Chasubl

This cloak was commissioned by the Count of Castile Don Pedro Fernández de Velasco and his wife Doña Mencia de Mendoza y Figueroa. It was made from luxurious al-Andalus fabric from. It subsequently found its way into the Museo Diocesano-Catedralicio in Burgos.

Sumptuous fabrics from Muslim factories were frequently used by Christians, particularly for liturgical vestments or costumes for the nobility[1]. This cloak is made from fabric from the Nasrid era, to which was added a velvet escutcheon-shaped inset and a hood.

Decoration takes the form of parallel vertical bands in different widths, woven horizontally on the loom. Inscribed wishes feature on the wider bands, the elongated upstrokes and downstrokes typical of fourteenth century Iranian and Middle East Arabic script. The white letters on a blue ground are intertwined with yellow and red naturalistic plant motifs which some scholars liken to Gothic flora (e.g. the carnation). l’œillet ». The narrow bands feature a string of white and yellow plant motifs on a red ground.

The hood and trim are made of red cut pile velvet edged with gold braid. The cloak bears the coat of arms of the Condestables [Officers of the Crown] dating from the late fifteenth century and relief embroidered with Gothic style facture thistle stalks and foliage intertwined with asymmetrical ribbed tendrils.

The fabric is white, red, yellow, green and blue, with a dark blue ground. The motifs and layout are reminiscent of central Asian panni tartarici found throughout the Islamic world in the early fourteenth century[2]. They have similar parallel bands bearing cursive inscriptions interlaced with palmettes and lotus flowers.

This cloak is comparable to:

- a cape in the Museo de Antequera, traditionally thought to be made from a banner seized from the Muslims at the battle of Chaparral in 1424.

- the cloak from Castillo de Caravaca (Murcia), whose inscriptions are similar to the one shown here. It bears the name of the Nasrid sultan Yûsuf I (1333-1354) and is therefore an earlier piece. It is conserved in Toledo cathedral[3].

- it also bears resemblance to the cloth garnishing the sepulchre of the Infante Don Alfonso de la Cerda, discovered and conserved in the Monastery of  Las Huelgas in Burgos

- a cloth on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London[4]

- and, finally, an allegedly fifteenth century fragment of velvet displayed in the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan in Madrid[5].

Luxurious fabrics were also used later to embellish liturgical objects in the Christian world, for example numerous chasubles made with Ottoman and Safavid textiles survive in Poland, and a mid fifteenth century chasuble may be seen, sewn and embroidered in Venice using fabric probably woven in Turkey[6].

[2] See the late C14 caftan from central Asia in the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt, Lubeck, Inv. M111 ; for an example  of mamluk see Le Caire, Musée d’art islamique, Iv. 5872, see Album du musée arabe du Caire. Le Caire : Ed. Institut français d’archéologie orientale (1930), p. 86 ; and  Al-Andalus. Las Artes Islámicas en España (1992), n° 98, p. 336.

[3] Répertoire chronologique des inscriptions d’Espagne, XV (1956), n° 5789, pp 120-121.

[4] The Arts of Islam, 1976, n° 17, p. 81.

[5] Lewis May, F.,1957, p.192, fig. 124.

[6] Venise et l’Orient 828-1797 (2006), p.187, item conserved in the Basilica de Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.