| P3 has note
| - This object belonged to a set of church ornaments, probably fulfilling the function of a panel on a dalmatic (the priestly garment worn by deacons). It is one of a set of matching ecclesiastical embroideries whose colour and imagery were appropriate for the liturgy of the dead and were therefore used at funerals. The Spanish style of dalmatic had matching apparels on the front, back and sleeves, those on the body being substantially larger (squarer) than those on the sleeves (rectangles). Usually, those on the body of the garment were attached between the waist and the hemline, those on the sleeves towards the edge with the imagery clearly visible when the arm was at rest by the wearer's side. (Pauline Johnstone. <i>High Fashion in the Church</i>. Leeds: Maney, 2002, p.142). The other panels in the collection that arrived with this panel and match it in design, seem to be two for the body of a dalmatic and two for the sleeves. They would probably have been attached to a garment of some variety of black silk (possibly velvet). Our own collection has a sixteenth century funerary dalmatic intact, with its panels in the correct position (T.766.1919).
The creation of embroidery and the learning of embroidery skills followed a similar path to that of sculpture and painting, and recently serious research has begun on its professional development in certain local centres in Spain (e.g. Marta Laguardia's work on Salamanca). Basically, skills were learnt through apprenticeship in a guild and groups of objects were made according to similar specifications (e.g. the workshop of the sculptor Gregorio Fernandez or that of the painter Francisco Zurbaran). Successful execution of standard imagery was valued (where today 'creativity' and 'originality' are highly prized). In some cases, embroidery was learnt in convents and nuns were skilled needlewomen who could make church ornaments.
By the seventeenth century the stark imagery of skull and crossbones was well-established shorthand for the fragility of human life, the transitory nature of the flesh, being used on gravestones and monuments as well as in painting and textiles. The raw drama of this imagery fits in with the principle of arousing deep emotion in the viewer, a principle promulgated in the Council of Trent (1545-63) and adopted in countries that espoused Counter-Reformation ideology. In many ways the imagery and its attention to the fragility of human life echoes the 'vanitas' paintings of the seventeenth century, such as the works by Juan Valdés Leal, <i>In Ictu Oculi</i> and <i>Finis Gloriae Mundi</i> in the Iglesia del Hospital de la Santa Caridad in Seville. (<i>Juan de Valdés Leal (1622-1690)</i>. Cordoba: Caja Sur Publicaciones, 2001, pp. 48-9)
Maria Dolores Vila (Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid) indicates that there are magnificent examples at the Monasteries at El Escorial and Guadalupe in Spain, but almost all convents or small parishes had some such items, and great houses had them with their coats of arms added (Personal communication by email, 30 May 2006). She noted the publication of certain objects in <i>Las Edades del Hombre: el arbol de la vida</i>. Catedral de Segovia, May-November 2003, pp.391-392, 275-78; <i>Huellas</i>. Catedral de Murcia, 2002, p. 340. Similar emphasis on skeletons, crosses, etc. is found in embroideries on chasubles etc. Johnstone illustrates a particularly dramatic chasuble made in Augsburg before 1630, and a dalmatic made in the Northern Netherlands in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Its apparels follow the Netherlandish rather than Spanish fashion (Johnstone, p.96.) (en)
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