[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I was looking at the painting of Salome (top left, > http://www.elizabethancostume.net/farthingale/history.html ) that is > generally accepted as one of the earliest forms of > farthingale/virtugarde/verdugados. I've heard the "Look, first the > hoops were worn on the outside, but very quickly they became an > underskirt and hidden" interpretation. I was thinking about the > allegorical aspect of religious art. > > Salome was supposed to have danced naked before she asked for the head > of John the Baptist. > > Is it possible that the artist depicted Salome in her underwear to > hint at this nakedness, and that hoops were never actually worn on the > outside?
Here's a color version with a larger view: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pedro_Garcia_de_Benabarre_St_John_Retable.jpg I should note first that I've never studied the Spanish farthingale in Spanish art, and perhaps these hoops-on-the-outside are all over the place in more reliable contexts. However, if this is the only example handy, I'd want more collaboration. The first problem is, of course, that Salome is often depicted with layers of artistic clues to indicate she is (a) historical, (b) Biblical, (c) foreign, (d) a dancer, and (e) a "bad" woman on the lines of a courtesan. So any style that specifically shows up on Salome or other similar characters, particularly if it is very showy or bizarre, may be a deliberate artistic attempt to show something not worn by real live women of the artist's time. Second is the specific issue you note -- that Salome was traditionally supposed to have danced in not-quite-full-dress. In medieval paintings you don't generally see her naked (I can't think of even one but I wouldn't be surprised if there's an example out there somewhere). But I can think of at least one image in which she is shown without the layers one would expect of a princess. (It is a c. 1300 English manuscript illumination in which she is wearing only a simple single dress layer while she is dancing, but in the adjacent scene, when she presents the platter, she has obvious multiple layers like the other women present.) Here's an image of a Spanish Salome from perhaps slightly earlier than your example, showing Salome wearing the hooped thing as an underskirt. Go to the 12th row, left: http://jessamynscloset.com/15thgallery.html (I haven't taken the time to look at the rest of the many images on this page so perhaps there's even another one in there somewhere!) However, in the example Emma cites, Salome is not dancing, but is in the platter scene, and with two ladies. Emma goes on to ask: > If that's true, why are hoops also visible on the ladies behind her? It is possible that by this point, the visible hoops had become code for "Salome" and were picked up by other artists of the same region and used in a broader context in paintings having to do with Salome. I have seen the same thing happen with other styles in 15th c. art in Flanders, when a dress detail was used with a clear purpose by an early painter (such as ven der Weyden or van Eyck) and the later ones picked up and ran with it with less focused consideration. However, I toss that out only as a possibility to explore, for someone willing to look at a whole lot of Spanish art, and particularly at depictions of Salome and other similar religious/historical figures. It's not a judgment I can make based on two examples! It might make a very cool paper for someone, though. (Particularly if you could spend a few weeks nosing around at the zillions of unreproduced medieval images that seem to be hanging all over Spain in churches and small art collections.) --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
