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The Saint Stefano church, one of the churches of the seven-churches complex in Bologna, houses a spectacular pearl-embroidered mitre from the second quarter of the 14th century. The iconography is not your average Christian fare with dragons, birds, and lion masks amidst foliage. It is, in fact, so rare that no comparable pieces are known. The sumptuous embroidery mainly consists of fresh-water pearls, simple silk shading, couched gold thread and precious stones. As the embroidery is worked over hefty padding made of string, parchment, and probably 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 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 fresh-water 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 in Spain, 7th century) is obviously wrong. Instead, there’s Isidoro Isolani, a Dominican theologian who studied in Bologna. This Mr Isolani was, however, never sanctified. But he has a lovely pearl-embroidered mitre to his name!
Literature
Blöcher, H., 2012. Die Mitren des hohen Mittelalters. Abegg Stiftung, Riggisberg.
7 responses to “Pearl-embroidered mitre of Saint Isidoro, Bologna (Italy)”
Ooh ! It’s all just so fabulous Jessica ! 💛
Gorgeous and so lovely to see something so unusual
What a beautiful thing! I have always loved pearls, and especially with gold and blue. And silver-gilt thread. I would love to do something like this!
Very beautiful! Jessica, can you explain why you think this should be attributed to Isodoro Isolani? I do not quite understand… Thank you!
Isolani is quite famous and he studied in Bologna. The mitre is closer to him in date than to the saint from Seville.
This is stunning. Ive never thought of pearls in embroidery before, which feels silly but I just never thought of it.
I’ve been taking a deep dive into your new and old blog to try and learn more about the specific tools you use because I find people’s setup’s so fascinating. Request from a young 25 year old who’s been doing modern embroidery since they were 12, can there be a blog post someday about your studio and the tools you use to start a project? The stick that held so many different colors of thread and the lack of resources for slate frames is what had me find you and I’m so grateful I did!!
Hi Wylie! My set-up wouldn’t fill a blog post :). I am literally sitting at my dining room table in our combined living-dining room of our two room apartment. I stitch at my slate frame supported by Royal School of Needlework trestles. I put them in front of my balcony doors for good daylight. Then there’s good embroidery scissors (DOVO is my preferred brand), a magnifier lamp and the wooden spool was made for me by a friend. I will soon review a new type of slate frame, so watch out for that!
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