One of the highlights of my museum tour at the end of November last year was the Dommuseum Frankfurt. It has nine medieval embroidered vestments on permanent display. Well worth a visit! At the beginning of the year, I showed you a green chasuble with embroideries from the mid-14th century and the second quarter of the 15th century, both made in Cologne. This time, I will introduce you to the Schlosser Ornat, a vestment set with embroideries made in both the Netherlands and Cologne. Both were made around AD 1460. The or nué, or shaded gold, used on the figures is very beautiful. Let’s have a look.

The Schlosser ornat consists of a chasuble and two dalmatics. It was bought by Johann Friedrich Heinrich, known as Fritz Schlosser (1780-1851), a councillor from Frankfurt, in 1842/43 from the Cologne dealer Fontaine. Fritz Schlosser asked his painter friend, Edward von Steinle, a vestment maker in Cologne, along with his two daughters, and painter and conservator Johann Anton Ramboux, also in Cologne, to restore the set.

Apparently, the vestments were completely taken apart. Loose parts were affixed. But what really astonishes me is that they treated the new gold threads with acid to make them look old. The vestment maker and his two daughters worked for about a year and were paid a 100 Taler (roughly €4243 today, according to some pretty tricky maths). This was not a living wage when compared to living costs around 1850 in this part of Germany. The vestment maker and his daughters must have had additional income.

Thanks to the names and coats of arms embroidered onto the chasuble, we know where it originally came from. The names and coats of arms are of Merten Moench/Maarten Monicx (born in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands), died 1466), a councillor in Cologne and his wife Drutgin von den Groeven (died 1451). He probably donated the vestment set to a church in his hometown of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in 1460, likely to the chapel of the Fraternity of Our Lady in the St. John’s Cathedral. A couple of years later, Maarten also donated the orphreys for a cope. The fraternity had to provide for the fabric and the tailoring of the cope. Unfortunately, the cope has not survived.

The curious thing about the embroideries on the Schlosser set of vestments is that they come from two different places. The orphreys on the chasuble were made in Cologne. We see a typical architectural background with saints standing on a tiled floor. However, instead of a golden background, the niche behind the figures consists of horizontally laid blue silk couched down with vertically laid gold. This is a technique not used in the Netherlands. A separate orphrey panel depicting St. John can be found at the Dommuseum Fulda.

Contrary, the embroideries on the dalmatics were made in the Netherlands. This time, the figures are completely stitched in or nué. The background of the niche in which the saints stand is filled with a basket-weave diaper pattern in red. As the original silken stitches of the finely worked faces had fallen out, they were ‘restored’ with paint. Not sure if this was part of the 1842/43 restoration by the vestment maker of Cologne. Given that there were two accomplished painters in the group of restorers, it would not surprise me if one of them had wielded a brush.

By taking a picture at an angle, you can clearly see the different slips that make up the orphrey panels on the dalmatic. The or nué on the robes of Saint John is absolutely stunning. However, these orphreys are the product of mass production. An identical Saint John can be found on the other dalmatic, too. And Saint John isn’t the only one. We also have doppelgängers for Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Simon the Zealot, Gregory the Great, James the Great and Saint Andrew. James the Great is even found in the same spot … And this is only on the front. The backs of the vestments are not really accessible and have not been published either.

Given that Merten Moench was born in what is now the Netherlands and died in what is now Germany, it is probably not surprising that orphreys from both places were used in this set of vestments. Likely, the family of Merten moved freely in the area that’s now the border between Germany and the Netherlands. What does strike me as odd is that the orphreys of the chasuble on the one hand and the orphreys on the dalmatics on the other hand are quite different. Apparently, this did not matter much to the people who made, gifted and used these vestments in the middle of the 15th century.

You can read more on this fascinating set of vestments here. You can also try your hand at recreating a small part of the embroidery with this tutorial.

Literature
Fircks, Juliane von (2010): Serienproduktion im Medium mittelalterlicher Stickerei – Holzschnitte als Vorlagenmaterial für eine Gruppe mittelrheinischer Kaselkreuze des 15. Jahrhunderts. In: Uta-Christiane Bergemann, Annemarie Stauffer (Eds.): Reiche Bilder. Aspekte zur Produktion und Funktion von Stickereien im Spätmittelalter. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, pp. 65–82.
Koldeweij, J., Vandenbroeck, P., Vermet, B., 2001. Hieronymus Bosch – das Gesamtwerk: [Katalog]. Belser, Stuttgart.
Stolleis, Karen (1992): Der Frankfurter Domschatz: Die Paramente. Liturgische Gewänder und Stickereien 14. bis 20. Jahrhundert. Band I. Frankfurt am Main: Waldemar Kramer.