Cope

French

Not on view

This splendid, semi-circular garment was intended to be worn, cloak-like, by the priest performing Catholic rites during church services. Glimpsed at the candle-lit altar as he prepared the tools of mass, the priest would have sparkled and shimmered, enveloped in exceedingly fine brocaded silk, with the repeat of its bold floral figurative design achieved by the complex interweaving of dyed yellow silk and precious silver-wrapped metal-threads, against a continuous ground of finer, silvered wire.

Cope, Dyed silk, silver-wrapped metal threads, silver lancé, French

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