Scenes of the Life of the Virgin, from an Altar Frontal (1330s or 1340s): Art, History and Details

Scenes of the Life of the Virgin, from an Altar Frontal (1330s or 1340s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This rare panel originally hung above a large embroidery that decorated the front of an altar in a church. The narrative begins with the Virgin’s parents and her early life; that panel is now in the Toledo Museum of Art. Cleveland’s portion continues the story with the Annunciation of the Virgin, Adoration of the Shepherds, Adoration of the Magi, Presentation of Christ, Christ among the Doctors, and the Assumption of the Virgin. The Death of the Virgin scene is likely missing. Painters usually sketched designs on stretched linen for embroiderers. Gold thread enriches the background and is secured in place with couching stitches in a small brick pattern.

Object facts

• Title: Scenes of the Life of the Virgin, from an Altar Frontal
• Date: 1330s or 1340s
• Culture: Italy, Florence
• Type: Embroidery
• Technique: Silk, gold thread, linen; raised work, embroidery: split, stem, running, fishbone, and couching stitches
• Dimensions: Overall: 16.8 x 127 cm (6 5/8 x 50 in.); Mounted: 27.9 x 137.2 cm (11 x 54 in.)
• Collection: T - Ecclesiastical
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1978.36

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “The Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Six Works from Von Hirsch Collection,” August 1, 1978, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Wardwell, Anne E. "A Rare Florentine Embroidery of the Fourteenth Century." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 9 (1979): 322-33.
• Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. 1980. “Recent Major Acquisitions of Medieval Art by American Museums.” Gesta 19 (1): 67–77.

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.