The Flagellation

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This embroidered panel representing the Flagellation is a remarkable expression of the Florentine Gothic style. While the needlework has been attributed to the Florentine Geri Lapi, the designer has not been recognized. Cooperation between painters and embroiderers is evidenced in Cennino Cennini's fifteenth-century "Il Libro dell'arte": "You sometimes have to supply embroiderers with designs of various sorts...Get these masters to put cloth or fine silk on stretchers for you...If it is white cloth, take your regular charcoals, and draw whatever you please. Then take your pen and your pure ink, and reinforce it, just as you do on panel with a brush." In some worn areas, underdrawing of the type described by Cennini can be discerned. More than twenty shades of silk and metallic threads give richness to the design, and the gold background is enlivened with raised scrolling vines. The Flagellation is one of twelve panels attributed to Geri Lapi depicting the life of Christ, of which nine are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The format and subject indicate that the ensemble decorated an altar frontal, perhaps the antependium described in the inventory of Jean, duc de Berry.

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