AN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE SILK VELVET, VOIDED, PILE ON PILE, BROCADED AND BOUCLÉ COMPOSITE PANEL, POSSIBLY FLORENCE, MID-16TH CENTURY

The allure of velvet has endured from the initial appearance and references, as a prestigious and exclusive item, appearing in Europe in the 13th century, having been brought from the Mongol empire with other textiles. Italy became the leading proponents of the skill of producing silk velvet and other European countries benefited from the migration of the skilled craftsmen, and in the 15th/16th century, the Renaissance was the high point for the European velvets. The design elements were influenced by Mongol and Levantine motifs, such as the ‘pomegranate’, and the Italian velvets were in turn exported to Turkey, before Ottoman velvets were produced. The appeal is in the design, techniques and the association of distinction. It became a very important diplomatic gift and item of trade and associated with rank. It was used for ecclesiastical vestments, other luxury clothing items including dresses and cloaks, as interior scheme decorative panels used for canopies and beds, and extended to smaller items such as accessories and book and casket coverings. The expense being prohibitive to most and every fragment would be precious. Larger panels were often cut, and reused or sold, and several international museums have small fragments from what was once a larger piece (for example from the Franz Bock collection). The large panels, as backdrops and clothing are tantalisingly represented in the 15th/16th century paintings of Italy, England and the Netherlands, often altar pieces or portraits, such as those by Carlo Crivelli (Madonna Della Rondine, 1491/92) or Agostino Bronzino (Portrait of Eleanor di Toledo, 1540) respectively.

Italian luxurious and beautifully designed velvets, have exuberant designs and bold engaging colour combinations, the most extravagant being those ‘cloths of gold’ with highly technical and expensive metal- thread detailing (silver-gilt filé), often of large motifs , including tiny loops (bouclé) which stand proud, and catch the light. The velvet itself creates shadows and depth due to the height of the pile and areas where it is intentionally lower, ‘pile on pile’, revealing the patterns of the motifs. The colours range from shades of dark reds, greens and dark blues.

Velvet is as popular now and far more readily available. The beauty and technical skills of the early evocative examples is incomparable and has not been equalled. The present example has all the attributes required of a Renaissance silk velvet.

The design of this velvet is used in a set of ecclesiastical Mass vestments, now divided between the Victoria and Albert Museum and Keir Collection, and purchased from Christie's, South Kensington, 27 May 1976.

For discussion of the dalmatic and altar frontal in the Victoria and Albert Museum, see Lisa Monnas, Renaissance Velvets, London, 2012, pp.120-121, Nr.35, Dalmatic, made of crimson pile-on-pile velvet, Italy (possibly Florence) or Spain, mid 16th century (see Fig. 1), with a matching altar frontal, and the accompanying matching dalmatic, cope and chasuble from the same set now in the Keir Collection.

For other related examples to this velvet, which are either identical or very similar, include three fragments (78 by 57.2cm, 76 by 56.1cm and 70.7 by 57cm) in the Musée des Art Décoratifs, Paris (10601 A, B & C - unpublished), and a chasuble, Italy, 1500-1550, in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Orville A. and Elina D. Wilkinson Fund (74.117).

There are six other similar variants recorded by Monnas, including: fragments in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; a late fifteenth century altar frontal, Italy, in the Chicago Art Institute; a sixteenth century fragment in the Museo Stibbert, Florence and a Florentine fragment, third quarter of the fifteenth century, in the Museo del Tessuto, Prato; a composite panel (376 by 58.4cm), Italian or Spanish, late fifteenth/early sixteenth century, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York and a comparable swath of a close variant of this velvet design was used for a ceremonial long sleeved kaftan, with gold brocaded crimson velvet, seventeenth century, probably Spanish, belonging to Sultan Ahmed I (1603 -1617), in Istanbul (The Topkapi Saray Museum).

The wonderfully vibrant and large pattern velvet has survived in examples which have been attributed to Florence, Venice and Spain. It has been noted by Roger, Tezcan and Delibas that silks similar to this in design were woven in both Italy and Spain. The style of velvet was also exported to Turkey, and an example found in the surviving kaftan in the Topkapi Saray Museum, which is considered to be Venetian in design, much imitated in contemporary Spain. Italian velvets from the various cities including Florence, Venice and Genoa are difficult to distinguish apart, due to the similar techniques used by all.

In addition to the detailed and comprehensive discussion of early velvets by Monnas, opcit., see Fabrizio de'Marinis (ed), Velvet: History Techniques and Fashions, Milan, 1994, essay, Roberta Orsi Landini, The triumph of velvet: Italian production of velvet in the Renaissance, pp.19-49, for further discussion of the production and processing of velvet, the motifs, uses and fashions including notes on sumptuary laws.