Altar Cloth
Unknown Artist
c. 1350
Medium
embroidery: linen
Dimensions
154.3 × 374.5 cm
Classification
Embroidery
Department
Textiles
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1948.352
About this artwork
This large, embroidered altar cloth is one of the rarest, most important medieval church furnishings in existence. It was stitched by nuns in the Premonstratensian Convent in Altenberg on the Lahn River, north of Frankfurt, Germany, and was used to cover the church’s high altar in the weeks leading up to Easter. The cloth is an example of linen embroidery, a specialty of German nuns in the later Middle Ages. The Altenberg monastery church once had valuable furnishings; the high altar retable (a ...