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Men’s tunics, jackets, and stockings were generally tailored from black or dark brown luxury fabrics like velvet or silk. Sixteenth-century men dressed down to display seriousness and sobriety. “…would like our courtier always to appear neat and refined and to observe a certain modest elegance, though he should avoid being effeminate or foppish in his attire and not exaggerate one feature more than another.” (164)

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Baldassare Castiglione, writer of a popular book on etiquette, The Courtier (published 1528), tells upper-class men how to dress. In the sixteenth century, men’s fashions turned towards darker, more somber hues in their fabrics. Clothing, therefore, was a central facet of both politics and economic stability. Clothes were also often used as payment for services rendered. This helped visually identify men who had sworn fealty to Mantua, and promoted tonal unity in public settings. The ruler has marked his courtiers with his house colors. The men in the image all wear one white and one reddish stocking because this marks them as servants or household members of Ludovico Gonzaga’s (sitting on the far-right side of the fresco, wearing an off-red robe) Mantuan court. This scene also gives insight into the ways clothing signaled authority and social connection in the fifteenth century. As the period advanced, men’s hemlines ascended higher and higher up stockinged legs, ultimately culminating in the need for the codpiece in the mid-to-late sixteenth century. Men’s hemlines in the fifteenth century ended above the knee to show off two-tone hose. The courtiers wear red, blue, gold, pink, or green belted tunics. Men’s clothing in this period enjoyed a wide range of colors. 2) painted by Andrea Mantegna between 1465-74 elucidates what men wore in fifteenth-century Italian courtly circles. A wall fresco of Ludovico Gonzaga and his Family and Court (Fig. Courts would often employ private fashion designers to clothe the royal family. A patrician closet relied on a vast network of tailors, dressmakers, purse-makers, metalsmiths, furriers, embroiderers, lace-makers, and leather-workers to stay abreast of the latest trends. Men’s dressįashion trends in this period were generally set by the aristocracy and upper-classes. Italy was a fashion forerunner at the time, and as such Italian portraiture helps us understand what people wore in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While paintings are not always perfect mirrors of the past, they give us the best available estimation.

Because pieces of clothing (and complete outfits) are so scarce, we must instead rely on pictorial media to understand what Renaissance peoples considered fashionable.

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As a result, there are very few full ensembles surviving from the Renaissance. Further, fabric decays quickly relative to other materials. If a dress was torn, stained, or became too small for its wearer, it would be cut, re-stitched, and reused as a seat cushion cover, for example, or clothing for children. In order to be considered beautiful (and fashionable), an early modern woman must also be virtuous.ĭuring the Renaissance, creating textiles was extremely expensive and time-consuming, so clothing was often recycled.

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However, Renaissance beauty was not skin deep. Renaissance women were expected to use lavish clothing, jewelry, accessories, and cosmetics to adhere to contemporary beauty standards. However, the painted words “Beauty adorns virtue” reverberate across nearly all portraits of women from the period. A banner of trompe-l’oeil paper intertwines all three plants, displaying a Latin motto: “VIRTVTEM FORMA DECORAT,” or “Beauty adorns virtue (Brown, 64).” Ginevra de’Benci is unique within Renaissance female portraiture due to its focus on the sitter’s individuality. Both symbolic branches encircle a sprig of juniper, a pun on the sitter’s given name. 1b) proclaims Ginevra’s literary intellect with a laurel leaf, which intersects with a palm frond (a typical attribute carried by martyred saints) to suggest her strong moral character. The sitter wears a brown kirtle laced with blue ribbon, and a halo of tight ringlets surrounds her face. The two sides blend together, creating a full picture of Ginevra de’Benci. The front panel displays the aristocrat’s face, while the back uses flora to represent her personality.

Around 1474-8 Leonardo da Vinci painted his iconic portrait of the Florentine noblewoman Ginevra de’Benci (Fig.