Jenny Davenport marvels at all the astoundingly intricate works of medieval English embroidery in Opus Anglicanum, a major exhibition currently on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
‘Everyone attests to the great needlecraft of English women in gold embroidery’ – so writes the Norman historian William of Poitiers. The term Opus Anglicanum was never actually used in England but it is found in inventories, fiscal accounts, correspondence and histories found elsewhere in Europe to refer to the embroideries associated with English embroiderers, particularly in the period 1250- 1350. According to the catalogue that accompanies the sumptuous exhibition, Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery, currently on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, it referred specifically to ‘a combination of embroidered figural scenes, gold backgrounds, pearl and rich decoration’.
England’s fame for embroidery dated from Anglo-Saxon times. St Etheldreda of Ely (636-79) was said to have made vestments for St Cuthbert and spectacularly beautiful examples of later (circa 909-16) fragments of vestments buried with him are now on show in Durham cathedral. As early as 1098 an English embroidered cope was described at the Council of Bari. This exhibition has brought together works commissioned from as far away as Holar in Iceland in the north and Madrid and Toledo in the south.
At its height Opus Anglicanum seems to have represented an international status symbol, the ​epitome of magnificence suitable for ecclesiastical gifts, particularly to Popes. We know of two copes given by Edward I to Popes in the 1290s. One of them, the Vatican Cope, is displayed in the exhibition. Other treasures, like the Bologna Cope, were given by Popes to churches associated with their earlier lives or their families.
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