Renaissance men cut fashionable figures at court. Indeed, Renaissance power depended on rulers being suitably dressed, and thus the political import of men’s adornment and attire can hardly be overstated.
Bibliography
Below is a list of the material related to the themes of the project: Textiles, Trade, and Meaning, referred to in each of the essays on this site. An extensive bibliography on Isabella d’Este more specifically is maintained by the IDEA (Isabella d’Este Archive) team. To access the IDEA bibliography, click here. Readers can refer also to the reference list and/or footnotes within each essay.
Primary source material
IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive at http://isabelladeste.web.unc.edu.
d’Este, Isabella. Selected Letters. Edited and translated by Deanna Shemek. Toronto: Iter Press, 2017.
Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Inv. b. 400, Codice Stivini - Inventario delle gioie di Isabella d'Este.
Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, (1516-1532), translated by Barbara Reynolds. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
Beltrami, Luca (editor). La guardaroba di Lucrezia Borgia: dall'Archivio di Stato di Modena. Milano: Tip. Umberto Allegretti, 1903.
Castiglione, Baldassare. Il Cortegiano.
Cerruti, A. “Il corredo nuziale di Bianca M. Sforza-Visconti: Sposa dell’imperatore Massimiliano I.” Archivio storico lombardo, II (1875): 51-75.
Coryat, Thomas. Coryat’s Crudities, vol. I. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905.
Fonte, Moderata. The Worth of Women, ed. and trans. Virginia Cox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Ghirardo, Diane. Lettere di Lucrezia Borgia (1494-1519), compiled in collaboration with Enrico Angiolini. Mantova: MIBACT-Direzione Generale Archivi & Trelune Edizione, 2020.
Mores Italiae 1575: Costume and Life in the Renaissance, edited by Valeria Finucci and Maurizio Rippa Bonati. Cittadella: Biblos, 2007.
Newett, Margaret M (translator). Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1907.
Orzechowski, S. Panagyricus nuptiarum Sigismundi Augusti Poloniae Regis: Priore correctior et longe locupletior. Addita est in fine Bonae Reginae luculenta laus. Cracoviae, 1553.
Rebora, Giovanni (editor) Un manuale di tintoria del quattrocento. Milan: Dott. A. Giuffrè Editore, 1970.
Rosetti, Gioanventura. Plictho de larte de tentori che insegna tenger pani telle banbasi et sede si per larthe magiore come per la comune. Vinegia: Agustino Bindoni, 1548.
Stivini, Odoardo. Le Collezioni Gonzaga: L’inventario dei beni del 1540–1542, ed. Daniela Ferrari. Milan: Silvana, 2003.
Tamalio, Raffaele. Ferrante Gonzaga alla corte spagnola di Carlo V: nel carteggio privato con Mantova (1523-1526) : la formazione da “cortegiano” di un generale dell’Impero. Mantova: G. Arcari, 1991.
Tamalio, Raffaele, ed. Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I di Francia nel carteggio privato con Mantova (1515-1517). Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1994.
Vecellio, Cesare. The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, edited and translated by Margaret F. Rosenthal and Ann Rosalind Jones. London: Thames and Hudson, 2008.
Secondary Material
Baum, Margaux and Margaret Scott. Fashion and Clothing. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2016.
Blonde et al., (editors) Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.
Browne, Clare. Lace from the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V & A Publications, 2004.
Buss, Chiara (editor). Silk Gold Crimson: Secrets and Technology at the Visconti and Sforza Courts. Milano: Silvana, 2009.
—— (editor). Silk Gold Incarnadine: Luxury and Devotion in Lombardy Under Spanish Rule. Cesano Maderno (MB): ISAL, 2012.
—— . ‘Half-Tints in Italy in 1628: An Unusual Book of Samples from the Milan State Archives’. In Inventories of Textiles – Textiles in Inventories: Studies on Late Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, edited by Thomas Ertl and Barbara Karl, 165-200. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017.
Calabi, Donatella. "Renewal of the Shop System: Italy in the Early Modem Period." In Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Blondé et al., 51-62. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.
Campbell, T. P. Tapestry in the Renaissance: art and magnificence (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 2002), 397–399.
Chambers, David and and Jane Martineau (editors). Splendours of the Gonzaga. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, exhibition catalogue. Milan: Cisinello Balsamo, 1981.
Cockram, Sarah. “Isabella d’Este’s Sartorial Politics.” In Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women, edited by Erin Griffey. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.
Condra, Jill. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing Through World History: 1501 – 1800. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.
Croizat, Yassana C. “‘Living Dolls’: François Ier Dresses His Women.” Renaissance Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2007): 94–130. https://doi.org/10.1353/ren.2007.0027.
Crowston, Clare Haru. Fabricating Women. The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Currie, Elizabeth. Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence. London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
—— . “Diversity and Design in the Florentine Tailoring Trade, 1550-1620.” In The Material Renaissance, edited by Michelle O'Malley and Evelyn Welch, 154-73. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
—— . "Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the Clothing Trade in Florence from the Mid-Sixteenth to Early Seventeenth Centuries.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39, 3 (Fall 2009): 483-509
de Maria, Blake. “Multifaceted Endeavors: Jewelry and Gemstones in Renaissance Venice.” In Reflections on Renaissance Venice: A Celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown, edited by Mary E. Frank and Blake de Maria, 119-31. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2013.
Earnshaw, Pat. A Dictionary of Lace. New York: Dover, 1999.
Fabiański, M. "Renaissance Nudes as 'materia exercendae virtutis'? A Contemporary Account of the Royal Tapestries in Cracow." Artibus et Historiae 32 (2011): 243–276.
—— ."On King, Priest and Wanton Girls. Looking at Flemish Renaissance Tapestries in Kraków." Source. Notes in the History of Art 29 (2010): 8–14
Finucci, Valeria. “Intellectual Tourism in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy: Costume and Manners in Venice and Padua.” In Mores Italiae: Costume and Life in the Renaissance, 37-77. Cittadella: Biblos, 2007.
Griffey, Erin (editor). Fashioning Women at the Early Modern Court (1450-1700): Sartorial Politics (Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019.
Hennel-Bernasikowa, M. and M. Piwocka, Katalog arrasów króla Zygmunta Augusta. Kraków: Zamek Królewski na Wawelu, 2017.
Herald, Jacqueline. Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400-1500. London: Bell and Hyman, 1981.
Hohti, Paula. “Dress, Dissemination, and Innovation: Artisan Fashions in Sixteenth-and Early Seventeenth-Century Italy.” In Fashioning the Early Modern, edited by Evelyn Welch, 143-65. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Holc, J. and A. Włochowicz. "The Arrases of Wawel: the Polish Royal Castle in Krakow." Fibres & Textiles in Eastern Europe, 54 (2005): 85–87.
Janicki, M. A. "Imagines biblijne, alegoryczne, historyczne i heraldyczne zamawiane dla Zygmunta Augusta w świetle kilku zapisów rachunkowych z lat 1547–1548 (przyczynek do genezy królewskiej kolekcji arrasów)." In Amicissima: studia Magdalenae Piwocka oblata, edited by Grażyna Korpal, 139–151. Kraków: Fundacja Nomina Rosae Ogród Kultury Dawnej, 2010.
Jones, Ann Rosalind. “`Worn in Venice and throughout Italy’: The Impossible Present in Cesare Vecellio’s Costume Books.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39, 3 (Fall 2009): 511-44.
—— . “Labor and Lace: The Crafts of Giacomo’s Franco’s Habiti delle donne Venetiane.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 17, 2 (Fall 2014): 399-425.
Kovesi, Catherine. “Brought to Heel? A Short History of Failed Attempts to Bring Down the High-Heeled Shoe in Venice and Beyond.” Vestoj 6 (2015): 65-69.
Kovesi Killerby, Catherine. Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200-1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Laughran, Michelle A. and Andrea Vianello. “‘Grandissima Gratia’: The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear.“ In Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, edited by Bella Mirabella, 253-92. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Levi Pisetzky, Rosita. Il costume e la moda nella cocietà italiana. Torino: G. Einaudi, 1978.
Levy, Santina M. Lace. A History. London: Maney, 1983.
Luzio, Allesandro and Rodolfo Renier. "Il lusso di Isabella d’Este." Nuova Antologia 147 (1896): 441–469; 148 (1896): 294–324; 149 (1896): 261–286, 666-88.
Mauger Colbert, Ann, Kathleen M. Rassuli and Laura Farlow Dix. “Marketers, Dolls and the Democratization of Fashion." Proceedings of the Biennial Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing 8 (1997): 113-121.
Mikhaila, Ninya and Jane Malcolm-Davies. The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing sixteenth-century dress, London: Batsford, 2006.
Modesti, Adelina. "Nun Artisans, Needlecraft, and Material Culture in the Early Modern Florentine Convent". In Artiste nel chiostro. Produzione artistica nei monasteri femminili in età moderna, edited by Sheila Barker and Luciano Cinelli, 53-71. Special issue of Memorie Domenicane, n. 46. Florence: Nerbini 2015.
—— . “‘Nelle mode le più novelle'. The latest fashion trends (textiles, clothing and luxury fabrics) at the court of Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere of Tuscany". In Telling Objects. Contextualizing the role of the consort in early modern Europe, edited by Jill Bepler and Svante Norrhem, 107-29. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018.
—— . Women's Patronage and Gendered Cultural Networks in Early Modern Europe: Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. London and New York: Routledge, 2019.
Molà, Luca. The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Muzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. “Sumptuous Shoes: Making and wearing in medieval Italy.” In Shoes: A history from Sandals to Sneakers, edited by Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil, 50-75. Oxford; New York: Berg, 2006.
——. “Reconciling the Privilege of a Few with the Common Good: Sumptuary Laws in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39, 3 (Fall 2009): 597-617.
O’Malley, Michelle. “A Pair of Little Gilded Shoes: Commission, Cost, and Meaning in Renaissance Footwear.” Renaissance Quarterly 63 (2010): 45-83.
O’Malley, Michelle and Evelyn Welch. The Material Renaissance. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
Orsi Landini, Roberta and Bruna Niccoli. Moda a Firenze, 1540-1580: lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la sua influenza. Firenze: Pagliai Polistampa, 2005.
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—— . “Fashion, Custom, and Culture in Two Early-Modern Illustrated Albums." In Mores Italiae, edited by Valeria Finucci and Maurizio Rippa Bonati, 79-107. Citadella: Biblos, 2007.
—— . “Fashions of Friendship in an Early Modern Illustrated Album Amicorum: British Library, MS Egerton 1191.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39, 3 (Fall 2009): 619-41.
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—— . "Arrasy Zygmunta Augusta w świetle antwerpskiej Certificatieboek z roku 1560." In Polska i Europa w dobie nowożytne, edited by T. Bernatowicz, 29-35. Warszawa, 2009.
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NAVIGATE
As I like it: Portraits of patrons in paper and paint
This essay explores Quattrocento and Cinquecento portraits of patrons such as Isabella d’Este in paintings and print. In particular, he examines how patrons exploited both scribal and print technologies, to enhance possibilities for self-expression within courts and across a broader range of networks.
Sourcing Clothes
Furs
Image List
Headdress (Zazara)
Sleeves, colour and berettino
Lace
Isabella’s undergarments
Spanish heels and golden brocade: Isabella visits Venice
Diplomacy of Scent and Makeup
Isabella d’Este: Fashion Innovator and Trendsetter
A Dodo in the Garden of Eden: Tapestries and Italian Influence at the Polish Court
Patronage and piety: portraits of Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia
Fashion Dolls
Jewellery
Political Self-Fashioning in the Portraits of Isabella d'Este
Germanic Fashions
Dolls, fashion, and diplomacy
Isabella d’Este had a noted reputation for procuring and using exotic and luxurious materials for self-representation. As a leading figure of the Italian Renaissance, other elite men and women sought her counsel and assistance when looking to build their own wardrobes or obtain the contacts necessary to buy appropriate or on-trend fabrics.