So, maybe this was a hairstyle, as shown in another picture in an earlier post today, with the roll actually made of hair and wrapped with pearls and jeweled hairpins stuck in along the roll. Dang, I don't have that much hair!
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Patricia Dunham Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 5:58 PM To: Historical Costume Subject: [h-cost] Laudonia in color WAS: Primary source for Elizabethan pillbox hats sought >I had asked Lynn McMasters and she says that it is based off an Italian >portrait. >http://lynnmcmasters.com/LadyM.html >in color and a wee bit larger. >http://tinyurl.com/yt6hg9 Some lurking! Thanks to those folks who tried to make me feel better about clunky, non-visual writing problems -- apparently your kind reassurances worked <G>. DISCLAIMER: The following is not meant to rant or peck at anyone, just a statement of our opinions and interpretations. We went hunting for a color version too, without having checked all of otsisto's links! Bad! Anyway, we found another(?) color version of the original B&W Laudonia portrait with more information about the painting, here http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudomia_de%27_Medici. This is an Italian wiki page for "Laudomia de Medici", note the spelling of the first name: an M not an N as in the caption on Lynn's page (which was probably a typo from where she found the B&W, or something about transfering the name from Italian to French or whatever the original language of the B&W source page was). OPINION: TO OUR EYES, ON OUR COMPUTER SCREENS, (especially when you enlarge the Italian Wiki picture) it appears from all color versions that the body of the dress is black, but the hair is lighter, reddish, both in front of the solid line of pearls and beyond the pearls. It looks to us like what is "behind" the solid pearl line is also the reddish of the hair color. Not that you can trust scans for this sort of thing; we've found paintings in multiple versions with wildly varying color values! This is completely not-obvious from the B&W version, where the hair and whatever is "behind" the pearl line all looks the same color as the body of the dress. We also noticed that the B&W version is cut off right at the top of the head, but the color versions show space above the head. What we noticed about that was that there was a flat line across the top of the back of the head, not a continuation of the rounded-appearance of the shape beyond the pearls that shows at the side of the head. This would seem, to us, to accord with the perception of hair being gathered to the back of the head in some kind of unstructured containment, like a jeweled caul, for example, where the natural weight of the hair could make a "flat" at the top, but the body/volume of the hair would make a rounded filling below the top of the head, at the sides, as is seen in both color and B&W versions. FYI, for those who don't read Italian <G>, the Medici family tree here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici_family_tree shows where the 2 Laudomia's occur and their aunt/niece relationship. Look down the Lorenzo line on the far right. While hunting Bronzino's on-line, we actually did find one item that looked possibly pillbox-like, even to us. About 40%? of the way down this page http://dressdiary.blogspot.com/2008/11/italian-renaissance-portraits.html there is Lorenzo Costa's Portrait of a Woman with a Pearl Necklace. It does also appear to involve a gauzey veil or tie or SOMETHING over the pearled surface, but the outline is as close to a "pillbox" as we've seen. Of course, it is also Italian, and probably ca. 1500, which is not exactly "Elizabethan"... Will stop while I am, hopefully, ahead. Chimene _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
