Vatican Museums

This precious fabric fragment, of silk basted with five colours, was decorated with depictions of religious subjects. A remnant is conserved with just one motif, depicting the Nativity within roudels of entwined lotus branches. It was found in the “Treasury” of the Chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum (1905), in the same circumstances that led to the discovery of similar fabrics within reliquaries between the ages of Leo III (795-816) and Paschal I (817-824). This piece and fragment cat. 61231 are traditionally considered to be part of a single piece of silk fabric, on account of their identical production and the similarity of stylistic modes. The iconography of the scene, of a typically Syrian type, is found in various depictions from the Christian east, suggesting that both fragments date from between the eighth and ninth centuries.