I have no doubt that the tech is spot on and that they have found
what they say >they have found. However, since I have a more than passing interest in historic >costume and am reasonably familiar with Renaissance clothing yet have never >encountered something that was specifically indicative of about-to and just-given >birth, I thought I'd toss that out to the list whose collective wisdom on matters of
historic costume is always impressive. It just smells like a Costume
Myth to >me.....but I could be wrong....
There does seem to be a bit of problem in the interpretation, but I'm not enough of a Da Vinci fan to know his whereabouts during his life, and therefore dont know enough to comment on what he saw and/or painted. Wikipedia places him in Florence, tho I thought he was from Urbino. I never been fond of Da Vinci as a costume source as his sfumato and chiaroscuro techniques obliterate costume details. Give me a Mannerist costume source any day! That said, pregnancy garments are common. No one, I believe, is disputing that. I cant point anyone to late 15th c Italian sources, or even early 16thc , but by the mid-16th there are lots of good primary sources. There are plenty of "mantelini da parto" listed in the Medici Giornalli. There are plenty of jewels, trays and other expensive gifts to celebrate a healthy birth. It's reasonable to associate garments, jewelry & household items with so significant an event. There are 16th c fabrics called "rete", networks, even of gold or silver, sometimes called gauze or net veiling. You'll see several of these depicted in the last chapter or so of Moda Firenze. There's even a married lady, Bianca Capella, 1585, wearing a silver(?) gauze veil on her head. There's a teenage girl, probably unmarried, wearing what appears to be a gauze zimarra over a red-gold gown on p.109. "women of the Cini family", 1577. I'm not able to definitively associate gauze with anything other than visible wealth & formal occasions. I just cant make the connection between a veil, even an expensive one, to, a celebratory birth gift. I certainly cant connect it exclusively as such. --cin Cynthia Barnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
