Altar Cloth

CultureVenetian

Datelate 16th century

MediumCut velvet on gold thread ground

DimensionsOverall: 21 3/8 × 69 3/8 inches (54.29 × 176.21 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number33-1583

On View

Not on view

Collections

Architecture, Design and Decorative Arts

Terms

DescriptionGold thread background with small all-over pattern in greenish-blue velvet.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

Pope Boniface III's 7th-century decree that altars must be covered began a tradition of elaborate altar cloths, such as this sage green and gold, cut-velvet example. The curvilinear sprigs of flowers and rectilinear broken-branch motifs of this textile characterize the simplified, geometricized, small-scale patterns woven in 16th-century Italy. The design shown here is composed of alternating rows of slightly varied, foliated elements, creating its asymmetrical arrangement.

Provenance

Edward Perry Warren, Esq. (1860–1928), Lewes House, Lewes, Sussex, and Fewacres, Farmington, ME, by December 28, 1928 [1];

To his godson and secretary, Charles John Murray West (1903–1947), Fewacres, Farmington, ME, and London, by October 12, 1933 [2];

Purchased from West, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.

NOTES:

[1] Warren owned a house in Farmington, Maine, known at the time as “Fewacres.” Today the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is called the Jacob Abbott House.

[2] West worked as Warren’s secretary at Fewacres and inherited the property at Warren’s death. See David Sox, Bachelors of Art: Edward Perry Warren and The Lewes House Brotherhood (London: Fourth Estate, 1991), 39; and Dyfri Williams, “‘And Broken Vases Widowed of Their Wine’: Athenian Pottery Fragments in the Haslemere Educational Museum, Sussex,” Mediterranean Archaeology 17 (2004): 110.

For West’s life dates, see “Parish Registers for Nottinghamshire; Reference: PR8621,” 1903, p. 38, Nottinghamshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1922 ; and “General Register Office; United Kingdom,” vol. 6b, p. 728, England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007 , both digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com.

In 1934, West had an address in Beckenham, Kent (modern-day London).

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