> michaela de bruce wrote: >>> There's a nice book on Spanish costume, entitled [strangely enough] >>> "Hispanic Costume 1480- 1530" by R. M. Anderson (1979), where the >>> author has pulled together artwork of the period and grouped it by >>> garment type to show the development of styles. It's a great place >>> to get started if you're interested in this era. >> >> And it's more than just a picture book;) There are samples of texts >> that collaborate what is seen in art. > > It sounds like that's the book to have. Textual analysis adds a world of > meaning. > >> There are examples real people wearing what the saints do in the >> artwork and vice versa- to a degree anyway, there are probably symbols >> in the costume to signify these are important people from the past. I >> have seen hoops on figures depicting real women but they had the four >> panel over skirt on top. > > And that brings us back to the question that started this discussion: > Whether > it was a popular fashion to wear the hoop skirt alone, rather than an > underlayer. > >> More hoops as per the Salome image: >> http://www.oronoz.com/leefoto.php?referencia=15099 > > Although this is another Biblical image, it does make me think that > perhaps > the key is not simply real vs. biblical/historical/allegorical, but also > the > nature of the setting and the mood the artist wanted to evoke. This > appears to > be a Birth of Mary image, and the scene takes place in the confines of a > lady's chamber, with only other ladies in attendance. That's a > circumstance > where it might make sense for upper-class women to be without their formal > overgowns. > > It may be that showing these women without overskirts reflects the > artist's > intent to show the intimacy of the scene. If so, the style might be > "real," > but that doesn't mean it would be considered fashionable for women to have > appeared in hoops without overskirts on the street, or at dinner, or at > church. > > Among the handful of other images shown so far of women in hoops without > overskirts was a camp follower (what some would call a "laundress") with > soldiers -- it was hard to make out detail, but perhaps she was > deliberately > portrayed as such to give the overtone of half-dress or intimacy (or lack > of > modesty!) > > I think there's very likely a layer of meaning here that viewers of the > artwork would have understood -- just as people in some not-so-distant > cultures would read loads of meaning in the presence and number of aprons > a > woman wore. Or think about styles for men of a century ago, and the > difference > between depicting one in a full suit, as opposed to with his jacket off > and > shirt-sleeves showing. In any of these contexts, artists could use the > recognized implications of layers of dress to signify something about the > setting or the characters. > > The 15th c. Flemish painters did as much with the recurring presentation > of > women in short-sleeved underdresses, worn without a formal overdress, with > or > without added sleeves to cover the chemise sleeves on the lower half of > the > arms. You never see this in formal portraits, but you do see the style on > realistic working women, AND on upper-class women in private scenes (in > fact, > I can think of one in another Birth of Mary), AND also as visual code to > signify certain Biblical figures (notably Mary Magdalen). > > Does Anderson say anything about the circumstances in which the hoop-alone > style appears in artwork, or does she just refer to it as one option of > wearing the clothing, without discussion of the context in which that > would > have been done? > > --Robin >
I couldn't help noticing in the early link with loads of images (http://jessamynscloset.com/15thgallery.html) that the Salome with outside hoops is from a Catalan picture, and the Salome with hoops on the underskirt is from Madrid (not Catalan). Further down there's another image of a fairly ordinary looking woman (dating from nearly 100 yrs later mind you) who also looks like she's got her hoops on the outside and is listed as being from Barcelona (ie Catalan). Catalonia has always been a pretty independent part of Spain (it was part of the Kingdom of Aragon at the time of the Salomes). Is it possible that the hoops on the outside are a Catalan fashion? Claire _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
