File:Needlework as art (1886) (14782188525).jpg

Identifier: needleworkasart00alfo (find matches)
Title: Needlework as art
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Alford, Marianne Margaret Compton Cust, Viscountess, 1817-1888
Subjects: Embroidery Needlework
Publisher: London, S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington
Contributing Library: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library

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ft continued to be lavished on altar decorationand priestly garments, in Flanders, Spain, France, andItaly. But the solemnity of these works was certainlyimpaired by their being emancipated from the traditionalecclesiastical forms and their accompanying symbolism,to which the old designers had so faithfully adhered.Ecclesiastical decorative art became, so to speak,unorthodox. As a proof of this secular, I might almost say irreverentspirit, I quote Bocks accusation against Queen Mary ofHungary, who in her embroideries, preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle, is said to have represented herself as the Queenof Heaven, surrounded by her adorers on their knees. There is no doubt, however, that needlework aspiredin the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the highestplace in art, and was enthusiastically cultivated by womenof rank and position, of artistic taste, who still gavethemselves to the productions of beautiful decorations,though they no longer confined themselves to ecclesias-tical motives.
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Ecclesiastical Embroidery. 331 Gabrielle of Bourbon and Isabella, sister of LouisXI., spent their lives in preparing and overlooking fineworks in their own apartments, and assembled aroundthem noble damsels for this purpose. Anne of Brittany,who lived in an artistic atmosphere, had her ownworkshop of embroidery. Pictorial design now assertedits dominion over needlework, which accepted it, justas it had been influenced in the eleventh and twelfthcenturies by metal-work motives, and, before then, bythe art of mosaic. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Spanishplateresque embroideries (adopted and modified inFlanders and in France), consisting of heavy gold andsilver arabesques of mutilated vegetable forms, super-seded the graceful Renaissance of the classical taste.1These Spanish embroideries forced their way by theirgorgeousness, in spite of their want of real beauty.They varied their effects with pearls, corals, and pre-cious stones2 (plate 69). Spain, though she was much d

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