Someone was looking for period documentation on umbrellas a while ago. Alas I can't remember who, so I'll post the info here. Assuming it's correctly translated, it seems a fine umbrella sent to the Ottoman court in 1637, along with a matching pavillion (padiglione, translated as tent, but I wonder if it might mean a portable baldachin ( Read more... )

When I stayed at the Greek island of Chios in 2010, I was so close to Turkey my mobile sometimes automatically switched over. Look at the map, and you'll see what I mean. Since I was writing about the Medicis, I visited the Medici Archive a lot. One day I checked out if the area I was in was present in the Medici archive at all. Indeed it was. And ( Read more... )

There are more text to come, but I wanted to share the page I've written on Ottoman kaftans and their Western adaptions.

http://aneafiles.webs.com/renaissancegallery/kaftan.html


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In Italy, as everywhere else, different styles lived side by side. But the main garment for women of the 16th century was the sottana, the dress. It could be worn on its own, or under an overdress. Various items could also be worn underneath ( Read more... )

23 meters of fabric and 39 meters of trim later...


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The Museum of Industrial Arts in Oslo have in their care a rather splendid early style mantua. A mantua was a female attire of the late 17th and early 18th century. It consisted of three main parts - an overdress open in front, an underskirt of the same or contrasting fabric, and an ornamental stomacher. The overdress was fastened to the stomacher ( Read more... )

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The National Museum in Oslo finally allows visitors to take pictures. In the past you could apply for it, but needed a valid reason - a research project, a school essay - for doing so. Now it's open for everyone, as long as it doesn't hurt the objects on display. Which obviously means no flash ( Read more... )

What would you have said if say the Spanish royal family commissioned a painting with family members depicted as saints? Sacrilegious? Blasphemous? Awesome? Tasteless? Pious? I'm sure all these thoughts rushed through the heads of the citizens of Florence when the Medici family presented this painting to the world:


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