otsisto wrote:
> http://tinyurl.com/4rk3xu
> I knew I would find the site with the other "farthingale styles.

Great collection. You can get a little information about the images by holding 
the cursor over them, and some show you closeups (but not all, and not all the 
linked ones work).

The unanswered question: Of the very few that show the farthingale worn alone 
(without an overskirt), are any meant to show a 15th c. Spanish woman in 
realistic fashion? Some of the images are clearly religious, allegorical, 
historical, or foreign. Of course this may in part reflect the nature of the 
available art -- much of which was religious or allegorical. One or two of 
them may represent women deliberately shown in a state of semi-undress.

There doesn't seem to be as much of a problem with the images that show the 
farthingale as a partially visible underlayer; it looks like at least some are 
realistic.

Number of images is one thing, and of course that has to be where to start. 
But context is the next question. I have on occasion found hundreds of 
depictions of a style that I still could not in good faith argue was routinely 
worn in life, because in essentially every image the choice of garment had a 
clear rhetorical significance in context. To answer the question of whether 
the Spanish farthingale with visible hoops, worn as the outer layer, was ever 
a real fashion for real women -- and, if so, when and where and by whom -- a 
researcher would need to gather dozens or hundreds of images and look at them 
with an eye to subject matter, medium, region, and time period. There's a 
really good paper topic for someone who cares about this fashion! (I've done 
it for some other fashions, but not this one.)

--Robin
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