Embroidered Picture

The angel depicted on this embroidery was copied from the image of an angel sounding a trumpet on the famous Tabernacle of the Linaioli (1432-33) in Florence, Italy. The overall design of the marble tabernacle is by sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), while the paintings that decorate it are by Fra Angelico (c. 1395-1455). The central image in the tabernacle is of the Madonna and Child; this is surrounded by a narrow border decorated with twelve small angels playing musical instruments. The images of these angels remain extremely popular even today and are available in a multitude of modern reproductions. In the late nineteenth century, when Florence Satterlee (1862-1929) stitched her angel, she likely copied the angel from a vividly colored chromolithograph print.

The embroidered picture is a close copy of the original image, from the angel’s pose to the red robe it is wearing. Florence stitched it in silk and metallic thread on a gold satin ground, which mimics the gilded ground behind the painting of the angel. She must have been very pleased with her handiwork, and after its completion, had the needlework framed with a velvet mat, and then placed into an oak outer frame. She then submitted it to be exhibited in the Applied Arts Loan Collection that was planned for the Women’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892-93). A letter in the American Wing files from the “Bureau of Applied Art” attests to the embroidery’s acceptance to the “Exhibit of the State of New York.” Well-known textile designer Candace Wheeler (1827-1923), whose name appears on the acceptance letter, was the head of Bureau, so undoubtedly saw the piece. The Museum holds a sizable collection of work by Wheeler, so this embroidery creates an interesting connection to another part of the American textile collection. In the “Report of the Board of General Managers of the Exhibit of the State of New York at the World’s Columbian Exposition” (1894), Florence’s work appears listed as “Satterlee, Miss Florence.—Copy of Fra Angelico’s Angels, embroidered picture,” and was one of 458 items of all types of “handicrafts” made by women that were accepted for the exhibit.

In 1893, at the relatively old age (for the time) of thirty-one, Florence married Loring Lombard Leeds (1863-1944) in Brooklyn, New York. Over the years, Florence and her husband lived in several different towns in the New York and New Jersey area. The couple had five children, four sons and a daughter, although only one of the children seems to have lived into adulthood. Upon Florence’s death in 1929, she was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. In 1985, Florence’s only surviving son, Livington Satterlee Leeds (1903-1994), who had treasured his mother’s embroidery for many decades, donated it to the museum.