Back from a weekend trip and responding to a bunch of posts on this thread.
The frontal piece on the sideless surcote shows up around 1380. This is also the point at which the garment has all but faded from depictions of "ordinary" noblewomen, and is typically found only on royalty/royal family. (Margaret, as duchess of Burgundy, counted as royal.) Also, the later you go, the more the appearances of the surcote are limited to ceremonial occasions (e.g. coronations) and formal portraits (including funerary and donor figures). So while this may be a "garment of the period," it is not something routinely worn outside a certain class level and context.
The frontal piece is referred to as a placket or plastron in various modern books, but I don't know of a specific name for it in the period. In fact, the sideless surcote itself does not seem to have had a specific name other than "sucote" -- a word applied to many styles of overgarments.
There's a range of variation in details of the surcote as portrayed in this period. Even before the frontal piece shows up, you may see a line of jewels or other decoration down the front, which gets more common after the addition of the frontal piece. Sometimes the piece hangs noticeably over the back; sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the arm openings appear squared in either front or back, but more often rounded (and the perceived angle may have as much to do with the hang of the opening). Sometimes the back of the surcote is wide, sometimes narrow. However, to my knowledge, by the time the surcote acquires the frontal piece, both the piece and the edging around the opening are always presented as being fur. There may be an exception somewhere, but I cannot think of one, and if there is, it would be quite atypical.
Audrey wrote:
Sideless surcoats were stylized in this way in the later centuries. They were illustrated on statues and other visual documents always being worn by royalty, and often with this kind of placket in the later centures, long after they stopped being worn. I suspect what you're looking at is some kind of allegory or imagery, not actual clothing of the period. But... I'm no expert, just going on memory of other discussions on this list and others.
At the relatively early date of this particular statue (1383), the surcote was probably still worn, at least by royalty. It is later that it appears to become fossilized in artwork, and the depictions less and less rooted in any reality whatsoever. This is something I charted out in much more detail in a paper presentation in 1994, and have talked about a lot on this list, so that may be where you've picked it up. (I also discuss this in a lecture that I've done on the road fairly frequently.) I hope that a proper writeup will be my next published paper, but as I've collected another few hundred examples of surcotes in the last 15 years, I'll have to redo my database completely first to encompass the entire set, before I can begin writing it all up. I can note, however, that I haven't seen anything that contradicts the conclusions from my original analysis.
--Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
