Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)

Enikő SIPOS: Hungarian-Related Textile Works in Switzerland

10. Antependium, with the Calvary and saints (Bern, Historisches Museum) Six columns of different styles separate the scenes. Only traces of what was originally a green silk hem have remained on the upper edges, subsequently replaced by a new blue silk hem. The black and white embroidery thread is worn in many places, making the excellent-quality washing show through. Emil Maurer has linked the style with that ot the Hohenfurt altarpiece. Specialists in the field highlight the fact that the artistic standards of the painter and the embroiderer are the same. While it used to be taken for granted that in the Middle Ages embroidery was designed by painters, this claim does not live up to scrutiny.

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9 The damaged parts of the antependium's underlying fabric were replaced in the fifteenth century by pieces of medium-blue silk damask cloth, thus preserving the original yellow embroidered silk fabric underneath. The figural parts were split stitch on an underlying foundation of linen cloth. The backgrounds were created by means of the so-called "Anlege technique" where golden and silver threads were laid on the underlying material in parallel rows and then sewn on with a silk thread in a rhombus, a criss-cross and a plaited pattern, with a different pattern in every panel (fig. 8-9). The architectonic frame at the top is attached to the columns. These details were also embroidered separately on linen cloth, and stitched together latterly with the areas of the scenes. The second antependium (fig. 10) The central space of the other frontal that has survived from the treasury of Königsfelden has a depiction of the Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist.

30 In three Gothic niches on either side are the 11. Detail from the antependium, lions under the Crucifixion 142