Chasuble

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The cross-shaped orphrey on the reverse of this chasuble– the tabard-like garment worn by a Catholic priest during church services– has been applied (perhaps at a later date) to a fascinating velvet, with cut and uncut pile now appearing red but originally also green (now only visible on the underside). The curious ombre effect is not intentional, but a result of the unequal degradation of the differently colored piles. Typical of German figurative needlework of the late medieval and early modern periods, colored silks of the orphrey are couched onto linen with satin and stem stitches in unexpected and exuberant patterns and concentric shapes. Heavily restored in the nineteenth century, the front of the chasuble has been cut and completely reshaped to a more fashionable, tear-drop silhouette, with the central orphrey on the front incongruously replaced with a strip of machine-woven, low quality silk decorated with a repeat floral motif.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art