Welcome to the first post on VertOwl.com! I wanted to begin with a dress that would have been worn by my persona. This dress was created for Calontir’s Queen’s Prize Tournament in 2018, and the goal was to create a dress that was plausible for a Florentine noblewoman in the first quarter of the 16th Century. My next post will be the dress diary for this garment, which will include more detailed construction photos; this post is primarily the research and a general description of the construction–as well as the goals for the garment, and its social and cultural context.
Early 16th Century Florentine Hemp-Stiffened Dress Inspired by Portraiture
By Lelia Corsini
Queen’s Prize 2018
I. Summary of Documentation and Construction (Abstract)
The project is an Italian outfit incorporating the styles of multiple portraits to create a historically plausible dress, i.e. one that could have existed in Florence during the first quarter of the 16th century without being an exact recreation of a portrait. The goals are to create a dress that is plausibly Florentine, to practice skills in stiffening these dresses using two different historical or plausibly historical methods, and to ensure the dress is self-supporting.
The subsidiary pieces created for this entry and their materials are:
- An Italian gamurra style dress stiffened with hemp cord (100% linen, commercial hemp cord, commercial velvet trim);
- An underskirt (100% raw silk stiffened with 100% wool felt);
- A pair of sleeves (100% silk charmeuse lined with 100% linen, commercial velvet trim).
- Additional materials: Cotton thread, silk embroidery floss, hook and eye closures.
The entry is roughly 90% hand-sewn, with the only machine-sewn elements being load-bearing structural ones that would have wrecked the stiffening experiment if they failed. Everything else is sewn by hand using period stitches. Nearly all of the materials used are natural materials which would have been available in the Renaissance, save for the commercial velvet trim which was used for ease and cost effectiveness.
The design was based on three paintings:
- The Preaching of St. John the Baptist (1520), by Francesco d’Ubertino.
- La Donna Gravida (1505-1506) by Raffaelo Sanzio.
- A Lady with a Nosegay (1520’s), also by d’Ubertino.
Ultimately the project was successful. The silhouette matches that of the portraiture, and the decoration on the dress is evocative of Florentine fashions of the time while not being a specific copy of any individual gown. The use of hemp cording in the bodice and wool in the skirts has stiffened it as desired, and as a result the bodice is self-supporting. There were some issues to correct for next time: The cording can be seen on the surface of the bodice, and using thicker hemp will provide similar structure with a more comfortable dress.
Goals for the future will include making a similar dress that is completely hand-sewn, and using the techniques from these dresses to attempt a completely hand-sewn all silk garment.
II. Introduction and Goals
This project is an attempt to make a Florentine dress from the first quarter of the 16th century, based on several exemplar portraits. The goals of the entry were threefold:
- To create a dress that was not an exact reproduction of a specific portrait, but rather a combination of several different techniques and styles from the same period to come to a product could have existed in the time and place listed above; and
- To experiment with new techniques from the period, and represent them in the dress. These techniques are the hemp stiffened bodice and the felt stiffened underskirt, both of which are either documentable or are plausibly historical.
- To use the techniques above to create a self-supporting dress in the gamurra
III. Background
This project utilized three different portraits in order to discern different styles which were common in Florence in the early 16th century. Those three portraits were:
The Preaching of St. John the Baptist, Francesco d’Ubertino (il Bacchiacca) (1520)
La Donna Gravida (The Pregnant Woman), Raffaelo Sanzio (Raphael) (1505-1506)
A Lady with a Nosegay, Francesco d’Ubertino (1520s).
Elements of the final dress were taken from each of these three examples. The color of the dress can be seen in The Preaching of St. John the Baptist[1] as well as the color used in the sleeves and their decoration[2]. The single band of velvet trim and the general shape of the sleeve can be found in La Donna Gravida, and another example of the main body of the dress color comes from Lady with a Nosegay.
Additionally, these paintings come from two of the more prolific artists of this era of Florentine art and culture. d’Ubertino (also spelled d’Ubertini, 1494-1557)[3] was a widely influenced and influential Florentine painter who would eventually become Court Painter to Duke Cosimo de Medici[4]. Raffaello Sanzio is the famous Raphael, one of the three great masters along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo[5], who moved to Florence in 1504[6]. Together they provide numerous portraits that give a snapshot of the fashion trends of their era.
IV. Materials and Colors – Period and Entry
a. Fabric and Construction Materials
Florence, like much of Italy, was noted for its material culture—a culture of creating, wearing, and consuming wealth[7]. For Florentine women especially this culture led to wearing wealth not as a show of ostentatiousness[8] but as a show of virtue and piety. Noted Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti wrote “I will not say that poverty wholly hinders a man, but it keeps his virtue…hidden away in obscure squalor. It is thus necessary that virtue should be supplemented by the goods of fortune. Virtue ought to be dressed in those seemly ornaments that it is hard to acquire without affluence, and without an abundance of the things that some men call transient and illusory and others call practical and useful.”[9] As Florence was a center of production for silk and velvet[10] as well as a trade hub, these fabrics are the most likely ones that a woman would have worn when sitting for a portrait from noted painters like Bacchiacca or Raphael. As the portraits above show the most common style was for a solid colored dress accented with trim. The sleeves could be used to show off even more sumptuous and/or patterned fabric. This was in part related to sumptuary laws instituted in just previous generations which banned the wearing of patterned fabrics in dresses but allowed it in sleeves[11]. However it was also more economical to show off wealth through them: “It is quite possible that people reserved their most elaborate fabrics and ornamentation for these detachable sleeves (as they would get the most use of their money being able to wear them with any tunic or gown) and thus, made them the most ornate clothing articles they owned.”[12]
Linen was widely available[13] and was used extensively. While we modernly tend to think of it as being more common in the lower classes it could also be made incredibly fine and used by the nobility and was frequently used in concert with more expensive fabrics: “Much of this production was of poor quality to satisfy mass demand at the low end of the market, but the materials could also be made into goods of the highest quality, for which there was substantial demand from people who were better off. Moreover, linen was often used in combination with silk, and the growth of the silk industry in the fifteenth century may have had a significant impact on the traffic of these cheaper fibers.”[14]
The gown is made out of 100% mid-weight linen, and 100% silk charmeuse lined in linen for the sleeves. The linen was chosen for the body of the dress to provide sturdiness for the experimental nature of the dress; because this was the first time attempting to stiffen a bodice with hemp. Silk would have been more expensive and therefore more of a waste if the experiment had failed. But silk was chosen for the sleeves in order to stay true to the Florentine fashion of sumptuous sleeves. The velvet trim is the only synthetic fabric used in the dress, as it is a standard nylon velvet trim. It was chosen for its closeness to the look of the period trim. The dress was sewn with 100% cotton thread. The hemp is commercially purchased hemp cording.
The underskirt is made out of 100% raw silk. It was chosen because silk is plausible (although it would not have been raw silk for a noblewoman) and because the color visually matches that of the underdress in the first d’Umbertino portrait. The wool stiffening is 100% wool felt covered in the same raw silk as the body of the underskirt.
b. Colors
While Florence was well known for its reds[15] (including a dye[16] which cost 40 soldi[17] to dye 1 pound of silk) and blacks (also a sign of wealth due to their cost)[18], they had access to a wide variety of dyes producing a rainbow of fabric. Blues were common up to the 1520s[19], and could be seen as virtuous. “Blue lifts thought high up aloft,” wrote Fulvio Pellegrino Morato in 1555[20], and Gregorian Monks wear the color[21]. There were a number of different blues available from the rich azzurro[22], the hyacinth torchino[23], the turquoise turchino[24], or the supremely expensive alessandrino[25]. Similarly there were a variety of orange or marigold colors available including ranciato (an orange tawny color)[26], punico (translated as a red or yellow)[27], and flammeo (a flame color)[28]. These colors could be achieved with a variety of different dyes: including dyes from insects and mollusks for reds, to plants[29] and herbal sources like indigo and woad for blues[30]
The fabrics were chosen to match colors in the portraiture as closely as possible. The blue of the gown appears to be a light torchino or azzurro color. The color of the sleeves are based on the gown which appears on the front page. They were harder to pin down. It could be meant to be a red, an orange, or a marigold. The hue of silk charmeuse was chosen to match as closely as possible. The raw silk was selected to try to match a dark brown or russet colored underskirt as seen in the d’Umbertini portrait.
V. Construction
a. General Construction
The entry consists of the following parts:
- A Florentine gamurra with a hemp stiffened bodice;
- An underskirt, stiffened with wool felt in the dioppa style with wool felt; and
- Two detachable gamurra style sleeves.
The orange and red dresses in The Preaching of St. John the Baptist, as well as the dresses in La Donna Gravida and Lady with a Nosegay are gamurra, as is the project gown. Gamurra were the standard gown of Florentine women of the upper and middle classes throughout this era[31], and were “considered to be the basic version of a woman’s gown.”[32] While the gown would evolve over the rest of period, in the early 16th century it was a sleeveless gown with a fitted bodice and a full skirt. The full outfit consisted of a gamurra with tied on sleeves which, as discussed above, would almost often be contrasting and of a richer fabric if one could be afforded[33].
The gamurra would have been worn over a camicia (a chemise), and an underskirt. A partlet of sheer material could be draped over the shoulders for modesty[34], which can be seen in other portraits[35]. Over all of this would be the Mantello, a large rectangular or semi-circular piece of fabric that acted as a covering when a mature woman went outdoors. The mantello could be pulled over the head to further shield the woman and/or protect her from the elements[36].
Part of the material culture of Italy and Florence demanded that these gowns be as full as they could be given the woman’s circumstance. “Making a gamurra required 10-15 braccia[37], so gamurras with richly made fabrics therefore formed a direct indication of the economic value of a woman.”[38] That same culture dictated that wealthy women should wear gowns of a dignified length as well, and conversely, that those who were not wealthy should not. Like many medieval and renaissance societies, ankles were something only servants (or worse) showed. “It’s an old Tuscan motto: ‘He that has little cloth wears short clothes.’”[39] As early as 1322 sumptuary legislation forbid female nurses and servants from wearing gowns that touched the ground.”[40] Unlike many of her sister city-states, however, Florence did not believe that dresses should be so long that they impeded movement, creating a delicate line for tailors to walk.
The project is approximately 90% hand-sewn, using three different stitches: Whip, back, and running. Whip stitching was the primary stitch used, running stitches were used for attaching the trim, and back stitching to sew up the seams of the underskirt, dress and sleeves. Whip stitching and back stitching are the most likely stitches that would have been used in the portrait dresses. The other possibility is that the dresses would have been sewn with a running stitch, but this is less probable for two reasons. First because it would have provided significantly less stability for a dress which is made of fairly weighty fabric and lining[41], and because extant garments from slightly later in the century (albeit from England) show the use of whip stitching[42]. Nonetheless all three stitches are documented to period[43]. The only parts of the dress which were machine sewn are some structural areas in the bodice and the channels for the hemp cording. These areas were machine sewn because they were vital to the experimental parts, and needed to be specifically reinforced.
The bodice was inspired by a pattern found in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 3 and then modified to fit both the silhouette of the dress and the specific measurements required. It was drafted directly onto the body and, once a suitable fabric mockup was achieved; a paper pattern was made. The skirt and underskirt share a similar design, although the underskirt is fuller. The underskirt is just under 120 inches in circumference and the dress is 104 inches. The pattern for the sleeves came from a resource on the web which is no longer available online[44]. Five layers of linen are used in each half of the bodice: The outer blue linen layer, the two layers sewn together to make the channels in the bodice (see below on the construction of the channels), and two more layers of linen. The two additional layers of linen were added to increase the comfort of the bodice as the thin hemp cording tended to dig into the skin through only one layer of linen.
Both the dress and the underskirt are pleated with a box pleat in the front-center surrounded by knife pleats. Both kinds of pleats are found in period and were the two most common form of pleats used in Italy in this era[45]. The combination was chosen to give the dress a nice flow when recreating the fullness and look of the dresses in the portraits.
The dress itself is constructed with front and back bodice pieces joined by side-back lacing. Late 15th Century Italian gowns exhibit primarily front lacing designs[46], which start to migrate in the 16th century to a side-back design. There is no direct portrait evidence of side-back lacing, but the portraits show gowns with no lacing visible on either the front or back (such as in the d’Umbertino Preaching portrait). The best example of an extant garment, albeit from later in the 16th century, the funeral dress of Eleanor of Toledo[47], supports the design.
There are 32 hand-sewn eyelets on the dress: 12 on each side, 2 on each shoulder, and 2 on each sleeve. These were made in period fashion by poking a hole into the fabric with an awl, and sewing buttonhole stitches around the opening. The dress is laced with cotton lucet cords which were hand-made for a previous Queen’s Prize entry. The sleeves are tied with the same type of cord. The dress is designed to be spiral laced, a period form of lacing demonstrated in portraiture.
The pleats of the underskirt were sewn to a waistband of the same material. The skirt attaches on each side with hook and eye attachments, and the seams are back-stitched.
The decorative elements are the area which show the most fusion of different styles. As can be seen in the example portraits it merges several styles into a unique, but still historically supported and plausible, look. It borrows the single band of trim across the top of the bodice from La Donna Gravida, and the ‘guard’ of black velvet trim on the bottom of the dress from the dresses in The Preaching of St. John the Baptist. The design of the trim on the sleeves is also taking from Preaching, the two bands of parallel trim barely visible on the blue sleeves of the woman in the orange dress.
b. ‘Experimental’ Stiffening Elements
None of the dresses in the portraits appear to have any form of boning in them; they exhibit instead the softer curves which were part of the hallmark of the early 16th Century Italian style (at least for those parts which were not de facto Spanish)[48]. While metal or rigid boning is plausible due to influences from the rest of Europe and trade[49], they are not as common at all and especially not in the early part of the 16th century. “One explanation for this can be that the Italian fashion kept the soft lines longer than some other European regions. The square neckline of the sottana stayed in fashion almost all of the century, especially in Venice (although the doublet bodice also was adapted) and the lines of the torso not altered to the extent of the English and Spanish fashion. “[50] There are a number of theories about how they would have been stiffened, because they clearly were somehow—the lines shown in the portraits are not what one would expect from a non-stiffened bodice.
One theory, primarily popularized in the SCA by Jen Thompson and Countess Portia Vincenzo (cited above), is that they would have used hemp cord to stiffen the bodice. As Countess Portia points out “Research is sketchy about whether or not this was actually used in corsets and bodices in the 16th century, but there is solid evidence of hemp rope being used to stiffen petticoats from the mid-16th century. By the 18th century, hemp twine was definitely being used in corsets, so Jen figured that it was pretty reasonable to go with it for a 16th century corset.”[51]
There is evidence of simply using fabric to stiffen it, multiple layers to provide structure and the proper silhouette. This is an Italian practice known as the doppia, which refers to “any area of a garment where multiple layers of fabric, stiffened and padded, has been used to stiffen a particular area and can be used in either the bodice or the hem[52] (see below for discussion of the hem). There is further evidence for this in the gown of Eleanora of Toledo, whose funerary gown had velvet stays.
Hemp cording was chosen both because of its plausibility in period, and because the idea had been interesting since first encountering it around 2012.
Like with a bodice using metal or bone strays, channels were sewn to keep the hemp in place and allow it to provide the desired structure. As stated above these were machine sewn for stability in the experimental portion, each just over a quarter inch wide. Two pieces of hemp were threaded into the channel doubled over and the ends were snipped off, leaving four pieces per channel[53]. In addition to the channel being machine sewn shut the channels were zig-zag stitched for stability, as was the overall bodice before it was attached to the skirt.
The desired hemp thickness was whatever would create a self-supporting bodice; one of the other goals besides learning new techniques and expansion of knowledge. Ultimately the bodice is successful in that respect because it is self-supporting. However it was found to be somewhat uncomfortable to wear initially. The hemp ‘boning’ had a tendency to dig in to the skin painfully. An additional two layers of linen per side (front and back) were added to make the dress more comfortable.
The hem of the underskirt was stiffened for similar reasons, to provide for better lines and a fuller skirt. This was done via the Italian doppia method mentioned above. Wool felt was cut into lengths that match the circumference of the underdress, and sandwiched between layers of silk matching the garment. The additional layers and felt are stitched to the hem of the underskirt, cause the bottom of the skirt to poof slightly outward.
This kind of weighting can be observed in a variety of portraiture; it can be seen in the dark brown underskirt of the Preaching painting, as well as in the following:
1. “Portrait of a lady and a fair haired little boy”, ca. 1540, Bronzino (NGA, Washington)
2. “Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo”, 1543, Bronzino (National Gallery, Prague)
3. “Portrait of a Lady”, 1580s, Alessandro Allori (Uffizi, Florence)
4. “Portrait of Johanna of Austria and her son”, ca. 1586, Bizzelli (Uffizi, Florence)
5. The hem for the crimson Pisa dress, ca. 1560 (Palazzo Reale, Pisa)[54]
As demonstrated above the doppia would often have decorative stitching as well[55], which is a possible future improvement for this dress.
VI. Outcomes and Future Plans
Overall the project was very successful. The stiffened bodice has the desired effect of being self-supporting, and it very much looks like it could have come from one of the example portraits in terms of construction and color. The lines of the garment appear to be the correct ones, and there are things that were learned during the construction of the dress which can be used to make future Florentine dresses even more successful. Furthermore, the wool stiffened hem of the underskirt turned out so nicely that wool stiffening will be added to the blue gamurra as well.
There are some things which need to be improved in future versions of the dress. Ultimately the 1/16 inch hemp cording was too thin, which meant that more of it had to be used to achieve the same effect; this had the side effect of leaving it perhaps too stiff. Using 1/8th inch or even 1/4th inch hemp cord could possibly provide similar structure while not being painful to wear without further padding.
Additionally, in the finished dress you can see faint outlines of the hemp and channels on the outside of the bodice. This could be solved by the addition of another layer of cloth between the channels and the outer layer of the bodice, which would keep the clean line (and provide more structure when there are fewer hemp cords in the bodice).
Appendix A: Works Cited
Francesco d’Ubertino (Il Bacchiacca), The Preaching of St. John the Baptist, Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bacchiacca_-_The_Preaching_of_Saint_John_the_Baptist_-_WGA1105.jpg
Raffaelo Sanzi, La Donna Gravida, Palazzo Pitti. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_donna_gravida#/media/File:Raphael-LaDonnaGravida(1505-1506).jpg
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Francesco d’Ubertino, A Lady with a Nosegay, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/10753
Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini), Getty Art Museum, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/660/bacchiacca-francesco-ubertini-italian-florentine-1494-1557/.
Francesco Bacchiacca, The British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=133718.
Biography of Raphel, RaphaelSanzio.Org, https://www.raphaelsanzio.org/biography.html.
Mary Lavan, Objects of Devotion: The Material Culture of Italian Renaissance Piety, 1400-1600, Medievalists.Net, http://www.medievalists.net/2012/02/objects-of-devotion-the-material-culture-of-italian-renaissance-piety-1400-1600/.
Carole Collier Fleck, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, Johns Hopkins University Press (2005), page 95.
Renaissance Velvet Textiles, The Metropolitan Museum, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/velv/hd_velv.htm.
Amanda E. Facelle, Down to the Last Stitch: Sumptuary Law and Conspicuous Consumption in Renaissance Italy, Wesleyan University (Connecticut, 2009)
Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, JHU Press (2009).
Onorata Katerina da Brescia, Colours of Florence – First Half 16th Century, The Florence Files, available at http://katerina.purplefiles.net/DOCO/FlorenceColours.html
Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, Del Significato de Colori (On the Signification of Colors), 1555.
Roy Osborne, Telesio and Morato on the Meaning of Colors (Renaissance Colour Symbolism II), Lulu (2018).
The Livery of a Florentine Employee in the Fifteenth Century: The Rewards of a Lifetime of Service, 1 History of Retailing and Consumption. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2373518X.2015.1015820.
Onorata Katerina da Brescia, A Glossary of Colours in Sixteenth Century Italian, Realm of Venus, available at http://realmofvenus.renaissanceitaly.net/library/colours.htm.
Renaissance Dancewear, An Historical Overview of Dyes, Dying, and Fabric Colors in the Renaissance, http://renaissancedancewear.com/fabric_colors_in_the_renaissance.html.
Anea Costumes, Dressing the Italian Way, available at http://aneafiles.webs.com/glossary.html.
Raffaelo Sanzi, Portrait of Maddalena Doni, Palazzo Pitti. https://www.wga.hu/html_m/r/raphael/2firenze/1/31doni2.html
Sarah Thursfield, Medieval Tailor’s Assistant: Common Garments 1100-1480, Crowood (2015).
Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 3, MacMillan (1985).
Tammie L. Dupuis, Basic Hand Sewing Techniques, The Renaissance Tailor. http://www.renaissancetailor.com/demos_handtech.htm.
Jen Thompson, Festive Attyre, from a section of the website no longer hosted online. It can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20120410044631/http://www.festiveattyre.com/research/diary/images/sleevepattern.gif
Drea Leed, Period Pleats, ElizabethanCostume.Net. http://www.elizabethancostume.net/pleats/.
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Lady, The Clark Museum. https://www.clarkart.edu/Collection/4412
Realm of Venus, Extant Clothing. http://realmofvenus.renaissanceitaly.net/workbox/extwomclo2.htm
Countess Portia Vincenzo, Portia’s Primers: Corsetry, Barony of Ynys Fawr. https://ynysfawr.lochac.sca.org/files/pdf/Portias-Primers.pdf
Anea Costumes, To Stay or Not to Stay. https://aneafiles.webs.com/renaissancegallery/stays.html
Anea Costumes, The Joys of a Stiffened Hem, available at https://aneafiles.webs.com/renaissancegallery/doppia.html
Endnotes
[1] The woman in blue sitting in the bottom middle-left.
[2] The woman in the orange dress in the bottom right, who appears larger on the front page of this documentation.
[3] Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini), Getty Art Museum, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/660/bacchiacca-francesco-ubertini-italian-florentine-1494-1557/.
[4] Francesco Bacchiacca, The British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=133718.
[5] Biography of Raphel, RaphaelSanzio.Org, https://www.raphaelsanzio.org/biography.html.
[6] Ibid.
[7] An example can be found at: Mary Lavan, Objects of Devotion: The Material Culture of Italian Renaissance Piety, 1400-1600, Medievalists.Net, http://www.medievalists.net/2012/02/objects-of-devotion-the-material-culture-of-italian-renaissance-piety-1400-1600/.
[8] Although it certainly was ostentatious; a yard of silk velvet brocade could cost 20 florins, while a middle class family of four could comfortably live on 56 florins per year. See Carole Collier Fleck, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, Johns Hopkins University Press (2005), page 95. Herinafter ‘Fleck’.
[9] Fleck, 77-78.
[10]Renaissance Velvet Textiles, The Metropolitan Museum, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/velv/hd_velv.htm.
[11] Amanda E. Facelle, Down to the Last Stitch: Sumptuary Law and Conspicuous Consumption in Renaissance Italy, Wesleyan University (Connecticut, 2009)
[12] Ibid.
[13] Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, JHU Press (2009), page 296. “Flax was one of the most common agricultural crops in the countryside around Florence, and a cottage industry producing linen grew up organized around the households of the people who worked the land…The production, almost all of it for local consumption, surfaces in many of the 1427 catasto reports submitted by urban residents who owned land in the countryside.”
[14] Ibid.,
[15] Onorata Katerina da Brescia, Colours of Florence – First Half 16th Century, The Florence Files, available at http://katerina.purplefiles.net/DOCO/FlorenceColours.html
[16] Kermes or Chermisi, which was “never wasted on inferior fabrics.” Fleck, 101.
[17] A small unit of currency equal to 1/20th of a Florin.
[18] Fleck, 101.
[19] Onorata Katerina da Brescia, above at 15.
[20] Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, Del Significato de Colori (On the Signification of Colors), 1555.
[21] Roy Osborne, Telesio and Morato on the Meaning of Colors (Renaissance Colour Symbolism II), Lulu (2018), 78.
[22] The Livery of a Florentine Employee in the Fifteenth Century: The Rewards of a Lifetime of Service, 1 History of Retailing and Consumption 47-62, 55. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2373518X.2015.1015820.
[23] Osborne, above at 20, 78.
[24] Ibid.
[25] A blue dye requiring three different dye baths of individually expensive dies. See Fleck, 101.
[26] See Onorata Katerina da Brescia, A Glossary of Colours in Sixteenth Century Italian, Realm of Venus, available at http://realmofvenus.renaissanceitaly.net/library/colours.htm.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Fleck, 101.
[30] Renaissance Dancewear, An Historical Overview of Dyes, Dying, and Fabric Colors in the Renaissance, http://renaissancedancewear.com/fabric_colors_in_the_renaissance.html.
[31] Anea Costumes, Dressing the Italian Way, available at http://aneafiles.webs.com/glossary.html. Herinafter ‘Anea Glossary’.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] See, e.g. Portrait of Maddalena Doni, Rafael, at https://www.wga.hu/html_m/r/raphael/2firenze/1/31doni2.html.
[36] Anea Glossary.
[37] A unit of measurement for fabric roughly equivalent to one yard of fabric, but cut narrower than modern bolts. Fleck, 95.
[38] Anea Glossary.
[39] Fleck, page 90.
[40] Id.
[41] Sarah Thursfield, Medieval Tailor’s Assistant: Common Garments 1100-1480, Crowood (2015). Herinafter ‘Thursfield’.
[42] See, e.g., Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 3, MacMillan (1985), page 27. Herinafter ‘Arnold’.
[43] Tammie L. Dupuis, Basic Hand Sewing Techniques, The Renaissance Tailor, available at http://www.renaissancetailor.com/demos_handtech.htm.
[44] Jen Thompson, Festive Attyre, from a section of the website no longer hosted online. It can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20120410044631/http://www.festiveattyre.com/research/diary/images/sleevepattern.gif
[45] Drea Leed, Period Pleats, ElizabethanCostume.Net, available at http://www.elizabethancostume.net/pleats/.
[46] See, e.g., “Portrait of a Lady” Ghirlandaio (1480), available at http://sophie-stitches.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/6/6/1166132/2523477_orig.jpg.
[47] Realm of Venus, Extant Clothing, http://realmofvenus.renaissanceitaly.net/workbox/extwomclo2.htm.
[48] Countess Portia Vincenzo, Portia’s Primers: Corsetry, Barony of Ynys Fawr, page 8. Available at https://ynysfawr.lochac.sca.org/files/pdf/Portias-Primers.pdf. Hereinafter ‘Portia’.
[49] Anea Costumes, To Stay or Not to Stay, available at https://aneafiles.webs.com/renaissancegallery/stays.html. Hereinafter ‘Anea Stays’.
[50] Anea Stays.
[51] Portia.
[52] Anea Costumes, The Joys of a Stiffened Hem, available at https://aneafiles.webs.com/renaissancegallery/doppia.html. Hereinafter ‘Anea Hem’.
[53] The doubling over and snipping was to solve the problem of four individual strands being too difficult to get into a single channel.
[54] Anea Hem.
[55] Ibid.