Suzanne wrote: > Robin, I think you are pushing this argument too far. Actually, I'm trying not to make an argument at all! My point is that you can't look at images in isolation. You have to look at a lot of them -- in context, and in combination.
As I've said several times, I don't know much about Spanish fashion, and I haven't looked comprehensively at this style in Spanish art. So I have been raising the questions I would want to see answered before I formed an opinion on how the garment was worn (if I were doing that research): Are there sufficient examples of the style, how do they show it being worn, in what circumstances, by what women? What patterns arise that might indicate either actual fashion, or the use of costume by artists in an unrealistic way to achieve a goal? Artists *do* use fashions in this way, particularly in the 15th century. Yet way too often, people (even authors of respected books) take a few images and describe the costume in them as routine wear by fashionable women, without considering the patterns evident in the artwork. I raised several scenarios: The hooped skirt worn alone might be fashionable wear (but the images offered so far don't include much in the way of examples that present that straightforwardly, like portraits). It might be an indication of informal or intimate circumstances, presented either realistically (e.g. on the camp follower and a few other images) or to evoke a particular implication for a narrative scene (as is often done in religious or historical paintings). It might be associated with certain historical/religious/allegorical figures. And it's possible all of these things are true, but at different times -- e.g. fashionable wear for decade or two, then passing into art and thereafter used for certain iconographical scenes or characters long after real people stopped wearing it that way. > There are too > many women in this scene for them *all* to be attendants. What I see > here is the custom of visiting the mother following delivery to > congratulate her on a safe and happy outcome -- some of these ladies > have just arrived, so they're not in a state of undress. In fact, I > would expect them to be wearing their best on a visit of such > ceremonial importance. That is certainly one possible reading, and it's based on your own expectations and assumptions of what would happen in the event being depicted. But before you decide what's going on in the picture, it's helpful to look at other depictions of the same scene. I may be wrong, but I have guessed that this is the Birth of Mary -- not just because of the presence of haloes on certain figures, but because the layout of the picture is very much like that of other paintings from this period of the Birth of Mary by artists elsewhere in Europe. The artists followed certain patterns and conventions. And in Flanders, right about this time, I know of at least one painting that shows a sizable number of women attending Mary's birth, in a very similar layout. And at least some of them are wearing noticeably informal dress. I haven't held the two up next to each other to see differences and similarities -- I frankly don't have time or interest to dig out the other image (which could be anywhere in a long row of books), or a bunch of other Birth-of-Mary images, which is what should be done -- but just from my knowledge of the genre I can tell you the parallel is strong enough that anyone wanting to figure out what's going on in this scene, and what conventions were routinely followed among artists, should be looking at other examples and considering them. It also helps to know that there was a huge traffic of art between Burgundy and Spain in this period, so you see a lot of echoes from one place to the other. > There is another image, IIRC in a museum in France (will provide > reference later), showing Isabella and her ladies in similar gowns > with a sort of loose sleeveless overgown, open down the front. Such > an overgown would suggest that the gown with hoops on the outside is > a fashionable garment and not something that is intended to be hidden. And that's exactly the sort of information-gathering I'd hope anyone would do in the process of determining who (if anyone) wore the fashion, and in what circumstances. A handful of portraits of real women wearing hoop skirts without an overlayer would balance the handful of images we've seen in which the style is potentially being used as artistic code. Slight confusion, though: If there's an overgown in that picture, then this isn't an example of the "hoops worn without an overgown," is it? I don't think anyone -- certainly not me -- has suggested that the hooped skirt was meant to be hidden completely. We've already seen a wide range of examples of the hooped skirt visible as an underskirt; the elusive images are those of it being worn with nothing at all over it. If you thought I was suggesting that the hooped skirt was never meant to show at all, I can see why you thought I was pushing way too far. But I never thought that, said it, or sugggested it. The original poster asked a very specific question: Was the hooped skirt, in life, ever worn on the outside as fashionable wear on its own, rather than being clearly used as an underskirt, partially visible (or completely hidden) beneath an overskirt? She pointed to one image that is often used as proof of "fashionable wear" in this manner that is patently unreliable for several reasons (Salome). And while other people have offered a lot of additional examples of hooped skirt images -- with and without overskirts -- individual examples still don't answer the question of who wore it, in what manner, and when. (Emma, if I misunderstood your original question, please set me straight.) How many images do you need to feel safe drawing a conclusion? It's not a question of number, but proportion. The more examples you have of the style in question, the better you can determine whether the preponderance of them are in potentially nonrealistic contexts, or whether there's as much representation in realistic contexts as you'd see with other styles of this period. Personally, as it stands, I truly can make no guess as to what *was* done, because I haven't done the kind of study I'm suggesting that someone else (who cares about this fashion more than I do) should do. But it will take more than pointing out a few examples in paintings. --Robin not trying to be difficult, just giving a historian's perspective _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
