Skip to main content
Advanced Search
Needlework Picture 2000-324
Needlework Picture, "Orpheus Charming the Animals"
Needlework Picture 2000-324

Needlework Picture, "Orpheus Charming the Animals"

Dateca. 1650
OriginGreat Britain
MediumSilk and metallic threads on a linen ground, metal purl, wood, glass, gilding
DimensionsFramed: OH: 20 3/4" x OW: 24 3/4"
Credit LinePartial gift of Betty Kramer Brown and Stuart H. Brown
Object number2000-324
DescriptionThis framed needlework picture consists of twisted and untwisted silk and metal wrapped silk embroidery threads on a linen ground with metal embellishment in a veneered walnut frame with gilt liner. It portrays the scene, “Orpheus Charming the Animals,” a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. The composition is roughly based on the title page of A BOOKE OF BEASTS, BIRDS, FLOWERS, FRUITS, FLIES, AND WORMES, by John Payne around 1630. It shows Orpheus in the center of the picture, surrounded by a plethora of animals, and two structures in the background.

At the top left of the picture is a group of dark clouds, created by couching metal purl onto the ground fabric using blue, red, and cream threads. Some of the coils are tinted blue. Contrasting the dark clouds is a group of bright clouds at the top right of the picture, created using a different technique. Dimension is created by covering stuffing with untwisted floss, then couching over-twisted two-ply silk, or silk wrapped around a silk core, into spiral patterns. A sun, worked in tiny tent stitches, shines out from below the bright clouds.

Beneath the dark clouds at the upper left of the picture is a castle with three spires and flags and an attached building with a stepped roofline. Blue smoke rises from the chimney of the attached building. The entrance to the castle is red. A bridge leads to the opening across a stream or moat. Underneath the bright clouds at the upper right is a small house or barn with two windows and a single chimney.

Orpheus is in the center of the composition and is show wearing a blue tunic with a yellow collar and a laurel wreath on his head. He is draped in red fabric and wearing yellow boots that are cuffed at the top. He holds a small harp, the strings of which are portrayed with threads made of silver wrapped around a silk core.

The remainder of the composition is filled with animals and flowers that are not shown to scale. The animals portrayed are a peacock, a parrot, a squirrel, three caterpillars, a rhinoceros, two butterflies, a kingfisher eating a fish, a fish in a spring-fed pond, a stag, a hare in a warren, a bunny, a ladybug, a worm, a unicorn, a lion, a leopard, a snail, a camel, and two flying bugs. The flowers shown are a red rose, an iris, a red carnation, a yellow tulip, and a daffodil. Except for the body of the lion, the motifs are all worked in small tent stitches. The lion’s body, but not his head or tail, is worked in queen stitches. The black outline of the lion appears to be couched. The ground, consisting of many hills, trees, and a pond, is worked in queen stitches.

The castle, unicorn, and the rock with the spring appear to be unworked and painted. However, the ground threads are pulled apart and fibers are evident beneath the canvas, which likely indicates that the motifs were once stitched but the fibers have since disintegrated. The only portion of unworked ground that does not appear to have once been stitched is at the back of the blue bird, where the queen stitching of background and the tent stitching of the bird do not meet, perhaps indicating that the entire ground was worked before the motifs. The portion is also unpainted.

The needlework picture is framed in a late 19th-century walnut ogee veneer frame with a gilt liner.

Stitches: couching, French knot, queen, tent, tent variation

Label TextThis needlework picture portrays the scene “Orpheus Charming the Animals” from Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.” Classical imagery such as this was much less common in seventeenth-century needlework than biblical imagery, likely due to the lack of classical education afforded to women. This scene charmingly shows both native and exotic animals coexisting in an imaginative, English landscape in front of a small home and a castle.
ProvenanceObtained by private collectors, Betty and Stuart Brown;
Partial gift to CWF, 2000.