Tina Anderlini
Independent scholar
This abstract refers to one particular question : « Given that very little actual clothing survives from the Middle Ages, how does our reliance on artistic, documentary, and literary representations affect the study of dress and its meaning ? » From a special kind of fabric, relatively common in archaeological remains, it asks the question of the meaning of textiles. But it also, consider other questions, such as the economical factors, trade, origin of fabrics, and messages carried by fabrics.
Remains of medieval textiles are rather rare. Most of them can be found in funerary or religious contexts. Numerous examples of silks figure in churches inventories as remains of shrouds or small reliquaries. Amongst these one kind of fabric is very interesting : the fabric known as Palla Rotata or Paile Roé, luxurious fabrics with medallion patterns, with birds, lions, or fantastic animals.
This kind of fabric, coming from Asia, and later made in Byzance, is also common in funerary contexts. One may think that it is representative of a very expensive fabric, worn by Western nobility, as it was worn in Asia. But a rigorous approach, based upon archaelogical pieces -when we know where they come from-, upon texts, or images, could show that these fabrics may have had a very special meaning amongst medieval fabric.
On medieval images, they are seldom seen on living people. When it is the case, it is in some very specific contexts, and can easily be connected with the sacred. They are connected with funerals, translation scenes. We can see them during royal weddings. When they are mentioned in texts, like inventories, they are for clergy members, or to decore the royal chapel. Fragments have been found in tombs, as shrouds, or they decorated coffins. Texts also show us that they were on display in royal palaces, as Impressionists paintings could be shown nowadays. They are precious, rare, expensive, shiny, and colored objects. We can add that painting versions existed, on churches walls, in papal palace, or in holy books. And, sometimes, embroidered medallions could also be found, on very particular copes.
Comparing sources, it could highly be possible that these fabrics, known since the Early Middle Ages and « common » until the beginning of the 14th c., were indeed connected to the Sacred and to hoarding, and were, in fact, rarely used to cloth living lay people in Western Europe. One must remember that the circular shape was, in Christian iconography, connected to Heaven. Moreover, the Oriental origin of the fabric refers to the Holy Land. The association of both elements (origin and pattern) may have made, in Western Europe, this fabric a fantastic cloth, close to God. Items coming from the Holy Land were sometimes looked as sacred, having some « magical » powers, like the soil from Jerusalem in Pisa’s Campo Santo.
The origin of these fabrics seems to be very important in another way, as the use of them brutally reduced in the 14th c., when a large quantity of silks, imitating Oriental patterns, were made in Italy. Pallia rotata doesn’t seem to have been a favourite production in Lucca. It is surprising that a fabric, coming from Orient, which has been so popular during more than 6 or 7 centuries, became out of fashion so quickly, when the production sites changed. This simple fact and the sources should be studied very carefully to figure if Pallia rotata was such a popular fabric for nobles, or had some very specific uses, connecting people who were wearing it, or scene represented, to the Sacred.