Back of a Chasuble with Scenes from the Life of Jesus

The ground fabric of the dissembled vestment is dark green velvet with silver thread pattern of pomegranates in fivelobed and elongated palmettes. The surviving back is adorned with embroidery in a column in four scenes. The lower three are continuous and chronological, while the uppermost scene sewn on a separate piece of cloth interrupts the chronology. From top to bottom the scenes are: Mary Magdalene anointing Jesus in the house of Simon; 12-year-old Jesus in the temple; the baptism of Christ, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. This chasuble fragment belongs to a group of Italian embroidered textiles the compositions of which were influenced by contemporaneous monumental art. The representations display the influence of the late trecento and early quattrocento, therefore its design was earlier attributed to the young Masolino (ca. 1383–1447?). However, the generally widespread compositions of chasubles cannot so directly be tied to a single artist. The embroideries were beyond doubt made in Florence in the first half of the 15th century and they were probably applied to the Venetian velvet ground at the end of the 15th century.