A fine and rare petit point needlework chasuble, probably French, circa 1740-50

The antiphon ‘Hosanna Filio David’ is the first chant given in the Missale Romanum for the celebration of Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. The text ‘Domine Non Sum Dignus’ is from the Gospel of Luke 7:6-7 and is the message sent to Jesus by a centurion whose slave was dying. It is used an an antiphon to the Magnificat at Vespers on the Thursday following Ash Wednesday. 

The usual method of decorating vestments in the 17th/18th century was with flat embroidery in polychrome silks combined with elaborate gold work, using a variety of threads and stitches. However there were other embroidery techniques used and needlework using tent or continental stitch, in petit point on linen or canvas ground, referred to by Saint-Aubin in his Treaty on Embroidery, as la broderie en tapisserie. It was a technique usually associated with furnishing fabrics, and was undertaken by religious communities and amateurs. There are however examples of it being used for vestments, of which the present item is one, and in the first decades of the 17th century is was popular as a technique to accurately present complex scenes and figures, and not as technically difficult and skilled as nue work. 

There is a distinctive set of comparable vestments, circa 1730, in the same technique used in the present chasuble textile, known as the Benedictus Ornat and located in the Schottenstift Musuem, Vienna. Although this set is unusual in depicting scenes from the Old Testament, and are stories that are the forerunners of incidents related in the New Testament which illustrate the Life of Christ. However here are similarities including the use of figures with foliate surround, and the laid silver-gilt ground is a notable match.