Chasuble

This garment- evoking the chasuble worn by a Catholic priest over his clothing during church services- was probably only assembled at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, likely at the behest of a dealer to appeal to the art market of the time rather than for actual use in a church setting. However, the two textiles of which it is composed are extremely fine historic velvets, spanning as many as two hundred years between them. The green velvet is the earlier of the two, with a high quality, thick deep pile. Though it is here assembled from multiple patches, the elegant pattern- of a style called inferriata or ferronerie, evoking contemporaneous metal-working- is still readily appreciable. The two central strips on the front and back of the garment are considerably later, also attributed to Italian velvet weavers, and show how the technique developed in the late seventeenth century, styling the colored cut pile as the foliate figurative element with bold, large bouclé loops of gilt thread, within a predominantly silver setting.