Merchants, princes and painters : silk fabrics in Italian and northern paintings, 1300-1550 / Lisa Monnas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Monnas, Lisa.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Silk in art.

Textile fabrics in art.

Painting, Italian.

Painting, Dutch.

Physical Description:

xi, 408 pages : color illustrations ; 30 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven [Conn.] ; London : Yale University Press, [2008]

Summary:

Covering a period that witnessed the flowering of the Renaissance and the major expansion of the Italian silk industry, this volume examines the Italian silk fabrics depicted in paintings from Italy, England and the Netherlands over the course of 250 years. Lisa Monnas offers a masterly evaluation of these paintings as source material for classifying surviving textiles, giving particular attention to the identification of historic textile types and their weave structure. Monnas examines a wide range of subjects, including silk as a marker of social status, the material possessions of artists and their ownership of textiles as props, the involvement of painters in silk design, and the repetition and transfer of patterns. She considers the evidence of paintings not only for the veracity with which the silks are depicted but also for their value as a historic source concerning the use of fabrics.

Contents:

Who wore silk? the price of silk fabrics, artists' clothing and studio props

Painters and the design of woven silks

Cloth of gold in fourteenth-century Sienese and Florentine paintings

Painting velvet in Italy and the Netherlands during the first half of the fifteenth century

The transmission of textile designs in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish paintings

Decorative silks in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italian paintings

Textiles in portraits in Venice, Florence, and England

Convention or reality? reading textiles in paintings

A life of their own: the longevity and changing use of silk fabrics

Nineteenth-century English textiles and wallpapers designed after fabrics shown in medieval and Renaissance paintings

Appendices. Looms, textile types and historic terminology (includes glossaries of weaving, dress and painting terms, measurements and money) ; Letter of William Makefyrr, 1506 ; Vestments woven with Christ and St. Thomas in Rome and Florence ; Copes with named benefactors with dates attached, extracted from the ninety-one copes in the inventory of St. Paul's Cathedral, London ; The terms paonazzo and morello ; Letter concerning an order of clothing for the Contessa de Melzo, 1475 ; Carpets at the early Tudor court ; Abridged genealogy of the Medici family

Tables. Selvedge colours on Italian silk fabrics, 1376-1466 ; Loom widths of Italian silks, thirteenth-sixteenth centuries ; Weaving prices specified by the Florentine silk guild, 1429 ; Prices of silk and wool from a wardrobe account of Edward IV, 1480 ; Prices of silk purchased for the great wardrobe of Henry VIII, 1533-1534 ; Textiles and clothing given to Dürer, purchased by him or given by him, on his journey to the Netherlands, 1520-1521 ; Neri di Bicci's Ricordanze: purchases of cloth, December 1453-January 1461 ; Extracts from the coronation account of Edward VI, 1547.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-391) and index.

ISBN:

9780300111170

0300111177

OCLC:

123136667