin, Rebecca, Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1985, p. 23, fig. 10 [not in exhibition].

Putney, Richard H., Medieval Art, Medieval People: The Cloister Gallery of the Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, 2002, pp. 26-27, repr. (col.) fig. 17.

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 108-109, repr. (col.) and (det.).

Label TextThis embroidery panel was once part of an antependium, a pictorial work to decorate the front of a church altar. Florence was an important site of embroidery in the 14th and 15th century, exporting works North to France and the Duchy of Burgundy. A painter would have drawn the imagery onto linen for an embroiderer—possibly a woman—to stich with silk and gold-wrapped thread. The embroidery depicts episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary taken not from the Bible, but from the Golden Legend—a book detailing the lives of the saints—and other non-Biblical texts popular in the later Middle Ages. The story is shown as a continuous narrative, like a modern-day comic strip, with each episode occurring in sequence. In the first scene, Mary’s father Joachim is expelled from the Temple, then an angel tells him the miraculous news that his infertile wife Anna will bear a child: Mary, the future mother of Jesus. Subsequent scenes show Joachim and Anna reuniting at the city gate, the Virgin Mary’s birth, the child Mary’s presentation at the Temple, and Mary’s betrothal to Joseph. The narrative scenes continue on a panel now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.