The exhibition presents more than 150 new pieces to the public for the first time from the abundant collections of the Musée de la Visitation. In fact, since 2014 and the Museum’s last exhibition dedicated to embroidery, the textile background was enriched with numerous deposits. Among this large corpus, it is interesting to present new textile pieces enhanced with floral embroidery, without being limited to the remarkable floral ornaments embroidered around 1660 for the celebrations of the canonization of Francis de Sales.
All the pieces selected have in common their iconography, their excellent state of conservation and the great virtuosity of the embroiderers who have executed the sets. They also stand out for the significant diversity of drawings, colors, as well as by the variety with which the patterns are arranged on the beautiful background fabrics of varied hues and often damask. Some petals are colored in polychrome silks embroidered with satin stitching or encroaching past. Others are stylized as layers of metal elements.
Finally, although this form of embroidery is sometimes denigrated, a place is given to decorations made with petit point on canvas, a technique that is found as much on chasubles as on armchairs from the Grand Siècle. Alongside productions from large workshops – worthy of the king’s embroiderers – with rich needle paintings, the exhibition shows works full of charm, made in the Visitandine cloisters.
Those of the workshops of chasubliers-embroiderers, specialized houses of the 19th and 20th centuries which worked for the whole of France, also have their place in this whole.
Finally the exhibition is not limited only to liturgical vestments of Catholic worship, and presents civil documents, preserved as is or transformed by the visitandines, for the needs of their community. The works presented demonstrate the great diversity of the collections now gathered in Moulins.