Chasuble

This chasuble (a liturgical garment worn during the celebration of the Mass) is fashioned of yellow-green velvet patterned in an allover repeat of a small-scale diamond shape with eight protruding points in a stepped configuration framed by double zigzag lines. Cut and voided velvets in symmetrical stylized floral designs like this were produced in Italy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The orphery areas are delineated with very narrow tape which matches that outlining the edges and neck opening.

Credit: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975