Ecclesiastical cope (piviale)

This large ceremonial cope worn in a Catholic church service[1], is made from silk velvet, principally in red and gold. It is made in three parts and sewn and embroidered in gold thread. The cope is semi-circular and fastens at the front.  It was worn by the priest or bishop for formal ceremonies (for example, at vespers and lauds) and in processions.

Many European museums and church treasuries have examples of similar items, woven in the Orient and altered into ecclesiastical vestments. The large number of such vestments shows the high regard in which these rich, Oriental textiles were held in the West from the Middle Ages. A chasuble conserved in the cathedral of Fermo (Italy), which had belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, was woven in cloth from Spanish Almeria, the major centre of textile production during the Almoravid dynasty (1042-1147).

This circular cope is decorated with staggered rows of medallions in a floral design alternating in red and white on a background of delicate flowering stems and decorated with composite floral motifs. The border sewn onto the edge of the cope is decorated with motifs of vegetal scrolls.  The hood is decorated with the same vegetal scrolls and frames a gilded cross motif.

Silk velvet, in rolls or already cut, were some of the luxury commodities exchanged between Venice and the Islamic world as part of diplomatic relations or in commercial transactions. The complex technique of weaving this opulent velvet probably originated in Italy where the oldest examples can be found dating from the thirteenth century. It was probably exported to the East, as far as Ottoman Turkey, where, from the fifteenth century, the workshops rivalled those of Genoa and Venice.

To judge from its decoration, this velvet was probably produced in Ottoman Turkey around the fifteenth century. It was probably made in Bursa, the principal capital of the Empire since 1326 and the centre of silk production and weaving from the Byzantine period when silk worms were acclimatised to Anatolian mulberry bushes. A textile which had belonged to a Swedish church[2] displays the same decorative arrangement, characteristic of Ottoman production. Anatolian carpets from Ushak which are predominantly red and gold with alternating medallions[3], reflects the same Anatolian tradition.  The arrangement of motifs in staggered rows was popular very early in the West and the East, for example in Egypt in the seventh to ninth centuries[4].

The two parts with a red background, the border and the hood, are of a different style, similar to the art of illuminated manuscripts and Ottoman bookbinding but also to motifs in the Venetian Renaissance decorative idiom. This type of scroll with side offshoots appears for example on the frame of the Virgin with Child painted in Venice towards 1450[5].

The two connected activities of the Italian and Turkish industries survived into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the practice of exchanging textiles, particularly silk velvet continued. Thus Ottoman kaftans in the treasury of Imperial Palace were cut in Italian silk velvet. Ottoman velvet, if apparently less popular in Venice, was still highly sought after throughout Europe for use in upholstery textiles and liturgical vestments[6].

[2] Silk cloth with gold and silver thread, Turkey, C15th, Stockholm, Museum of National Antiquities, inv. 15662.

[3] Ushak carpet with medallions, Anatolia, third quarter of C15th, wool, Kuwait, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, al-Sabah Collection.

[4] Fragment of pair of gaiters, embroidered wool-linen, Egypt, Antinoë excavation ( ?), C7th  - C9th, Lyon, musée historique des Tissus, inv. 28.520/27 et 28.

[5] Virgin and Child, M. Giambono, tempera and gold on wood panel, Venice, Italy, c. 1450, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, inv. 1660.

[6] Turkish and Iranian textiles are particularly numerous in Russian and Polish collections in the form of ecclesiastical vestments worn during Orthodox and Catholic (Polish) church services.