Back to Salome again, but only briefly, as I am loaded with work and will not
be able to pursue this thread further (I spent way too much time online this
week).
Suzanne wrote (among many other things in a very thoughtful and helpful post):
I suggest that we break up the question into 2 parts:
(1) WHO was Salome? In the 21st century, what does everybody know
about her? In the 15th century, what did everybody know about her?
(2) WHAT is she wearing in this depiction? Is this style ever seen
any where else? Does it have an iconographic meaning?
That last question is probably even more important than the first one. What
people knew about a religious character or story in the 15th century is the
starting point; the key element for our purposes (interpreting an image) is
how that knowledge became translated -- and cemented -- in artwork. And
iconographic conventions don't always match historical, religious, or
theological understanding. Sometimes they are holdovers from earlier eras.
Sometimes they are the result of confusion. (Consider the images of Catherine
of Alexandria that show her with a wedding ring in the Mystic Marriage.
Whoops -- that's Catherine of Siena's story. Oh well.)
So, before I would feel comfortable stating what is going on in a picture like
this one, I'd want to be reasonably familiar with how artists of that place
and time handled that particular scene, so I could determine what elements of
the scene were routinely repeated, and how this artist followed that
convention, and where he chose to depart from it.
I'm afraid I don't know Salome images from 15th c. Spain. And I have not made
a significant study of Salome depictions overall (as I have with some other
figures). However, I do know enough Salome representations from elsewhere and
elsewhen in Europe to hazard some guesses on *possibilities* that may be at
play in the mind of a 15th c. artist.
Salome might be considered, and represented, as:
-- a historical figure
-- a religious figure
-- a foreigner
-- an evildoer (I know, she was just doing what her mother said, but she's
still seen as an evildoer because she was instrumental in John the Baptist's
death)
-- a dancer
-- a princess.
Thus a medieval artist might draw on any of these themes in dressing Salome;
the choice would depend in large part on what was customary for presentations
of that scene in his place and time.
More than one of these devices might be present at once. I have seen a c. 1300
English illumination that depicts Salome as a dancer in one panel (and this
is where informal dress comes into play, as she was wearing only an
undergown in that scene) and as a princess in the adjacent panel, on the
same page. In early 15th c. France, the Limbourg brothers gave her an odd
little tiara (which might have meant foreigner or might have meant
princess; it's hard to tell), and dressed her in a currently fashionable
gown but added stripes of a type that, elsewhere in the book, appear on
Biblical/historical/exotic figures -- and, interestingly, on a couple of
dancing girls. (The history of stripes as a real-life marker for prostitutes
may be relevant here as well.) Yet I have seen many, many people look at this
Salome image and assume that because the gown is of the fashionable style, the
stripes must be evidence of contemporary fashionable decoration. No -- they
are some sort of marker for her character.
It would be quite extraordinary for Salome to be unmarked in 15th c. Spanish
art; there is certainly something, maybe many things, about her dress in this
scene that are there specifically to differentiate her from the contemporary
fashionable woman. But without knowing what is considered normal, and what
shows up in other religious art, and particularly what shows up in other
Salome scenes, I can only guess at which elements are the ones you cannot
trust. The hoop skirt might be one such element. Or it might not -- it might
be currently fashionable dress in the Catalan style. The point is, this
picture will never tell us, because Salome's depiction is deviant by
definition. By the time you know enough (from a study of other artwork) to
know how to interpret it, you'll have better evidence from elsewhere. Other
artwork could eventually show us how to interpret Salome's dress, but Salome's
dress can't tell us much in itself.
This post is already longer than I intended, so I'll add just one small
clarification. Suzanne wrote:
Going on to question #2, since the painting in question shows
everyone fully dressed, right down to their hair and jewellery, I
don't see any reason to re-interpret this as an informal scene. And
for reasons that I stated yesterday, I don't believe that the other
[non-Salome] depictions shared by list-members need to be interpreted
as informal scenes.
It seems I was not clear in what I meant by informal. I was not referring to
the *scenes* as informal
