If you're planning to cover up to 1600 and not just 1500-1600, you
might consider expanding your talk to include discussion of 14th and
15th-century images of saints. Robin Netherton is the expert here,
but I do a little version of Jeff Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck
if" that I call "they might be a saint if" in my Costume History
class. Images of saints are particularly common in these centuries
in Italy and the Low Countries, though they appear elsewhere as
well. They tend to be wearing fanciful and/or imaginary clothing,
and for some reason modern people looking for research always seem to
zoom in on them.
The key is that often saints are depicted holding or standing on
something odd. They might be holding a severed head, a plate of
breasts, an eyeball on a stick, a spiked wheel, a tower, etc. Or
these elements might be somewhere else in the painting. They often
relate to the way in which the saint was martyred and were meant to
identify the subject to the medieval viewer.
Another giveaway is of course a halo or a set of wings--biblical
characters and angels can almost never be trusted for clothing
research. Saints are also often depicted holding a strange green
feather-looking thing, which is meant to be a palm frond.
I tell my students to check out the caption first then start looking
for the odd props. In addition to saints and biblical folk,
mythological and classical people depicted in medieval and
Renaissance paintings are often not trustworthy for research. If the
person is meant to represent "Honesty" or some other abstract
concept, they are probably not wearing "real" clothing either.
I encourage you to work this information in, because much of the bad
research that I see depicts saints, biblical, mythological, or
classical people.
Melanie Schuessler
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