On occasion of the General Audience with the Holy Father on Wednesday, 10 October 2012, Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio of Florence presented a gift to Pope Benedict XVI: a stole created specifically to mark the occasion of the start of the Year of Faith on 11 October 2012.
The stole was sewn of silk. gold and silver lancé taffetas hand-woven on a late 19th-century loom.
The design of the stole with Christ Pantocrator reproduces a detail of a fabric put into production by Giuseppe Lisio in 1926 ca.
Mastro Lisio drew his inspiration from the so-called Dalmatic of Charlemagne, now in the Vatican Museums, and recreated in woven cloth the embroideries of the Byzantine original.
The intent of Fondazione Lisio was to bring together all the creative, technical and manual skills of its collaborators in a symbolic object such as the stole.
- for technical design: Eva Basile and Felice Pessi of Idea Immagine
- for weaving the fabric: Marta Valdarni
- for hand-braiding the passementerie of the cross: Rosaria Peris
- for cutting and sewing the stole: Simona Lombardi
The design, the subject of which is Christ Pantocrator, reproduces the centre portion of a fabric put into production in late 1926 by Giuseppe Lisio, who called it ‘Dalmatica’. He drew his inspiration from the so-called Dalmatic of Charlemagne, now in the Vatican Museums, a Byzantine embroidered work from the 9th-10th century representing Christ amidst a host of angels and saints.
Thanks to the skill of his designers, Mastro Lisio succeeded in obtaining, in a woven cloth, a design manifesting the same effects of depth and minute detail created with needle and thread in the Byzantine work.
