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/500

 8690.

Piece of Green Velvet, spangled with gold, and embroidered with three armorial shields in gold thread and coloured silks. German, 17th century. 10 inches by 9-3/4 inches.

All the shields are very German, especially in their crests. The shield on the right hand will attract notice by its anomaly; on a field azure it gives a rose gules barbed green, or colour upon colour; the crest, too, is a curiosity, at least in English blazon, displaying an Elector's cap with very tall bullrushes, five in number, and coloured proper, issuing from between the ermine and the crimson velvet.

8691.

Linen Napkin, for liturgic use, embroidered, in coloured silks, with conventional flowers. German, end of the 16th century. 2 feet 1/2 inch by 1 foot 11 inches.

This is another of those liturgical rarities—Corpus Christi cloths—of which we have spoken at No. 8342, under the name of Sindons, or Pyx-cloths. Such appliances were employed for mantling the pyx or ciborium when shut up in the tabernacle—that little temple-like erection on the table, or rather step, on the wall-side of the altar—when the custom ceased of keeping the pyx hanging up beneath a canopy.

8692.

Hood of a Cope, silk damask, red and yellow, with the subject of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary woven in it. Florentine, late 15th century. 1 foot 5 inches by 1 foot 4-1/2 inches.

Uprising from her grave, and amid rays of glory and an oblong or elliptic aureole, the Virgin Mary is being wafted to heaven by four angels, who are not, as of yore, vested in long close albs like deacons, but in flowing garments so slit up as to show their naked arms, bare legs, and lower thighs. Upon the empty tomb, from out of which are springing