Embroidered Panel: Holy Kinship (1500s): Art, History and Details

Embroidered Panel: Holy Kinship (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the late Middle Ages, the life of Jesus was increasingly embellished by other figures and stories. Part of this is the theme of the holy kinship, represented in the central medallion. It was based on an apocryphal account (unsanctioned by certain canons) of the three marriages of Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin. The central theme is accompanied by the main authorities of the Catholic Church, the Evangelists, and the Church fathers. The monumentality of the design, the dignity and spontaneity of the figures, and the fine execution of the embroidery itself distinguishes this as one of the finest examples of Swiss or South German linen embroidery of the 1500s.

Object facts

• Title: Embroidered Panel: Holy Kinship
• Date: 1500s
• Culture: Germany or Switzerland, 16th century
• Type: Embroidery
• Technique: embroidery: silk and linen on linen ground; contours of design applied with ink
• Dimensions: Overall: 147.3 x 152.4 cm (58 x 60 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1979.1

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. "Recent Major Acquisitions of Medieval Art by American Museums." Gesta 19, no. 1 (1980): 67-77.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1979." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58-99.
• Wardwell, Anne E. "The Holy Kinship: A Sixteen-Century Immaculist Embroidery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 9 (1980)..

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.