Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the MuseumRock, Daniel
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Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum
Rock, Daniel
Art objects -- England -- London -- Catalogs; Textile fabrics
As was observed, while describing the beautiful Syon Cope, No.
9182, the nine choirs of angels separated into three hierarchies is
indicated here also; and the distinction marked by the garments which
they are made to wear in these embroideries; some are clothed in
copes, others in tunicles, the remainder, besides their narrow stoles,
in long-flowing white albs only--that emblem of spotless holiness
in which all of them are garmented, as with a robe of light. The
bushiness of the auburn hair on all of them is remarkable, and done in
little locks of silk.
For a student of mediæval music, this angel-choir will have an
especial interest; but, to our thinking, neither this, nor any other
production of the subject, whether wrought in sculpture, painting, or
needlework, hitherto found out on the Continent, at all comes up in
beauty, gracefulness, or value, to our own lovely minstrel-gallery in
Exeter Cathedral, or the far more splendid and truly noble angel-choir
sculptured in the spandrils of the triforium arches in the matchless
presbytery at Lincoln Minster. A cast of the Exeter minstrel-gallery
is put up here on the western wall of the north court, and among the
casts lent by the Architectural Society are those of the angels in
Lincoln.
Of the musical instruments themselves, we see several in these two
pieces of cut-work. Beginning with the back orphrey, marked No. 1194
at top, the first of the two angels is playing with the fingers of
both hands an instrument now indiscernible; the second, the lute;
below them one is beating a tabour with a stick; the other is turning
the handle of the gita, our hurdy-gurdy. After these we have an angel
blowing a short horn, while his fellow angel strikes the psaltery.
Then an angel robed as a deacon in alb, and stole worn like a belt
falling from his right shoulder to under his left arm, sounding the
sistrum or Jew’s harp, and his companion fingers with his right hand a
one-stringed instrument or ancient monochord. In the last couple, one
with a large bow is playing the viol, a long narrow instrument with
several silver strings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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