An English orphrey panel

Last quarter of the 15th century.

Embroidered in coloured silks in split stitch and couched work and gilt metal threads in underside couching, on a linen ground. The saint - possibly Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary - stands holding a scroll beneath an architectural canopy with vaults, towers and crenellations. St. Anne, unnamed in the Bible and whose legend derives from the early apocryphal text Protevangelium of James, is often depicted wearing a green gown and adorned with ermine, and sometimes with a scroll, or book, from which she is supposed to have instructed the young Mary. The inscription that was once embroidered on the scroll here and that would, indirectly, have identified the saint is, regrettably, now illegible.

This is a late example of opus anglicanum, the exquisitely worked English embroidery much prized throughout mediaeval Europe, and would have formed part of an orphrey band intended to embellish an ecclesiastical vestment; either the straight edge of a cope, or the centre of the front or back of a chasuble. Orphreys of similar style are held in the collections of the V & A, accession no. 839-1901 , the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession no. 11.137.8a, b, and on a cope in the Art Institute of Chicago, reference no. 1971.312a.

Provenance: with Peta Smyth Antique Textiles, London, whence acquired by a private collector, June 2012.

The embroidery 30cm (11¾”) high and 19.2cm (7½”) wide.

Framed size 47.7cm (18¾”) high and 37cm (14½”) wide.