Isabella d’Este: Fashion Innovator and Trendsetter
Via the nephew of the Royal barber we have had a letter from your ladyship and six silk and gold snoods in the latest fashion … we pray Your Ladyship to let us know when some new style of binding the head happens and to send us something that is pretty and pleases you, for we are sure you never miss anything as Your Ladyship is the source and origin of all the loveliest fashions in Italy (Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland, 15 June 1523) [1]
Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua (1474 - 1539), was both a keen observer of regional Italian and European dress and the creator of innovative fashions. Her own unique, self-constructed, and often unconventional attire was under constant scrutiny, often widely discussed during her travels, in her correspondence, and among foreign rulers and individuals who emulated her distinctive colour choices, accessories, textile textures and surface decorations. Many accessories were conceived of or redesigned by her, such as the balzo (also known as the zazara), the fine silk one-piece veil (velo), perfumed gloves (guanti profumati) and fur pelt (zibellino) [2]. This essay will examine the endurance and representation of these fashion innovations (balzo, veil, fan, perfumed gloves, and zibellino) for women in the prints and commentaries in Cesare Vecellio’s noted costume book, Degli habiti antichi et moderni (1590) and in a selection of illustrated alba amicorum that were compiled in the decades after Isabella’s death in 1539. Both print and manuscript mediums played very important roles in advertising new styles as did urban peddlers and mercers in making them available to interested customers [3]. These visual mediums reveal that Isabella’s fashion innovations were adopted not only by members of her own courts in Ferrara and Mantua, and in nearby Padua and Venice, but traversed distant geographical regions across Europe. As trends, they influenced a wide array of social registers both in the courts of Italy and in other countries throughout Europe.
When the Queen of Poland, Bona Sforza, designates Isabella as the ‘source and origin of all the loveliest fashions in Italy,’ what does she mean by this statement? While Isabella’s fashion choices served personal and political goals, as Sarah Cockram has written [4], fashion in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not depend solely on trickle-down emulation or a top-down process initiated by one specific group or individual. New forms of information exchange about clothing, dress and fashion, such as the printed costume book, illustrated album amicorum, and fashion albums in manuscript form, were owned, assembled and carried throughout Europe by merchants, soldiers, patrons, university students, travellers and tourists [5]. Illustrated alba amicorum, in particular, disseminated detailed colour images about fashion innovations and trends at a faster pace, with greater regularity, and to a more diverse group of individuals than printed costume books or the circulation of commissioned painted portraits. The clothing images contained in their pages therefore supplement what we learn about fashionable dress in private correspondence, diplomatic reports, and inventories because of the variety of colors, types of fabrics, and accessories they depict that were available to an ever-widening group of people. They also call attention to the collaborative processes by which ideas about fashionable dress circulated among university students, patrons, manufacturers, tailors, mercers and urban peddlers who produced and disseminated fashionable goods upon market demand [6].
By the end of the sixteenth century, the means of transmission and communication about fashionable attire was further enhanced by the introduction of ‘numerous printed and hand-written newsletters [which] moved between different European cities, taking advantage of a well-managed postal network’ [7]. Indeed, Isabella constantly looked for special international products that were ‘difficult to obtain in either Mantua or Ferrara: the highest quality cloth, particularly black and blue velvets whose popularity at the French court was renowned’ [8].
Fig. 1 ‘Venetian Courtesans in a Gondola rowed by servants’. From Künstliche Wolgerissene… (Frankfurt, 1582). London, The British Library © British Library Board, MS Eg. 1208, fol. 19.
Isabella’s desire to accumulate knowledge about fashion trends from elsewhere in Europe was so that she would look like no one else. As Welch points out, ‘Isabella very deliberately did not want to blend in. She wanted to stand out. Only the highest quality would do’ [9]. Therefore, she collaborated closely with agents, mercers, artisans, and tailors in the acquisition, construction, design and dissemination of luxury goods that placed her in a position whereby men and women looked to her for advice on what to buy and wear. By joining skilled artisans in the design process, she set in motion an expansive and varied social and trade fashion network both in Italy and beyond that depended on the frequent interaction of agents, producers, manufacturers and consumers. Her tailors, for example, responded swiftly to her highly discerning tastes and design ideas. From the late fifteenth through the sixteenth century, Italian tailors increasingly shaped garments to the body and were central to the process of dressing; they chose and collected textiles for their clients directly from merchants and mercers [10]. In this way, they helped shape and influence personal aesthetic choices with new cuts and with new combinations of colours, fabrics, and ornamentation. Elizabeth Currie states that in Florence ‘tailors were viewed on a par in financial terms with artists who were admired for their design skills’ [11]. They were also able to expand their trade by responding energetically to competition from northern Europe and by encouraging the production of locally-made fabrics that were less expensive than those imported from other countries. Cheaper silks were adorned by specialist craftsmen whom tailors subcontracted to apply a wide range of haberdashery and ornaments [12]. Therefore, to wear specific fabrics, styles of dress, and accessories did not always translate into adhering to the prescribed dress of one’s region as the sole marker of one’s identity, wealth, or social status. Indeed, John Styles defines dress as ‘a material language, capable of being manipulated by the wearers and read by those who observe them’ [13]. Evelyn Welch adds that the innovator worked with specialists to create a fashionable object. In this specific sense, Isabella d’Este, was both an innovator and a trendsetter because she gathered information beyond the courts of northern Italy and then translated it into creatively designed, innovative garments. Her teams of specialists assisted her in realising her designs. Finally, she promoted her new styles of dress and innovative accessories by using herself as a model [14].
Fashionable dress signalled an individual’s extensive network and knowledge about dress from the world both inside and outside one’s own geographical location. As fashionable dress involved the transformation of textiles into clothing with new cuts, shapes, and styles, fashion as a system must be understood also as introducing significant changes in social and gender practices. Women up to and throughout the eighteenth century in Italy, for example, were spinners, weavers, embroiderers, mercers, petty retailers, hawkers, and labourers who worked together with weavers, tailors, and doublet-makers [15]. Unlike many elite consumers, Isabella influenced the market because she took on the role of fashion connoisseur. She touted herself as the person who detects not only refinement, excellence, and beauty in fabrics but the knowledge of how to put together an aesthetically-pleasing ensemble. Her highly-placed social register also permitted her to demand fabrics and accessories of the finest quality that she then inspected carefully and with a discerning eye upon their receipt. While Isabella was able to spend exorbitant amounts of money on fashionable clothing, accessories, jewels and other luxury goods because of her family’s privileged status and her immense dowry, she justified her massive expenditures as bringing lustre to her family as a whole, the court she oversaw, and not just to her. In this sense, her innovations were also politically motivated even as early as the sixteenth century whereby, as Evelyn Welch and Julia Claxton argue, ‘[I]mitation was an act of social homage, an acknowledgment of networks and connections as much as of style.’ It was a way in which ‘men, and in particular, women drew attention to their knowledge and connections in an increasingly public environment of social display’ [16]. While fashion and textile innovation was often viewed in the sixteenth century as foreign invasion that in the end created barriers between countries, it could equally and profitably ‘stimulate the production of local versions’ [17]. Isabella’s keen observations of European fashionable dress motivated her to join others’ innovations with her own rather than to hold onto distinct regional fashions. She united others’ luxurious trims, fabrics, and colour choices into a creative collage when designing her own gowns. She united into one ensemble, for example, detachable sleeves from France, darker hues for her gowns’ fabrics from southern Italy (Naples, in particular), the finest linens for her sleeve trims from northern Europe, and the most supple and delicate leathers from Spain for her perfumed gloves.
Deanna Shemek’s careful selection (from over 28,000 extant secretarial copies from the Gonzaga chancery) and magisterial translation of 830 letters written by Isabella provide a valuable trove of information about her expansive and extensive fashion network [18]. As both an innovator and an influencer involved in all stages of the creative process and not just in acquiring goods, Isabella’s letters provide a window onto the production, manufacturing and acquisition of material goods. She understood well, for example, how the quickly-changing European fashion market functioned in accordance with seasonal demand. As Evelyn Welch notes, ‘[S]easonality was essential for the regular, annual, and highly predictable replenishment of male and female wardrobes. Medieval and renaissance consumers were already accustomed to purchasing fabrics in the late autumn and early spring and to having garments lined and unlined with furs at these times’ [19]. Also, her enthusiasm in receiving a ‘new fashion’ is palpable, for example, when she expresses much appreciation and ‘friendly greetings and political reportage’ to the Marchesa of Crotone (Eleonora Orsini del Balzo) in Letter 278, dated 22 August, 1502, from Mantua:
Fig. 2 ‘Sposa Venetiana in gondola’. From Album of Sigismundus Ortelius…, 1573-79. London, The British Library © British Library Board, MS Eg. 1191, fol. 63.
Upon return of Giovanni the footman we received the letter Your Ladyship wrote us from Rome, along with the fusi and the blouse you sent us through Monsignore’s [man] Zanino. We appreciated these very much, both because they are new fashions and because they come from Your Ladyship’s hands [20]
Aware of the fast pace by which regional clothing trends change, Isabella writes another letter (Letter 540) on 29 June, 1515 from Mantua to Alda Boiarda to thank her for a hat design. Isabella notes that she will not order it, however, ‘because the style is no longer in fashion in Mantua’. She goes on to say that ‘[W]e liked very much the sample of the cap that Your Ladyship sent us, for it is truly beautiful. But because we no longer wear hats in that style, as Your Ladyship will see if we come to Ferrara, you need not bother to have any made for us, and we are sending you back the sample here enclosed’ [21]. Therefore, to be the ‘source and origin’ of fashion meant looking beyond Italy for ‘special products that were difficult to obtain in either Mantua or Ferrara: the highest quality cloth, particularly black and blue velvets whose popularity at the French court was renowned’ [22], and joining them to her own novel designs.
Isabella’s letters concerning fashionable dress and accessories may be divided into the following categories: gift giving [23] – either items she receives or items she gifts to individuals, sometimes in exchange for items she has received such as specific fabrics, jewels, gloves (letters 198, 228, 278, 360, 552); requests for fabrics and passamenterie (ribbons, decorative borders) for clothes or shoes she is having made for herself or someone else (letters 34, 35, 37, 198); criticism of a fabric’s quality or the unsuitable construction of a hat, garment or pair of gloves (letters 142, 192, 352, 517, 537, 540); detailed descriptions of clothes and fashions of another person or group of people she has witnessed at a specific event — marriage ceremony, entry procession, theatrical performance (letters 261, 262, 264); and mention of specific accessories that she champions, such as a veil, cap, balzo, perfumed gloves, gold button, bracelet, and fan (letters 352, 360, 376, 496, 537). Her agents helped her at all times to acquire what she needed, either for herself or as gifts for others, as did craftsmen and suppliers from other towns whom she met, often incognito (‘stravestito’), during her travels [24]. If she did not travel in person to the place itself, she contacted others to buy items she had seen other noblewomen wear. Through loyal informants and purchasers, she obtained what she wanted. In this sense, she saw her agents ‘as extensions of herself’ [25]. From them she learned that market pressures, when coupled with increased social mobility, negatively influence the consumption of luxurious and heavy-weighted textiles (velvets, damasks) as they are no longer in demand by the end of the fifteenth century. Instead light-weight textiles flooded shops, stalls, and tailors’ ateliers at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The lower costs of textiles and the simpler designs of many highly portable accessories permitted faster transmission, adoption, or rejection across Europe [26]. The proliferation of cheaper and lighter-weight textiles that imitated more expensive weaves, and secondhand markets where clothes could be bought or rented, impacted the sumptuary restrictions that had been in place centuries before. Since renaissance fashion as a system championed the new and depended less on conservatism and tradition, sixteenth-century dress no longer served the same purpose it had in the past for storing value [27].
Printed costume books produced throughout the period help us measure the extent to which European countries were intent on preserving national dress as a statement about identity. These books also record the endurance of fashion innovations throughout the sixteenth century in and among diverse regions, countries, and people. A costume book compiler such as the Venetian author, commentator, and painter, Cesare Vecellio, deciphers the language of dress and gives it verbal expression in order to situate the human subject in relation to a geographical place and time. His 1590 commentary to his Degli habiti antichi et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice: Damaro Zen, 1590), which was accompanied by 421 woodcuts by the German printmaker, Christoph Chrieger, instruct the reader how to interpret the value of textiles, the cut of clothing, and fashion trends, particularly accessories that are easily adopted and transformed, as signs of one’s profession, wealth, gender, social status, and geographical provenance. Surpassing any of the dozen costume books published before or after his, Vecellio searches for and illustrates with a merchant's eye which innovations have endured in an ever-changing commodities’ market [28]. He pairs image and text to speak about dress, understood as custom, both near and far. Profiting from a direct knowledge of Venice, a mecca of trade, a center of publishing, and a meeting point between the East and the West, Vecellio brings to the reader a mine of information about material culture. For him, the costume book serves above all to consolidate and preserve fashion trends into dress, understood above all as cultural ways of life and regional identity formation, rather than question them. His hierarchical ordering of prints and social commentary are a conservative method of organisation as it was for the bulk of printed costume books of the period. As a genre, therefore, the printed costume book strictly reinforces rather than rejects dress codes, even though Vecellio recognised that political changes affecting the elite could lead to the adoption of new styles. When describing the dress of a ‘Modern Venetian Noblewoman’, for example, he emphasises the rapidity by which women’s fashions change, which he voices through a misogynous commonplace about a woman’s fickle nature:
Because women’s clothing is very subject to change and is as variable as the phases of the moon, it is not possible in one description to say all that can be said about it. Indeed, it is rather to be feared that even as I am describing a style, women are turning to another one, so that is impossible for me to capture it all [29].
His ethnographic approach to what people wear underscores how clothing, understood as dress, constitutes a collection of manners that are informed by prescribed codes of civility, cultural ways of life, social dictates, regional specificity, and gender. Ultimately, his commentary on clothing seeks to affirm the persistence of social patterns of dress by attempting to consolidate them.
Fig. 3 ‘Sposa Venetiana per Gondola’. From an album amicorum of a German soldier, 1595. Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum of Art, MS. 91.
Illustrated alba amicorum, by contrast, are less concerned with preserving dress as national identity and are more intent on demonstrating how quickly fashions can be imitated, adapted to one’s specific region and social register, and change dress codes. For this reason, alba and fashion plate albums, which were produced during the second half of the sixteenth century, sometimes on a yearly basis, can assist the viewer in identifying which fashion trends that Isabella set in motion were repeatedly imitated and reinterpreted after her death. Owned most often by northern-European male aristocratic or burgher students attending universities in Germany, Italy, France, and Belgium or by tourists en route throughout Europe, their friendship albums were used to assemble autographs, learned mottos (in Latin, Italian, French or German), short poems, coats of arms, and fashion images on either (or both) the recto and verso of each folio. This interplay between word and image provides an energetic representation of fashion as in constant movement. Unlike printed costume book engravings or woodcuts that are created in black and white (some were hand colored), illustrated alba amicorum depict styles of dress in a wide range of vibrant hues in watercolor and gouache. Highly portable because they were typically no more than three to five inches high, album owners and signers document their professional and personal associations alongside the fashions they select to adorn their pages. The pages are dated next to the inscription, location, name of the person who leaves a signature, and the name of the person to whom it is inscribed. Students who reserved a space in a friend’s album by promising to purchase images from an itinerant painter or from a stationer’s shops often exceeded their restricted budgets and thereby left the album owner with many blank pages.
Isabella’s vivid descriptions of women who wear fashionable attire bring to life groups of people sometimes far from her elite social register. In Letter 192, written on 6 October, 1499, from Mantua to ‘Diodato, regarding Valentina, who has become a courtesan’, Isabella displays an awareness of Italian courtesans’ stylish attire when she reminds her friend that courtesans from Rome always dress well. ‘We are pleased that you have proven our prediction, but the fact that you found her so well dressed, in stylish clothes and lots of jewels is not so strange, because the other courtesans of Rome dress that way’ [30]. While courtesans often appear in printed costume books from all parts of Italy, the specific colours of their garments and the courtesans’ ‘ruffiane’ or female go-betweens are ubiquitous in illustrated alba amicorum. Foreign student travellers were especially attracted to high-level Venetian courtesans and were fascinated by their fashionable garments, freedom of movement, elegance, and artistic abilities as poets, musicians, singers and entertainers. The images in their albums often call attention to courtesans being serenaded in sumptuous gondolas rowed by their personal servants, or courtesans on the street in elegant dress with a male servant assisting them as they walk in their high platform shoes. Stationers’ shops in Venice must have sold series of images of courtesans from which travellers and students could choose to personalise their albums because many albums contain images of both Venetian courtesans and brides, floating down the canals (Figs. 1-3, above). These images reveal the blending of fashionable dress among social registers and women’s various stations in life.
Isabella also describes ceremonial dress with the same kind of enthusiasm as international dress or the dress of courtesans. On the occasion of Lucrezia Borgia’s marriage to her brother, Alfonso I, she captures the thrill of the moment by directing her keen eye to the novelty of Lucrezia’s gown and to those who surround her. In two letters, the first from 1 February, 1502, from Ferrara ‘To Francesco II Gonzaga’, she focuses on Lucrezia’s arrival in Ferrarese territory and her ceremonial welcome. What strikes her is how Lucrezia’s fashionable ensemble, which she describes in detail strikingly departs from the dress of elite women in Naples:
Her clothing was a dress of wrought gold with a crimson satin ruffle and Castilian sleeves. Over that she wore a cape of dark silk that was slit down one entire side and lined with sable. Her chest was covered, as is her fashion, and her blouse was slit down the center. At her neck, she wore a string of large pearls, with a balas pendant and a pear-shaped pearl below that. On her head a gold cap with no band [31].
The items that most captivate her are Lucrezia’s gown ‘of wrought gold with crimson satin and ruffles and Castilian sleeves’; her ‘cape of dark silk’, which is ‘slit down one entire side and lined with sable’; and how her chest is covered as ‘was her fashion’, with a blouse ‘slit down the centre to reveal strands of pearls and a balas pendant’. These precise innovations excite her because Lucrezia’s luxurious fabrics are joined to daring and provocative designs. Lucrezia’s foreign-style sleeves, their dark hues, and unusual jewels were not a traditional part of the Italian bridal ensemble. Paula Hohti suggests that inventive coupling points to fashion’s ability to create change: ‘A new look might be the result of the innovative and creative ways in which clothing, accessories, and decorations were put together, rather than arising from direct imitation of particular dress styles, garments or fabric types’ [32]. Cockram emphasises that although Isabella was immensely wealthy, other women at court were even more affluent such as Lucrezia Borgia with whom Isabella felt competitive because she recognised that Lucrezia could outdo her in fashionable display [33].
In the same letter, Isabella makes particular mention of Lucrezia’s entourage of ‘twelve Ferrarese Maidens’, who accompanied the procession, all dressed in ‘crimson silk gowns and black velvet cloaks lined with black lamb’. This description of the Ferrarese maiden’s crimson red silk gown (without the ‘black velvet cloak’) matches a print of the ‘Una Donzella Ferrarese’ in the richly-illustrated Mores Italiae (fol. 19), an album amicorum dated to 1575, nearly forty years after the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso I [34], (Fig. 4). Again, twenty years later, in the 1595 album amicorum (Fig. 5) owned by an anonymous soldier, the donzella Ferrarese’s dress is the same style but in white rather than red. Another donzella Ferrarese appears in an early seventeenth-century album amicorum, the Codicetto Bottacin (c. 1614), housed in the Museo Civico in Padua, but this time not only the colours of the gown and veil have changed to blue and yellow respectively but so has the style of the gown [35] (Fig. 6). Finally, within the printed costume book, only Pietro Bertelli’s Diversarum nationum ornatus (1589) includes a black and white engraving of the Ferrarese maiden’s gown on fol. 20 (Fig. 7).
While Isabella’s uses of her own designs and innovations constituted a kind of ‘personal branding’, as Deanna Shemek argues [36], and are ubiquitous in manuscript alba and fashion plate albums, the balzo (pieces of silk intertwining real or artificial hair covering a wooden or wired structure, and adorned with jewels) also known as the zazara is rarely found in their pages [37]. This suggests that by the last decades of the sixteenth century, the balzo was beginning to be replaced by other types of headwear. However, in the printed costume book, the balzo as a fashion accessory, particularly in the Venetian territory, is illustrated and described eight times in Cesare Vecellio’s 1590 costume book. He views it as an enduring trend, which he documents with precision. He dates its first use among both women and men in Venice from as early as the last decade of the fifteenth century and states that it is still in use in Venice in the 1590s. In ‘The Clothing of Early Noblewomen Outside Their Houses, with the Dogalina’ and (‘of former times’), he writes: ‘On their heads these women wore a balzo made of gold wire in the shape of a round garland, which encircled the entire head like a diadem’, (Fig. 8) [38]. With “Noblewomen of Early Venice at Home,” he says “[I]n the old days Venetian noblewomen at home, once they had removed their dogalina, wore a headdress made like a cap or a copper balzo, covered with a fine cap of silk and gold, very beautifully worked [39], and in ‘Venetian Clothing of Former Times, From Only a Hundred Years Ago or Slightly More’, he adds that ‘[O]n their heads they wore a gabbia as shown in the drawing, of gold or silver thread or plain silk, woven with beautiful designs. Some women decorated these headdresses with pearls and other jewels, but they all wore their hair loose, uncurled, and in its natural colour. And for this reason the women of that time are to be commended for their wisdom, as well as for the fact that their complexions appeared whiter’ [40] (Fig. 9). In the fifteenth century in Venice and throughout Italy, (‘Clothing Worn in Venice, and throughout Italy’), even men, he notes, wore a balzo:
As far as I can tell, the people of a century ago dressed very differently from the way we do now. This can be clearly seen if we compare this drawing of clothing once worn in Venice and throughout all Italy with our dress today. The reason I say this is that in those times men wore a balzo on their heads, like that worn by women, made of copper and round, in the shape of a diadem. Covering this they wore a cap of silk woven with gold [41] (Fig. 10).
In Venice, he is quick to point out in ‘Clothing of Venice and Other Places in Italy’, women are still wearing the balzo (Fig. 11):
Wearing of the style illustrated here did not last long among women, though to begin with they had liked it because they thought it was new. In this they were wrong, however, for the same style had been worn long before, though with some differences, since then it was considered richer and grander than other styles. Some wore a balzo like this on their heads, in many diverse colours, and I have seen them in my own day. This was of cloth of gold or silk, patterned with leaves and roses, and decorated with jewels and other trim. They also wore gold chains and belts of great price and carried fans with gold handles, very beautifully worked [42].
While the balzo worn in his day is multi-coloured, made of cloth of gold or silk, and decorated with jewels and leaves and roses as recorded in ‘Clothing Formerly Worn by Men and Women in Padua’, an earlier balzo was more like a diadem and, rather than embellished with many jewels, it featured only a few ‘gorgeous pendant pearls’:
Her gown was so long that it trailed far behind her and she was adorned with a jewel at her neck and a gold balzo in the style of a diadem with gorgeous pendant pearls (Fig. 12).
Farther afield in Germany, a patrician maiden from Augsburg wears a circular headdress ‘of many veils’. While Vecellio does not call this a balzo, he suggests that it is a redesigned balzo because of its stiff understructure. He also emphasises that what were long-held styles of dress among noblewomen in Augsburg can no longer endure because ‘many years now, present-day nobly born girls of Augsburg have begun to change their style of dress, as a result of foreigners who go there continually and wear different kinds of clothes’.
They wear a circular headdress of many veils, tied here and there with gold threads or silk or gold cords and with beautiful medallions, which form very attractive puffs on their heads [43] (Fig. 13).
Fig. 14 Cesare Vecellio, ‘Married Women of Padua’. From Habiti Antichi Et Moderni Di Diverse Parti Del Mondo (Venice: Zenaro, 1590), 216.
Isabella did not wear the balzo for a long period of time. She reverted instead to ornamental headwear that ‘could only be scrutinized for meaning for a brief period before it was replaced by yet another style’ [44]. In Letter 537, dated 4 June,1515 from Mantua to Felice Della Rovere, she states that she will not send Della Rovere one of her own ‘hats’ because she believes it is unsuitable for ‘her illustrious lord consort’s unmarried daughter’; in its place, she is sending, she says, two other styles that are more appropriate for his maiden daughters: ‘And since I understood that you wanted it for one of your most illustrious lord consort’s daughters, I didn’t think I should give her one of mine, because unmarried girls here wear a different style. I’ve had two made of the kind maidens wear, and I’m sending them to Your Ladyship to do as you wish with them’ [45].
Vecellio illustrates and describes other types of headwear that Italian maidens and married women wear, including fine silk one-piece veils that range in color from black, white, to pale yellow. They are attached either to the garment or to the headdress itself according to the social rank, marital status, or fashion tastes of the individual. Isabella mentions her use of fine silk veils many times throughout her letters, but most often in relation to the practice of mourning. Vecellio suggests that in his time the veil is a fashion accessory that can be used also to cover partially the face as is the case in his commentary on ‘Married Women of Padua’, (Fig. 14). They pin ‘a very thick and beautiful silk veil’, to their coiffure much like the veil designed and worn by Isabella decades earlier:
The married women of Padua also dress in a way suitable to their rank. They wear their hair in curls framing their foreheads and bind the rest of it into lovely braids, which they wrap around the crown of their head. To this coiffure they pin a very thin and beautiful silk veil, which, because it is so wide, falls behind them to the hem of their overgarment, though they take up the ends of this veil and pin them to their belt in front…And when they go out…[T]hey also cover their faces with white silk veils, as Venetian girls do [46].
In the first decades of the sixteenth century, Vecellio writes that Venetian women not only wore a metallic, copper structure (‘gabbia’) on their heads that was richly embellished with jewels and other ornaments but they attached to it a ‘black veil’. In Rome during the 1590s he adds that Roman women wear richly adorned headdresses and attach a ‘veil of very fine silk, which they let fall behind’:
Fig. 15 ‘Donzella Padoana’. From Album of Sigismundus Ortelius …, 1573-79. London, The British Library © British Library Board, MS Eg. 1191, fol. 82.
So their dress includes a very lovely headdress, which they call the canacca, which gathers up their hair with strips of golden braid and rises in a cap shape a palm’s length above the head, in a kind of cuffia. Above this, with silver pins they attach a veil of very fine silk, which they let fall behind [47].
Commenting on the dress of noblewomen in Lombardy, the Duchess of Parma, and Brides in Venice, Vecellio records that they continue to attach a fine silk veil to their coiffure. Only the Genovese noblewoman departs from the traditional colours (black or white) in her choice of silk veil, but the reason he provides for her bold departure from tradition is that she has assumed a much more public presence in her city than women of earlier times. Vecellio describes Genovese noblewomen with great admiration: she is skilful in the marketplace, a friend to her ‘sisters’, and knows how to buy and sell ‘without any loss of reputation’:
These are the most affable and most pleasant-spoken women of all Italy, because they do business in public with such skill and friendliness that they seem to be the sisters of all those with whom they exchange and sell goods. They go about buying and selling without any loss of reputation because women who buy and sell at the greatest profit are very highly esteemed, so they are shrewd and sharp-witted. The noblewomen of this city wear their hair all in curls, and their locks are decorated with beautiful nosegays of flowers, which grow abundantly here at all times of the year. They gather their hair under a thin veil or transparent yellow silk striped with gold, which forms a lovely point at the top of their head, and they let the rest of their hair fall freely from their head down to their shoulders [48].
Fig. 16 ‘Veneta Virginis’. Italian, late sixteenth century. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS PML 5675, fol. 9.
Fine silk veils are not only for brides or noblewomen. In his description of ‘Middle-Aged Woman of Tuscany’, he adds that they also attach to their ‘cap(s) of velvet…a white veil underneath that falls down their back’ [49]. In letter 708, written on 1 March, 1526, from Rome to Giovanni Battista Malatesta, ambassador of Federico II Gonzaga in Venice, Isabella asks for the price of cloth ‘per ell of those black veils that those ladies use to make capes they wear on their heads’. She also wishes her agent to gather ‘information’, about whether she ‘could have as much as seventy or eighty ells’ presumably for unmarried maidens who used one piece veils when outdoors [50]. This use is frequently represented in illustrated albums, such as in three examples, one of a German university student (Fig. 15), a fashion plate album in the Pierpont Morgan Library that dates to the end of the sixteenth century (Fig. 16), and in the Codicetto Bottacin, an album amicorum from the first decade of the seventeenth century (Fig. 17).
Fine silk veils are just one of Isabella’s accessories that make up the fashionable ensemble. Gloves and fans of all types are evident in printed costume books, illustrated alba, and fashion plate albums during the sixteenth century. Isabella was well known for inventing ways to perfume gloves, which she often gave as gifts. She also circulated recipes for making perfume and scented oils packaged in beautiful containers as favours. As Meredith Ray argues, this was her way to establish networks of friendship, communication and political alliance, and to create goodwill and communication networks. In Letter 552 written from Mantua, on 18 May, 1516, to Federico II Gonzaga at the French court, Isabella sends gloves and perfume as an act of friendship for his ‘sweetheart’: ‘We are sending you a dozen pair of gloves for yourself and a jar of concoction wrapped in cotton in a separate talla incerata for perfuming your sweetheart. We wrote to Genoa and Rome for oil, water and other perfumes to satisfy your request’ [51]. But in Letter 380, dated 3 August, 1506, from Sacchetta, ‘To the Queen of Hungary’, she appeals to a friend to send her a gift of folded gloves ‘with the inside out’ because she knows from experience that they are of good quality: ‘In obedience to your Majesty’s strict commandment that I ask for something from you, it occurred to me, since that I am in terrible need of gloves, to pray you see that I have several good pair from Valencia and some of those that are sold folded; with the inside out; because I have had very good ones of this kind before’ [52]. Vecellio notes, when speaking about ‘Married Noblewomen of Pisa’ (Fig. 18), whom he refers to as from ‘long ago’, they carried perfumed gloves in one hand and a fan in the other: ‘In one hand they carried perfumed gloves and a pretty flower, and in the other a fan of fine feathers’, as does a Neapolitan woman in ‘Clothing of a Woman of Naples, No Longer Worn’": ‘In one hand she held a beautiful fan with an ebony handle, and in the other, perfumed gloves’ but, Vecellio adds, this is no longer true at the time he is writing his book [53]. The only other mention of ‘perfumed gloves’ in the volume occurs when Vecellio describes a German married woman from Bavaria: ‘They also adorn their necks with gold necklaces in many strands, and in their hands they usually carry perfumed gloves’ [54].
Fig. 17 ‘Donzella Padoana’. From Codicetto Bottacin, early seventeenth century. Padua, Museo Civico di Padova, fol. 13.
Another widespread fashion accessory was the fan, which came in many shapes and styles — folding, feathered (made with ostrich and other plumes), or as a banner (often in the form of a rectangular flag (Figs. 19 and 20) [55]. Isabella championed the style that was attached to the belt, as she tells Count Lorenzo Strozzi in Letter 496, dated 2 June, 1513, from Mantua. For her sister-in-law, Lucrezia Borgia, she requests this specific type of fan fashionable in Mantua:
We understand from your letter that the most illustrious duchess, our sister-in-law and honored sister, wishes to have a little fan of the sort that are starting to be used here. And finding that we happen to have one that we have made for us in the fashion that we saw in Milan and that we liked very much because it can be worn attached to the belt, we are sending it to you, so that you can give it to Her Excellency in our name. Tell her that we will be pleased if she likes it. If she does not, then let her advise us of the style and the size she would like, and we will have it made at once [56].
Vecellio refers to the practice of holding either a folding or feather fan in one hand and a different accessory in the other in only two places in his volume. In ‘Brides of Padua, Friuli and Other Nearby Places’, he notes that ‘[I]n their right hands, they carried a very thin fan with a silver gilt handle’ and in ‘Clothing of the Principal Married Women of Florence’, he adds that this practice of holding fans is aligned with the fashion of simultaneously holding gloves in the other hand: ‘The overgown is lined with very fine fur, such as ermine…the sleeves of their overgowns are open and lined with marten and sable. They usually carry gloves in one hand and in the other a fan of very fine feathers’ [57].
Unlike Isabella’s mention of perfumed gloves or fans, when referring to the zibellino she places herself in the important role of determining the quality of the zibellino’s fur pelts not only for their beauty but also for their quality. She reminds Taddeo Albano in Letter 543, from 19 November, 1515, from Mantua, that all parts of the zibellino must be inspected before it is assembled, and to her agent she writes in a much earlier letter (1490) that she orders him to purchase a fur pelt either with or without a pair of heads that she will then inspect for its excellence:
Fig. 21 ‘Una Gentildonna Maritata Padoana.’ From Mores Italiae, 1575. Yale University, Beinecke Library. MS 457, fol. 28.
About the sables, we ask you to make every effort to go with some friend of yours who is well informed about them, and try to choose a pair that are excellent for their beauty. If they don’t have their heads, the head can be attached later, but see that we get them in any case on approval. And if [the sellers] are hesitant to give them on approval, promise them in our name that the sables will be returned absolutely spotless if we don’t like them…If you cannot get ones that are exceptionally beautiful for the above-named price, take a less beautiful pair, as long as they are valued at twelve or fourteen ducats. And since if we like them we won’t be sending them back and forth, send also the heads and legs and feet, attached or not, for we will have them attached here if they are not already so [58].
Isabella’s attention to seasonal cycles also informs her request for fur pelts, particularly lynx or ermine, in her Letter 457 to Taddeo Albano, dated 10 March, 1511, from Mantua:
Since you were unable to get us the lynx fur sooner, don’t make any effort to send it now because, as you wisely observed, the season is far enough along that we don’t really need it anymore. Similarly, you can refrain from sending the musk, because we got some from another source. If you see some amber that in your opinion is perfect, we would be pleased if you would get up to two ounces for us [59].
Fig. 22 ‘Una Novizza.’ From Mores Italiae, 1575). Yale University, Beinecke Library. MS 457, fol. 84.
No longer a fashion innovation purchased solely by women, the zibellino is ‘institutionalised as part of nuptial rituals’, by the mid-sixteenth century, and is owned by the husband. As both a fashion item and an augury of fertility, it was expected to be found in an upper-register bride’s dowry or counter-dowry [60]. This transformation from coveted fashion accessory purchased by noblewomen such as Isabella d’Este to marital luxury object is confirmed in both costume books and illustrated albums. When speaking of ‘A Woman of Venice Sixty Years ago’, Vecellio notes they ‘wore a sable skin attached to a gold chain, and the skin itself was decorated with a head of gold; they arranged it around their shoulders’. But in the ‘Brides of Padua, Friuli and Other Places’, he describes these brides from northern Italy who adorn their gowns with the zibellino as not only a very beautiful sight but one that heralds Venice’s magnificence. He dates this description as the year when ‘the most serene King of France’ made his triumphal entry: ‘a great number of people gathered in the city…to welcome his majesty and the grand festivities held here, attended by beautiful Paduan brides, who looked very splendid in their dress and carried themselves very nobly’ [61]. In particular, Vecellio singles out how the brides decorated their gowns and bodies: ‘At their waists they wore a heavy gold chain set with precious stones, down to the knee, and to this was attached a very beautiful sable fur, with a head of gold that seemed the living picture of a sable, and for eyes it had two rubies’ [62]. About fifty years earlier in Venice, women wore the zibellino in a similar fashion but the ornamented jewelled head hung from a chain encircling their shoulders rather than their waist (‘A Woman of Venice Sixty Years Ago’). Very few zibellini appear in illustrated albums. However, in Mores Italiae, there are two representations of the zibellino (also known as the ‘sgriddato’), always associated with marriage rather than public or ritual splendor. In ‘Una Gentildonna Maritata Padoana’, fol. 28, (Fig. 21), the zibellino hangs from the waist on a gold chain as it does for ‘Una Novizza’ (a bride), fol. 84, (Fig. 22) [63]. The ‘novizza’ wears the zibellino draped over her arm rather than at her waist or shoulders. While the zibellino, as designed by Isabella, was very much linked to female consumption and taste, in the last decades of the sixteenth century it became the fashion trend predominantly of married women because of its symbolism and ‘promises of fertility’. As a purchase, it was transferred therefore to the hands of the man [64].
Eventually, the zibellino was substituted altogether by the use of long belts that became increasingly ornate to which were attached fans or other items useful to women. But in the early decades of the sixteenth century, it was still in the hands of a female innovator such as Isabella d’Este, who makes it clear that she is the person with whom women should consult when purchasing a sable pelt for its quality and aesthetic perfection. In her Letter 759, written on 25 October, 1530, from Mantua, to Ginevra Malatesta, she sends regrets that she herself cannot send a sable as requested because her own stockpile is diminished:
It pains me to my soul that I cannot satisfy Your Ladyship’s request for a sable, for at present I have not sables of any kind except the one that I carry at my side. If I had any others of the type that I know your Ladyship uses, you may be most certain that I would not fail to please you with one most willingly, as I always wish to do out of love [65].
Fig. 23 ‘Cortegiana Padoana‘. From an album amicorum of a German soldier, 1595. Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum of Art, MS. 91, fol. 61.
Portraits of elite women in northern Italy, Spain, and France from the first half of the sixteenth century often feature whole fur pelts embellished with a sable head, either held in the hand or fastened to a chain around the waist. This fashion trend was also adopted by unmarried women from more modest origins, like the ‘Cortegiana Padoana’, who drapes a zibellino over one arm in a 1595 illustrated album amicorum [66] (Fig. 23). Paula Hohti explains this type of appropriation of a noblewoman’s style of dress and accessories as ‘keys to distinction, both for the nobility and at lower social levels; but for the latter the effect was realized in more subtle ways, involving a process of selection, interpretation, and modification of broad fashionable trends’ [67]. Mixing and matching separate parts of the ensemble actually ended up by permitting more luxury. As Welch and Claxton argue, it was ‘the embellishments that proved expensive rather than the fur itself’, and the construction or manufacturing of the zibellino itself was in the hands of the buyers who made it according ‘to their own taste, using multiple suppliers’ [68].
Ultimately, the fashion trends that Isabella d’Este created or redesigned, promoted and disseminated were imitated among women throughout Europe from diverse social registers. Easy innovation permitted those who delighted in experimentation to bend the norms of tradition. Isabella supervised large teams of loyal informants, purchasers, suppliers, tailors, and craftsmen that kept her up to date with regional, seasonal and market demands. She initiated a fashion network that followed her own preferences while championing another woman’s individual selection and modifications to suit her own tastes and means. Decades after Isabella’s death in 1539, Moderata Fonte, a Venetian woman writer of the citizen register, wrote a proto-feminist dialogue, The Worth of Women (1580), in which one of the pro-women debaters, Corinna, speaks about a female hairstyle with horns that is under attack by men. Corinna’s insistence that a woman has the right to choose how she adorns her body puts into words what Isabella did in practice.
I’d say, said Corinna, that that style too is one that should be not only merely tolerated, but accepted and praised, just as much as any other feminine adornment. Because this is nothing more than a fashion, and a pastime of ours; and when it is done judiciously and with moderation, it sets the face off very charmingly. But, anyway, what on earth has it got to do with men, whether we dress our hair on one side rather than another? And what has it got to do with them if we do what we can to look beautiful, and what we like to do with our hair? After all, women were created to adorn and bring gaiety to the world [69].
Isabella’s fashion trends survived the rapid shifts in dress and excessive visual displays of the sixteenth century. Rather than divide women, they allowed multiple social registers the opportunity and delight to assert their personal tastes and styles. Isabella’s desire for change and innovation became theirs as well.
Margaret Rosenthal, University of Southern California
Notes
[1] ^ Cited in Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 251.
[2] ^ Ibid., 267-70.
[3] ^ For a useful introduction to the ways that knowledge about fashion was disseminated throughout Europe in the early modern period, see Evelyn Welch, “Introduction,” in Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe 1500-1800, edited by Evelyn Welch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 14-26. See also how fashion as innovation, change, and periodicity are intertwined in John Styles, “Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe,” in Fashioning the Early Modern , ed. Evelyn Welch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 33-55. Essential reading about the connection between the print medium and knowledge about renaissance fashion and nationhood includes Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1-31,146-75. For a translation of Vecellio’s costume book, see The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, ed. and trans. Margaret F. Rosenthal and Ann Rosalind Jones (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008).
[4] ^ Sarah Cockram, "Isabella d’Este’s Sartorial Politics," in Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe: Fashioning Women, ed. Erin Griffey (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 33-56. For Isabella as a trendsetter rather than a pioneer of fashion and design, see Cockram, 37-8, who calls her a 'mistress of sartorial politics par excellence', but not always 'unique'.
[5] ^ On the illustrated album amicorum, particularly in relation to fashion in the Renaissance, see Margaret F. Rosenthal, "Cultures of Clothing in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 39, 3 (Fall 2009): 459-81 and Margaret F. Rosenthal, “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. See also June Schlueter, The Album Amicorum and the London of Shakespeare’s Time (London: The British Library, 2011); Mirella Spadafora, Habent sua fata libelli: Gli alba amicorum e il loro straordinario corredo iconografico (1545-1630c.) (Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice, 2009).
[6] ^ On the increasingly active role of early modern retailers throughout Europe, see John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993); Frank Trentmann and John Brewer (eds.), Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and for early modern retail networks, and shops and the marketplace, particularly in Italy, see Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 123-63, 212-43; Donatella Calabi, "Renewal of the Shop System: Italy in the Early Modem Period," in Blondé et al. (eds.), Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 51-62; Elizabeth Currie, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 59-68.
[7] ^ Welch, “Introduction,” 15.
[8] ^ Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 251.
[9] ^ Ibid.
[10] ^ Elizabeth Currie in "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, examines the important role of the tailor in relation to fashion in the Florentine context. See also her “Diversity and Design in the Florentine Tailoring Trade, 1550-1620,” in The Material Renaissance ed. Michelle O'Malley and Evelyn Welch (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 154-73, and Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence, 69-74. See also the useful study of Paula Hohti, “Dress, Dissemination, and Innovation: Artisan Fashions in Sixteenth-and Early Seventeenth-Century Italy,” in Fashioning the Early Modern, ed. Evelyn Welch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 143-65, in which she studies the dissemination of fashion via the tailor and artisan in lower social groups in Italy.
[11] ^ Currie, Fashion and Masculinity, 73.
[12] ^ Ibid., 69-74.
[13] ^ Styles, “Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe,” 34.
[14] ^ See Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 245-73. On the dissemination of ideas about fashionable dress in Italy, see Hohti, “Dress, Dissemination Innovation,” 148-58.
[15] ^ For Venice, see Joanne Ferraro, History of the Floating City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 186. On women as lace-makers in Venice, see Ann R. Jones, “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. See also Rosenthal, “Clothing, Fashion, Dress,” 912-14.
[16] ^ For a discussion of imitation in dress as social 'homage', particularly in the early decades of the eighteenth century, see Evelyn Welch and Juliet Claxton, “Easy Innovation in Early Modern Europe,” in Fashioning the Early Modern, ed. Evelyn Welch (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 87-108, and for this cited passage, 108.
[17] ^ Welch, "Introduction", 11.
[18] ^ Isabella d’Este, Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Deanna Shemek (Toronto: Iter Press, 2017). See also IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive at http://isabelladeste.web.unc.edu
[19] ^ Welch, “Introduction,” 19.
[20] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 195.
[21] ^ Ibid., 400.
[22] ^ Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 251.
[23] ^ Cockram, "Isabella d'Este's Sartorial Politics," 45-9, discusses gifting of fashion items in relation to Isabella’s sartorial politics for both male and female attire.
[24] ^ Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 260.
[25] ^ Ibid., 267.
[26] ^ Welch, Introduction, 6.
[27] ^ On sumptuary regulations in Italy, see Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “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; Hohti, “Dress, Dissemination and Innovation,” 158-61.
[28] ^ On Vecellio’s costume book and the epistemological impossibility of the costume book as a fixed genre of representation in early modern Europe, see Ann Rosalind Jones, “`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.
[29] ^Rosenthal and Jones (eds. and trans.) The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, 141.
[30] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 135.
[31] ^ Ibid., 178. A 'balas' jewel is a 'rose-red to orange semi-precious gem from a region in northeastern Iran', 178, n.129. On jewellery and gemstones in the Renaissance, especially in Venice, see Blake de Maria, “Multifaceted Endeavors: Jewelry and Gemstones in Renaissance Venice,” in Reflections on Renaissance Venice: A Celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown, ed. Mary E. Frank and Blake de Maria (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2013), 119-31.
[32] ^ Hohti, “Dress, Dissemination, and Innovation,” 164.
[33] ^ Cockram, “Isabella d’Este’s Sartorial Politics,” 50.
[34] ^ Mores Italiae 1575: Costume and Life in the Renaissance, ed. Valeria Finucci and Maurizio Rippa Bonati (Cittadella: Biblos, 2007).
[35] ^ On the Codicetto Bottacin, see Francesca Zago, “Il Codicetto Bottacin di Padova: Illustrazioni e nuove ipotesi sulla committenza,” Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova (2009): 137-55.
[36] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters 7.
[37] ^ Ibid., 33-56, defines the zibellino as both a sartorial and political tool for Isabella, on 36, 48.
[38] ^ Rosenthal and Jones (eds. and trans.), Clothing of the Renaissance World, 57.
[39] ^ Ibid., 58.
[40] ^ Ibid., 93.
[41] ^ Ibid., 94.
[42] ^ Ibid., 96.
[43] ^ Ibid., 304.
[44] ^ Evelyn Welch, “Art on the Edge: Hair and Hands in Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Studies 23, 3 (2008): 241-268, at 255.
[45] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 399.
[46] ^ Rosenthal and Jones (eds. and trans.), Clothing of the Renaissance World, 216.
[47] ^ Ibid., 31.
[48] ^ Ibid., 207.
[49] ^ Ibid., 232.
[50] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 499.
[51] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 408.
[52] ^ Ibid., 272-73.
[53] ^ Ibid., 209.
[54] ^ Ibid., 306.
[55] ^ On fans in Italy, see Valeria Finucci, “Intellectual Tourism in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy: Costume and Manners in Venice and Padua,” in Mores Italia: Costume and Life in the Renaissance (Cittadella: Biblos, 2007), 37-77. On different kinds of fans, see 64, and 76 n.99.
[56] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 366 n. 148.
[57] ^ Rosenthal and Jones (eds. and trans.), Clothing of the Renaissance World, 227.
[58] ^ Shemek (ed.), Letters, 402.
[59] ^ Ibid., 341. Shemek says that 'the pelts of sables, ermines, and other small mammals were prized as fashion accessories and were often worn around the neck or as belt ornaments, with the feet and heads attached', 402, n.265.
[60] ^ See Welch and Claxton, "Easy Innovation in Early Modern Europe", 101-102 on the zibellino as a male purchase for his bride (quotation at 102). On its symbolism, see Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, "Weasels and Pregnancy in Renaissance Italy", Renaissance Studies 15 (2001): 172-187.
[61] ^ Welch and Claxton, "Easy Innovation in Early Modern Europe," 97 and 215.
[62] ^ Rosenthal and Jones (eds. and trans.), Clothing of the Renaissance World , 215. Vecellio is referring to the triumphal entry of Henry III in Venice in 1574.
[63] ^ On fashion trends in an illustrated album amicorum, see Margaret F. Rosenthal, “Fashion, Custom, and Culture in Two Early-Modern Illustrated Albums," in Mores Italiae, ed. Valeria Finucci and Maurizio Rippa Bonati (Citadella: Biblos, 2007), 79-107.
[64] ^ On the zibellino as an 'easy innovation', understood as rebellion and novelty and potential unrest but not requiring 'substantial capital investments, and … state regulations', see Welch and Claxton, "Easy Innovation in Early Modern Europe", 87-109, and especially 96-102. As Welch and Claxton note, this decorative fur piece had already been 'popular in southern Europe for almost a century. Almost a hundred years before, in 1490, Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, had asked an agent in Venice to look out for a sable … Almost twenty years later, in 1512, she was still requesting whole furs' (98).
[65] ^ Shemek, Letters, 541.
[66] ^ On courtesan’s fashions, Rosenthal, "Fashion, Custom and Culture," 99-102, and 106, n.40 for other references to important work on this subject.
[67] ^ Hohti, “Dress, Dissemination and Innovation”, 162.
[68] ^ Welch and Claxton, “Easy Innovation in Early Modern Europe,” 99-100.
[69] ^ Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women, ed. and trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 235.
Jessica O’Leary