Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/391

 figure of an evangelist; the whole enclosed in a border inscribed with Sclavonic characters. Ruthenic work, middle of 17th century. 4 feet 6-1/2 inches by 2 feet 10 inches.

In the centre of this curious ecclesiastical embroidery (for spreading outside the chancel, at the end of Holy Week, among the Greek,) our dead Lord, with the usual inscription, IC, XC, over Him, is figured lying full length, stretched out, as it were, upon a slab of stone which a sheet overspreads. His arms are at His sides as far as the elbows, where they bend so that His hands may be folded downward cross-wise upon His stomach, from which, to His knees, His loins are wrapped in a very full-folded cloth done in silver thread, but now nearly black from age. His skin is quite white, His hair and beard of a light brown colour, and His right side, His hands and feet are marked each with a blood-red wound; and the embroidery of His person is so managed as to display, in somewhat high relief, the hollows and elevations of the body's surface; all around and beneath His head goes a nimbus marked inside with a cross very slightly pattee, the whole nicely diapered and once bright silver, but now quite black. Two nimbed angels, beardless and, in look, quite youthful, are standing, one at His head, the other at His feet, each, like the other, vested, as is the deacon at the present day, for mass, according to the Greek and Oriental rites; they wear the "chitonion" or alb, over that the "stoicharion" or dalmatic, and from the right—though it should have been from the left—shoulder falls the "orarion" or stole, upon which the Greek word "agios," or holy, is repeated, just as a Greek deacon is shown in "Hierurgia," p. 345; in his right hand each holds extended over our Lord, exactly as Greek deacons now do, at the altar, after the consecration of the Holy Eucharist, a long wand, at the end of which is a large round six-petaled flower-like ornament, having within it a cherub's six-winged face; this is the holy fan, concerning which see the "Church of our Fathers," iv. 197; and each has his left hand so raised up under his chin as to seemingly afford a rest for it. At each of the four corners of the frontal is the bust of an evangelist with a nimb about his head; in the upper left, "Agios o Theologos," for so the Greeks still call St. John the Evangelist: in the lower left, St. Luke; in the upper right, St. Matthew; in the lower right, St. Mark; each is bearded, and the hair, whether on the head or chin, is shown in blue and white as of an aged man. While the heads and faces of all four evangelists are red, with the features distinguished by white lines, the angels have white faces and their hair is deep red with strokes in white to in