The Saint Stefano church, one of the churches of the seven-churches complex in Bologna, houses a spectacular mitre with pearl embroidery from the second quarter of the 14th century. The iconography is not your average Christian fare, featuring dragons, birds, and lion masks amid foliage. It is, in fact, so rare that no comparable pieces are known. The sumptuous pearl embroidery mainly consists of freshwater pearls, simple silk shading, couched gold thread and precious stones. As the embroidery is worked over hefty padding made of string, parchment, and possibly some kind of stuffing, many parts would be classified as stumpwork. Let’s have a closer look!
The blue silk atlas mitre shows two dragons facing each other on the bottom half. The middle part consists of frames filled with a bird or a medallion. On each side sits a lion mask with foliage sprouting from its mouth.
The majority of the pearl embroidery is worked as a slip. You can clearly see the linen embroidery fabric where the embroidery has worn away. The embroidery has been padded with string and parchment to achieve the high relief. I also think the high relief below the animals and the rosettes is achieved with some type of stuffing.
The strings of pearls have been couched down over the padding. Once the slips were attached to the blue silk, they were outlined with a single strand of silver-gilt thread (S-twist, yellow silk core).
It always amazes me how they were able to source such large quantities of uniform, high-quality natural freshwater pearls. It shows that the Diocese of Bologna was wealthy enough to have a mitre like this one made. The attribution to Saint Isidore of Seville (Spain, 7th century) is obviously wrong. Instead, there’s Isidoro Isolani, a Dominican theologian who studied in Bologna. This Mr Isolani, however, was never sanctified. But he has a lovely mitre with pearl embroidery to his name!
Literature
Blöcher, H., 2012. Die Mitren des hohen Mittelalters. Abegg Stiftung, Riggisberg.
0 Comments