monica spence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>>><snipped>The dresses worn by Eleonora in her Bronzino portraits usually don't have that center strip down the CF. You can surmise that is there from the pictures where she wears a zimarra (surcoat). Where you do see the strip come from the hands of copyists, or students of Bronzino or from his workshop-- not from the master himself.<<<< I believe this one is stated to be by the master himself... http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?45823+0+0 Just thinking out loud here - perhaps the centre-front strip owes its existance more to a then current fashion (1550s-1560s I mean) for decorating bodices of plain fabric (as opposed to figured fabric), than to a copyist/school of Bronzino. There are very few images of Eleonora. Of those of her in a non-figured fabric, the above image (1560s, by Bronzino himself) shows a centre-front strip of embroidery, and only one of her (the pink one by Bronzino) which does not show it is dated from the 1540s... http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Angelo_Bronzino_040.jpg So perhaps it is rather the date of the portrait which explains why "the dresses worn by Eleonora in her Bronzino portraits usually don't have that center strip down the CF". As for evidence from the 1550s-1560s centre-front strip of embroidery/embellishment, I can only think of one earlier image (from Bergamo rather than Florence) of the 1550s that features a centre-front strip, albeit in a fan-shaped rather than T-shaped bodice embellishment.... http://realmofvenus.renaissancewoman.net/wardrobe/IsottaBrembatiGrumelli.jpg I'm sure there must be others out there. As to the extant item posted earlier (the one laid out flat post conservation), it is, as I understand it, the very same one Janet Arnold examined and discussed in Patterns of Fashion, which was indeed the burial garment of Eleonora de Toledo. It too has a centre-front strip of embroidery. Bella
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