Fashion in History: A Global Look

Tutor: Giorgio Riello

Week 5

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Fashion in the Renaissance: Power and Behaviour

1. Fashion and the Renaissance Court

The Court of Mantua, fresco by Andrea Mantegna. Detail. 1471-74, walnut oil on plaster, 805 x 807 cm, Camera degli Sposi,Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, c. 1514-15. Oil on canvas. 82 x 66 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris

Raffaello Sanzio, Self Portrait. Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Titian, Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. c.1536-38. Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Raffaello Sanzio, Portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino

Portrait of Lodovico Capponi, Sixteenth-century aristocrat at the court of the Medici, 1551, by Agnolo Bronzino, Frick Collection, NY.

Redundant Renunciation

2. Men in Black

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Man, 1506-10Oil on wood, 42,3 x 35,8 cmKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556),Portrait of a Gentleman.Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy

Titian, A Gentleman (Ludovico Ariosto?). 1510. Oil on canvas. National Gallery London.

The Renaissance Courtier: Principles of Fashion

1. The wearing of black is not a ‘mundane fashion’ but an ‘ethical fashion’. Black is a ‘moral habit’.

2. Dress is dominated by the Classical idea of ‘mediocritas’ (‘correct or suitable middle’): a man of virtue must avoid the extremes

Titian, Portrait of Emperor Charles V Seated. 1548. Oil on canvas. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Anonymous.  John Calvin. 1550s

Portrait of Martin Luther

Philip III of SpainPhilip II of Spain Velázquez,Portrait of Phillip IV. c. 1628. Prado

Attributed to Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, Portrait of Abel Tasman, His Wife and Daughter, c.1637. oil on canvas; 106.7 x 321.1cm. National Library of Australia

Portrait of Johan Camerlin, oil on panel by Michiel Janszoon van Mierevelt, 1626.

Johannes Verspronk, Portrait of a Lady, 1641

3. Manners and the Renaissance Court

- Giovanni della Casa, Galateo (1558)

-Erasmus De Civilitate Morum Puerilium (The Good Behaviour of Young People) (1532)

“You can tell the attitudes and inclinations of people from their comportment… because when a rustic or cowardly person wants to say something seriously, what do you see? He squirms, picks his fingers, strokes his beard, pulls faces, makes eyes and spits every word in three. A noble man, on the contrary, has a clear mind and a gentle posture; he has nothing to be ashamed of. Therefore, in appearance, in his words, and in comportment he is like and eagle which without any fear looks straight at the sun”.

Mikolaj Rej, The Mirror, cit. in Maria Bogucka, ‘Gesture, Ritual, and Social Order’, p. 191.

Sprezzatura (Grace)

Norbert Elias (1897-1990), The civilizing process. Vol. 1: the history of manners [Über den Prozess der Zivilisation] (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978 and following editions).

After Tintoretto - Wedding at Cana, Venice, c. 1561-70

4. Fashion, Gender and Sex – Part 1

‘Galenic theory’ from the Philosopher Galenos who lived in the 1st century AD

became well known during the renaissance.

It argues that there is only one sex:

- Men’s genitalia are the “correct” version.

- Women are placed in a lower category as their sex was ‘inverted’ (the inversion of men’s genitalia)

4. Fashion, Gender and Sex

4. Fashion, Gender and Sex

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/17century/topic_1/mulier.htm

4. Fashion, Gender and Sex

Will Fisher and Jenny Jordan argues that in the Renaissance the differentiation between genders did not derive from the overall shapes of bodies

Gender differentiation derived instead from the ‘prosthetic parts’ of the body.

- Beards- Weapons- Handkerchiefs- Gloves- Jewelry (earrings, necklaces, earrings, etc,)- Fans- Hats- Codpieces- Hair- etc.

5. The Concept of Prostheses

Beards

Moretto da Brescia (Alessandro Bonvicino) (c. 1498-1554), Portrait of a Gentleman with a Letter, c. 1538. Oil on canvas. 45.08 x 39.37cm. Pinacoteca Civica Tosio-Martinengo, Brescia,

Italy.

George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. Vellum on panel by Nicholas Hilliard c. 1590. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

Glove, c. 1590-1610; Warwickshire, England

(probably), 35 cmX 20 cm. Victoria and

Albert Museum, T.145&A-1931

Handkerchief, c. 1600-20. Linen, with cutwork decoration, produced in the Flanders, 55 cmx 53.5 cm.

Victoria and Albert Museum, 484-1903

Head-covering

The Ruff

Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1663. Oil on canvas.

The National Gallery, London.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Rubens and his wife Isabella Brant in the honeysuckle. Oil on canvas, 178 x 136 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich

French Farthingale

English Farthingale

Xilography, Bumroll, c. 1600. Dutch.

Christoph Amberger (c.1500-61)Portrait of Christoph Fugger. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

Weapons

Portrait of Emperor Charles V, by Titian, 1532-33. Museo del Prado

6. Fashion, Gender and Sex – Part 1

Theory of the mutable erogenous areas

Hollywood’s Shakespeare Hilliard’s 17th-Century Shakespeare