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Author
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Topic: Garb and hair from Tacuinum Sanitatis
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Sean A. Garrison
Member
Member # 335
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posted 07-03-2002 11:02 AM
    
Hello everyone, I have a few questions about a very early 15th century style of ladies dress.
We have a reproduction copy of the Tacuinum Sanitatis, and in the last few years my lady has been making various pieces of garb based upon the off-the-shoulder dresses that are pictured throughout that work.
In this version of the book, there are illustrations that originate in Vienna, Paris and Rouen- but this style of dress predominates throughout every version of the book.
We don't have any doubts about the dress and it's various versions, what we can't understand is why nearly all of the women have their heads uncovered. In the upper left hand corner of page 204 (Boucher's "2000 Years") there is a picture of a group of women taken from an Italian breviary, and every one of the figures is wearing a version of this dress, and most of these ladies are bearheaded. However, two of these figures have hoods with long tails. Is this style hood still fashionable this late in the 1300's?
Wait- upon closer examination some of the women in the Tacuinum have what looks like see-through veils wrapped around their fashionably coifed heads.
My friends and I do 1350-1450, and Kara adores this style of dress. We see women with veils, without veils, with ribbon braided into their hair, with hoods...we see all types of stuff. Some of these figures even have their hair down!!
What's the deal here? She wants to wear her hair down or braided up. Opinions?
-Sean
Registered: Jul 2002 | IP: Logged
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Gwen
Member
Member # 126
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posted 07-03-2002 11:58 AM
Hi Sean-Those crazy Italians appear to be the only nationality where appropriately coiffed and/or dressed hair virtually replaces female headcovering for virtually any century. As long as your lady has her hair -dressed- (not down and flowing, that's still the prerequisite of virgins and very young girls) she is perfectly correct. As you see a very fine, virtually transparent veil is often worn over the hair to actually draw attention to the hair, not cover it. The veils are so fine that it is entirely possible that they were more widespread and simply don't show up on a lot of paintings because over the centuries they have worn off the face of paintings or were lost in the restoration process. I was looking at a painting last night in the Italian Interiors book; a table has no legs and simply floats in midair because of over vigorous "restoration". Hope that helps- Gwen
Registered: Feb 2001 | IP: Logged
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