Altarcloth

Sophia, Hadewigis, and Lucardis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Adoration of the Magi appears on one end of this exceptionally large, well-preserved altar covering from the convent of Altenberg, not far from Trier in Germany. Christ as judge; Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Thuringia, mother of a thirteenth-century abbess of Altenberg; and Saint Nicholas, patron saint of the convent, are among the other figures represented in richly textured embroidery. A monk in their company kneels on a coat of arms identified as that of Henricus de Cronenberg. An inscription in Latin names the nuns who served as needleworkers—Sophia, Hadewigis, and Lucardis—and invokes Jesus whit the prayer that their work be acceptable to him. Linen was a cloth valued since ancient times. The Gospel accounts specify that the body of Jesus was wrapped "in fine linen." Linen became an important material in the service of the altar, more lustrous and less likely to soil than cotton. The nuns at Altenberg may have had an additional reason for creating this white-on-white embroidery; they were known as "white canons" because of the color of their habits. The embroidery is one of only a few that passed into private, and eventually, museum collections after the secularization of the convent by Napoleon in 1803.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art