Front of a chasuble

Although the vivid palette and bright, shiny metallic thread of this chasuble give little sense of age, close looking reveals that this panel– one half of a priest's tabard– has been cut and dismembered. At its center originally ran a broad orphrey strip, which was removed before the piece arrived at The Met: its lost presence can just be discerned in a pair of vertical indentations running from top to bottom of the garment. Tailored from machine-woven silk, this textile has the thickness of upholstery fabric, which may indeed have been its intended function. Its figurative pattern of symmetrical red and gold garlands and green foliate swags supporting full-blown red and blue blooms would, likewise, be more appropriate in scale for furnishing.