In the dark and mediaeval ages, time was of no account. Skilled labor, such as was needed for … illuminations and embroideries, was freely given as the duty of a life. The cloistered men and women worked for no wages; neither to benefit themselves nor their descendants; hardly for fame – that was given to the convent which had the credit of patronizing and producing art, while the very name of the artist was forgotten...[based on a paper given at St. Louis University in 2015]

The term opus anglicanum, as a designator of English national identity associated with embroidery and textiles, is unknown in any document written in England during the Middle Ages, but is used in papal and other European archives. The term has been questioned by a number of scholars who have suggested it may be a generic name used to describe a particular technique of attaching gold thread to an embroidered textile (underside couching). It is suggested in this article that the phenomenon of opus anglicanum during its golden age c. 1200–1400 was part of a wider European cultural development at a time when an appreciation of cultural identity as a transnational phenomenon emerged. The article goes on to examine the relationship between English pictorial artists and the craftswomen and men who made these textiles. It concludes with a case study of the orphrey associated with the Daroca Cope in Madrid — now associated with a designer in the artistic circle of the artist of the Wilton Diptych. The respect for, and reuse of, these works of art (many of which have survived through the care taken to preserve them in cathedral treasuries and private collections up to the present day) is an element in their continued importance as a part of our shared European heritage. Keywords: opus anglicanum, cope, orphrey, Daroca, Wilton Dyptich

In the Middle Ages, elite women acted as creators, donors and recipients of textile art. This article analyses a small but representative group of seventh- to thirteenth-century embroideries in order to examine the motivation for their creation and to investigate the ways in which women could mark their own presence through textile art. It discusses written sources alongside the material evidence; these sources include documentary, hagiographical and literary texts, which provide information about cultural norms and the expectations of society. Set within the context of these sources, the evidence suggests that society both channelled women’s creativity into textile art and idealised it. At the same time, as artists and patrons of ornamented textiles, noblewomen had creative control over the medium; embroidery became a field in which their works were noted and celebrated.

This essay explores the production of fine needlework by Italian Renaissance nuns and asks why it has been undervalued in the hierarchy of modern aesthetic categories. Two decades of revisionist scholarship have sought to dismantle the binary divide between art and craft by emphasizing the cultural values, aesthetic qualities, meanings and uses embodied in material objects. This essay advances the "material turn" in tandem with feminist perspectives that view textile artifacts as embodiments or extensions of their makers. By interrogating reigning assumptions about what counts as art and by analyzing the social praxis surrounding nuns' artistic production, I argue that nun textile artists made important interpretive choices when developing free-hand designs and translating embroidery cartoons into finished products, which in turn invite a reconsideration of current aesthetic hierarchies. A close, contextualized analysis of two exceptional embroidery pieces made by the nuns of Santa Verdiana in mid-fifteenth century Florence casts new light on the intentionality of nuns as artists and shows that these nuns used needlework as a communicative tool to construct alternative discourses about their subjectivity and spiritual worth.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT The main subject of this study is an outstanding twelfth-century psalter produced in Normandy which has clear Eastern influences, both in terms of technical conception and iconography. This manuscript, kept in the Royal Library in the Hague with the signature 76 F 13, is certainly related to other preserved examples, produced at the same time in Norman England, such as the Gough Psalter from the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The historical records of these artworks will permit us to shed light on the arrival of these iconographies and techniques of Byzantine origin in the medieval West, where the Abbey of Cluny played a major role, after which they spread throughout the Norman kingdom. Finally, we will devote a part of the research to how these sacred images with Byzantine influences have been appreciated by contemporary Western viewers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESUMEN ESPAÑOL La principal obra analizada en esta investigación es un salterio del siglo XII de muy alta calidad, producido en Normandía, con claras influencias bizantinas tanto en la iconografía de las escenas como en la concepción técnica de la figuración. Este manuscrito, conservado en la Biblioteca Real de la Haya con la signatura 76 F 13, está relacionado con otros ejemplos de salterios iluminados producidos contemporáneamente en la Inglaterra normanda, como el Salterio Gough de la Biblioteca Bodleiana de Oxford. La documentación histórica sobre estas obras nos permitirá conocer mejor la llegada de iconografías y técnicas de origen bizantino al Occidente medieval, donde la abadía de Cluny desempeñó un papel fundamental, para después ser transmitidas, en nuestro caso, a través del Reino normando. Finalmente, ofreceremos una idea sobre la consideración de esas iconografías de origen bizantino en la mente del espectador medieval contemporáneo.

in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse and Kathryn A. Smith, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 121-76. NB: the publisher of my first book, 'Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England', is given incorrectly in the bibliography for this essay, and was changed without my authorization in the final stages of publication. The originating publisher of my book was The British Library (London).

This study examines a group of late sixteenth-century embroideries by Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) and the English countess "Bess of Hardwick" (ca. 1527-1608). While scholars have tended to regard these textiles as status-driven proclamations of rank and power, Nicole LaBouff argues that they functioned as aids for self-instruction in natural history, the wisdom of the ancients, and the art of discourse. Recent histories have shown "information overload" to be a pervasive problem among Renaissance male intellectuals. These embroideries reveal women also struggled with it. Bess and Mary found their solution in embroidered cabinets of curiosity , needlework notebooks, and stitched mnemonic devices. keywords: sixteenth-century embroidery designs; Conrad Gesner; emblems in needlework; art as memory device; early modern mnemonic devices  In 1569 the exiled Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was placed under the protection of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at Tutbury Castle in Stafford-shire under suspicion of treason and plotting against her cousin Queen Elizabeth. Shrewsbury's wife, Elizabeth (ca. 1527-1608), came in close contact with the royal prisoner, whom she would later serve in a conflicting set of roles: prison warden, friend, embroidery companion, and relative by marriage.

Commonly regarded merely as exercise in "marking" for linens, embroidered samplers might better be considered as escritoires containing a wealth of personal, social and economic information about their makers and their milieus. This paper argues that samplers may be used to located historical cultural changes in the underlying discursive practices affecting the lives of young women. Based on typology, I identify three distinct sampler genres as linked to the historical periods of antiquity through the late Middle Ages, the early Renaissance to the late 16th century, and the 17th to the 19th centuries. This paper concentrates on the last period, examining New England colonial samplers to illustrate their value as visual rhetorical documents that reflect both the underlying Puritan cultural emphasis on universal literacy and the feminine cultural discourse of the period. In the process, I suggest that New England women achieved near-universal situational literacy by 1775, further supporting this contention with evidence from statutes, the book industry, and the rise of women's academies. From a child's first lettering sampler to the complex academy samplers that touted the virtues of Republican motherhood, samplers acted to shape a girl's group identity even as she wrought her own personality into her work. Consequently, I conclude that: (i) as often ubiquitous items of girls' lives, samplers and other embroideries should be regarded as historical documents that are uniquely reflective of cultural mores; and (ii) the methodology for so doing requires a more precise categorization of embroideries according to their discursive functions.

The activity of embroidery for elite women, such as Bess of Hardwick, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, in sixteenth-century England, provided opportunities for private and public emotional expression and served as illustration of and counterpoint to their changing fortunes, and sometimes even as the instrument of their authority. At the same time, printed pattern or model books for textile work, which first appeared in Europe in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, proliferated, with many examples copied and adapted to suit different national markets. These books were ostensibly designed by men and aimed primarily at an audience of leisured women, providing patterns, though not instructions, for popular types of embroidery and lace. Frequently, they also included verses extolling the benefits of needlework in inculcating virtue and providing pleasure for those who worked the patterns. These texts have been interpreted as indicating a degree of passivity on the part of the women who worked from these designs. Other texts, however, such as the epitaph for Elizabeth Lucar who died in 1537, depict women capable of designing as well as producing sophisticated embroideries. This chapter examines the roles of both the practice of embroidery and the printed pattern books in sixteenth-century England. It considers women as designers, producers and consumers of embroidery, and interrogates the place of creativity and agency in their work, the ways that needlework was used in the construction of morality and gender, as well as in their emotional and political lives.

While the bulk of late medieval manuscripts written and decorated for Scottish patrons and book-owners did not outlast the Reformation, there are a number of survivals that merit more attention than they have hitherto received. The Arbuthnott book of hours, now housed at the Paisley Museum and Art Gallery, is part of a uniquely interesting group of manuscripts that was copied by a named scribe between 1482 and 1492 for the Arbuthnott family, who lived in a small, rural village about 26 miles south of Aberdeen. Members of this family were notable patrons of art, architecture and the Franciscan order, and the manuscripts they commissioned illuminate key aspects of indigenous book production in late medieval Scotland. This essay will focus on several illustrations and texts in the book of hours that reveal the liturgical preferences, reading habits, and religious sympathies of its earliest owner, Mariota Arbuthnott. My chief aim is to show how this book of hours reflects very early evidence of the dissemination of Maria in sole (Virgin in the Sun) iconography and of devotion to the Rosary. Hence I hope to show that this manuscript, which reflects both national and regional Scottish concerns as well as certain Continental aesthetic influences, provides important information about book production and religious culture in the far North.

Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Chapter 8 - Urban production of manuscript books and the role of the university towns By M. A. Michael Edited by Nigel J. Morgan, University of Cambridge, Rodney M. Thomson, University of Tasmania Book: The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 2008, pp 168-194

Guido Guerzoni presents the results of fifteen years of research into one of the more hotly debated topics among historians of art and of economics: the history of art markets. Dedicating equal attention to current thought in the fields of economics, economic history, and art history, Guerzoni offers a broad and far-reaching analysis of the Italian scene, highlighting the existence of different forms of commercial interchange and diverse kinds of art markets. In doing so he ranges beyond painting and sculpture, to examine as well the economic drivers behind architecture, decorative and sumptuary arts, and performing or ephemeral events. Organized by thematic areas (the ethics and psychology of consumption, an analysis of the demand, labor markets, services, prices, laws) that cover a large chronological period (from the 15th through the 17th century), various geographical areas, and several institution typologies, this book offers an exhaustive and up-to-date study of an increasingly fascinating topic."

PREFACE Opinion on the nature of the medieval scriptorium has been mixed because contemporary texts are ambiguous. For example, Reginald of Durham's description of the illuminator at work at Fountains Abbey in the published transcription is unclear about where he was working, and scholars have not agreed on the details. It is, however, generally understood that medieval scribes worked in the cloister, adjacent to the monastic church, although some scholars like Braunfels and Meyvaert have been unsure about this. Where the best secular artists worked on giant illustrated books such as the Lambeth Bible is a much bigger question. The difference between elite professional artists and monks who worked as scribes and illuminators has been given little consideration in this regard. There is virtually no literature on the subject, and no information available about the specific needs of secular artists regarding space, materials and access. In discussions about the monastic scriptorium they are usually not mentioned, with the implication that they were somehow subsumed into the cloister or other communal space with the scribes; this study suggests that they would have been accommodated in an interior space or workshop appropriate to their requirements and status as craftsmen. Macready and Thompson's 1986 book on patronage contains essays covering all areas of the arts from precious metalwork to wall painting, including the patronage and

Scholars have proposed Milan, Pisa and/or Bologna as possible locations for the copying of the inner gatherings (II–IV) of the manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, [alpha].M.5.24 (Mod A) and have argued that some of the compositions might have originated in the circle of Archbishop of Milan Pietro Filargo. Yet evidence based on Mod A’s repertory and the scant biographies of its composers is insufficient for determining the manuscript’s origin. To solve this problem, I look at Mod A as a cultural artifact, attributing its illumination to the Master of 1411, an illuminator active in Bologna from 1404 to 1411, or to his assistant, both associated with the manuscript workshop of the Oli- vetan abbey of San Michele in Bosco, on the outskirts of medieval Bologna. The Master of 1411 might have been Giacomo da Padova, an illuminator documented there between 1407 and 1409. Iconographical analysis shows that the illuminator of Mod A possessed considerable knowledge of Paduan culture before the fall of the ruling Carrara family in 1405. This knowledge is apparent in his use of an astrological allusion to Carrara heraldry in his decoration of the song Inperial sedendo. His illumination of a Gloria by Egardus with the figure of Saint Anthony of Padua implies a familiarity with Padua’s musical institutions. Mod A may have been illuminated when the papal entourage of John XXIII visited San Michele in Bosco in the fall of 1410, although further compositions were added after the illuminator had finished his work. This conclusion invites scholars to consider afresh the social context that might have fostered the compilation of the repertory in the inner gatherings of Mod A.

This thesis examines function and patronage of early sixteenth-century portrait miniatures by Lucas Horenbout (d. 1544) and Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543). Portrait miniatures, a unique form of portraiture emerging in the sixteenth century, have a long tradition in England, but hold an ambiguous place within art history because of their size, variety, and multifaceted function. Scholarship on the topic of early English portrait miniatures defines and discusses the tradition as it applies to the Elizabethan miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619), the first major English-born artist. Therefore, the miniatures prior to Hilliard have been studied as predecessors to his works but not within their own historical context. The general prevailing concept is that, as with Hilliard, the early sixteenth-century English miniatures began and remained royal objects through the second half of the century when their use expanded outside of court. This is not the case. As early as the 1530s portrait miniatures were created for a variety of patrons and uses. This thesis strives to prove that it is possible to study miniatures based on their physical and visual properties and to remove the predominant focus on the limited textual sources. Stylistically this collection of portrait miniatures is varied and has been approached by scholarship mainly through vested interests of museum collections in terms of technical analysis and judgments of quality. Art historical scholarship has emphasized the general stylistic differences between the portrait miniatures of Lucas Horenbout and Hans Holbein the Younger, the two major court portraitists of this period. Through this interpretation, Holbein’s works are praised as the work of a Northern Renaissance master, and Horenbout’s disregarded as fixed within the old medieval style of manuscript illumination. However, this analysis of early portrait miniatures has limited the understanding of the careers and works of these two early miniaturists and their historical contexts. I will consider the stylistic differences between Lucas Horenbout and Hans Holbein the Younger as a deliberate choice that met the needs of their patrons and that their different sources of patronage had a significant impact on their approaches to portrait miniatures.

This article examines a late Qing woman’s jacket embroidered with eight well-known Suzhou garden and temple sites. Such an object makes little sense within the conventional historiography of Chinese dress, long dominated by regulated garments like dragon robes and rank badges, and consequently, concerned with themes of imperial status and official rank. I argue that the jacket is best understood, instead, at the juncture of three wider historical processes: the popularisation of tourism, the commercialisation of embroidery, and the role of urban courtesans in nineteenth-century Suzhou. Combining close analysis of material culture with a wide range of textual sources, in particular folkloric records and urban “bamboo ballads”, the article demonstrates the impact of handicraft commercialization and widening material consumption upon late Qing women’s fashions, and explores the degree to which these developments enabled women to connect with and contribute to popular urban culture. The jacket thus highlights not only the economic salience of commercialized handicrafts, but also the growing visibility of women in the early modern Chinese cityscape.