Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence - Nodrm

PRAISE FOR
Fashion and Masculinity

in Renaissance Florence
“
A brilliant analysis of men and the importance of dress in one of early
modern Europe’s fashion capitals. Readers will discover Florentine
elite men as avid sartorialists propelled by their enthusiasm for new
possibilities of materials and displays as much as by the intricate
political and emotional games dress and accessories allowed them
to play. Richly researched, this book represents a milestone in our
knowledge of how sixteenth-century men conducted their lives through
interacting with things.
Ulinka Rublack, Professor of Early Modern European History,
University of Cambridge, UK
“
This book opens up the wardrobes of elite Florentine families, showing
how subtle and sophisticated the choice of dress could be in the
sixteenth century. An intelligent, beautifully-illustrated and original
study, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how clothing
‘made the man’ during the Renaissance. Highly recommended.
Evelyn Welch, Vice-Principal, Arts & Sciences,
King’s College London, UK
“
This insightful contribution turns a discerning and critical eye towards
the clothing of sixteenth-century Florentine men. Currie skilfully
explores the ways that clothing made the man within this emphatically
sartorially-literate society, and shows the rich, fundamental ways that
power and identity were invariably ‘negotiated with a material reality’
on elegantly dressed male bodies.
Timothy McCall, Associate Professor of Art History,
Villanova University, US
“
Elizabeth Currie vividly captures the pleasures and perils of engaging
with appearances for Florentine men of the sixteenth century. Recent
work on the history of clothing has taught us much about sumptuary
laws, courtly etiquette, and cultures of consumption in the period.
Currie teaches us more, showing how the politics and materials of dress
informed the very experience of men’s lives, from political posturing
in the lucco, through the reputational risks attached to balancing
magnificence and sobriety, to the playful freedoms sought in eroticised
youthful display and dressing for the homosocial pursuits of sport
and carnival. Accessible and scholarly, Fashion and Masculinity in
Renaissance Florence is a valuable addition to an expanding literature on
sartorial histories.
Christopher Breward, Principal, Edinburgh College of Art,
University of Edinburgh, UK
Fashion and
Masculinity in
Renaissance
Florence
Fashion and
Masculinity in
Renaissance
Florence
Elizabeth Currie
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC1B 3DP NY10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2016
© Elizabeth Currie, 2016
Elizabeth Currie has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-4976-8

ePDF: 978-1-4742-4978-2
ePub: 978-1-4742-4977-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Currie, Elizabeth (Fashion designer), author.
Title: Fashion and masculinity in Renaissance Florence/Elizabeth Currie.
Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003923 | ISBN 9781474249768 (hardback) | ISBN
9781474249782 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Fashion–Italy–Florence–History–16th century. | Men’s
clothing–Italy–Florence–History–16th century. |
Nobility–Clothing–Italy–Florence–History–16th century. |
Masculinity–Social aspects–Italy–Florence–History–16th century. |
Florence (Italy)–Court and courtiers–History–16th century. | BISAC:
DESIGN/Fashion. | HISTORY/Europe/Western. | HISTORY/Renaissance. |
SOCIAL SCIENCE/Gender Studies. | HISTORY/Europe/Italy.
Classification: LCC GT972.F55 C87 2016 | DDC 391.00945/511–dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016003923
Cover design: Sharon Mah

Cover image: Portrait of Stefano della Bella, painting by Carlo Dolci, conserved
at the Palatine Gallery in Pitti Palace, Florence. Reproduced with the permission
of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Finsiel/Alinari Archives.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

In loving memory of my parents, Pamela and Robert Currie
Contents
List of illustrations x
Acknowledgments xiv
Notes on the text xvi
Introduction 1
Part One Fashioning the Medici Court 15

1 The Court on Show 17
2 The Rise and Fall of the Florentine Toga 36
Part Two The Courtier as Consumer 57

3 The Noble Art of Shopping 59
4 Ruinous Appearances 75
Part Three Modes of Masculinity 91

5 The Versatility of Black 93
6 Youth, Fashion, and Desire 109
7 Festive Dress 128
Conclusion 146
Notes 149
Bibliography 181
Index 198
List of Illustrations
0.1 Michele Tosini (Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio), Portrait of a

Gentleman, 1575, oil on panel, North Carolina Museum of Art,
Raleigh, Gift of Mr. and Mrs Arthur Erlanger, G. 55.10.1. 2
0.2 Jacopo Bassano, The Adoration of the Magi, early 1540s, oil
on canvas, Scottish National Gallery. 9
1.1 Orazio Scarabelli, Naumachia in the Courtyard of Palazzo
Pitti, 1589, engraving, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe
degli Uffizi. (® 1990, Photo Scala, Florence. Courtesy of the
Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali ). 24
1.2 Domenico Passignano, Procession of the Body of St.
Antoninus, fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence. (Photo
Scala, Florence/Fondo Edifici di Culto—Min. dell’Interno). 25
1.3 Giovanni Stradano, Joust Held in the Via Larga, ca. 1556, fresco,
Sala Gualdrada, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (Getty images). 26
1.4 Sketch for a man’s robe (described as a veste or zimarra)
for the Grand ducal livery, 1593, Archivio di Stato di Firenze,
Guardaroba Medicea 143, 418r (with permission from the
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali ). 30
1.5 Unknown artist, The Peasant Girls’ Dance, ca.1600, fresco,
Palazzo Giuntini, Florence (Photo Scala, Florence). 32
1.6 Nicolas Bollery, Maria de’ Medici accompanied by Grand Duke
Ferdinando de’ Medici, ca. 1613–14, oil on canvas, Cherbourg-
Octeville, musée Thomas Henry, 835.74, © D. Sohier. 33
2.1 Domenico di Michelino, Dante Alighieri with the Divine
Comedy in his Hand, 1465, fresco, Florence Cathedral
(Getty Images). 37
2.2 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Stories of St. Francis of Assisi, 1483–86,
fresco, Sassetti Chapel, Church of Santa Trinita, Florence
(Dea Picture Library, Getty Images). 38
2.3 Nanni di Banco, St. Philip, ca. 1411–15, Orsanmichele,
Florence (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico, Soprintendenza per i
Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze). 40
2.4 Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, Preliminary drawing for a
chiaroscuro painting decorating the triumphal arch of the
Antellesi corner, representing Cosimo de’ Medici hailed as
Duke. Florence, Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi,
no. 7731 F (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico, Soprintendenza per
i Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze). 41
2.5 Giovanni Stradano, Procession in Piazza Duomo, 1561–62,
fresco, Sala di Gualdrada, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
(Getty Images). 44
2.6 School of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Works of Mercy: Tending
the Sick, ca. 1482, fresco, oratory of the Buonomini of San
Martino, Florence (Photo Scala, Florence). 48
2.7 Youth’s dark brown leather jerkin, English, ca. 1550–1600.
Museum of London 36.237 (Getty Images). 49
2.8 Bernardo Strozzi, A Betrothal, 1620s, oil on paper, 18.5 × 28 cm,
WA 1946.338 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. 50
2.9 “Rector, University of Padua,” Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti
antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice: Sessa,
1598), facing page 121. Wellcome Library, London. 51
2.10 An operation on the head from Andrea Cesalpino,
De Plantis Libri XVI (Florence: Marescotti, 1583).
Wellcome Library, London. 53
2.11 Justus Suttermans, The Senators of Florence Swearing
Allegiance to Ferdinando II de’ Medici, 1621, oil on canvas
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. 55
3.1 Florentine School, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1550, oil on panel
(Inv. 104). Dea/Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Getty Images). 62
3.2 Cosimo I de’ Medici’s doublet and martingale breeches.
Displayed in the Galleria del Costume, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
(Getty Images). 72
5.1 Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora di Toledo and her son, Francesco
de’ Medici, ca. 1549, oil on panel. Pisa, Museo Nazionale di
Palazzo Reale. 95
5.2 Attributed to Giovanni Stradano, Niccolò di Luigi Capponi,
1579, Gift of June Pilliod Torrey, class of 1939, 1987.16.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. 96
List of Illustrations xi
5.3 Anonymous/Giovanni Stradano/Jacopino del Conte, Portrait of
Luigi Capponi, ca. 1550, oil on wood panel, Gift of Henry White
Cannon Jr., Class of 1910, in memory of his Father, y 1935–59.
Princeton University Art Museum (Photo: Scala, Florence). 98
5.4 Agnolo Bronzino, Bartolomeo Panciatichi, ca. 1540–45,
oil on panel. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (Photo: Gabinetto
Fotografico, Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici
di Firenze). 103
5.5 Agnolo Bronzino, Lucrezia Panciatichi, ca. 1540, oil on panel.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (Getty Images). 104
6.1 Tiberio Titi, Portrait of Marcantonio, Orazio, Luigi, and
Filippo Magalotti, 1601. Private Collection (Photo: Gabinetto
Fotografico, Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici
di Firenze). 110
6.2 Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, Saint Ives, Protector of
Widows and Orphans, 1616, oil on panel, 291 × 215 cm,
Palatine Gallery, Florence (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico,
Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze). 111
6.3 Left predella panel to the altarpiece Christ and the Adulteress
attributed to the workshop of Alessandro Allori, 1577. Cini
Chapel, Santo Spirito, Florence (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico,
Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze). 112
6.4 Italian silk velvet, late sixteenth century, Fletcher Fund, 1946,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 46.156.88.
www.metmuseum.org114
6.5 Dress of Young Men of the City of Venice, and Students and
throughout all of Italy, Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et
moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice: Damiano Zenaro,
1590). © The British Library Board, 810.i.2, p. 160. 123
6.6 Dress of the Young Men of Venice and of other Places in Italy,
Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse
parti del mondo (Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1590). © The
British Library Board, 810.i.2, p. 162. 124
6.7 Bernardo Castello, Engraving of Rinaldo and the Mirror Shield,
from Torquato Tasso, La Gerusalemme Liberata, unnumbered
folios (Genoa: Pavoni, 1617). © The British Library Board, 80.h.8. 126
6.8 Francesco Maffei, Rinaldo and the Mirror Shield, about
1650–55, oil on copper (85.PC.321.1). The J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s
Open Content Program. 126
xii List of Illustrations

7.1 Raffaello Gualterotti, Gioco del Calcio—Piazza Santa Croce,
Florence, 1589, oil on canvas. Collection of The John and
Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of
Florida, Florida State University. 132
7.2 Jacques Callot, “Game of Football in Piazza Santa Croce,”
from Capricci di varie figure, ca. 1617, Florence, Gabinetto
dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi. (© 2016. Photo Scala,
Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali). 135
7.3 Engraving from the dance manual by Fabrizio Caroso,
Il Ballarino (Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1581) Bologna, Civico
Museo Bibliografico Musicale (Getty Images). 137
7.4 Francesco Beccaruzzi, A Ballplayer and his Page, ca. 1550,
oil on canvas, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. 138
7.5 Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier, 1529–30, oil on
panel transferred to canvas, The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles (89.PA.49). 138
7.6 Anonymous, Parade Horse, 1619?, pen and brown ink and
brown wash over graphite, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Delia
E. Holden Fund 1963.241. © The Cleveland Museum of Art. 143
List of Illustrations xiii

Acknowledgments
I
first started thinking about Florentine court dress and gender during my doctoral
studies and over the years this project has assumed various guises before arriving
at its current form. During this time many people have helped and inspired my
research, including everyone connected with The Material Renaissance: Costs and
Consumption in Italy, 1400–1650 project sponsored by the Arts and Humanities
Research Board and the Getty Grant Program. I would particularly like to thank
Evelyn Welch for her continuing support and encouragement. The staff on the
Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art History of Design course and
successive cohorts of students have helped to shape this book, not least by offering
fresh perspectives on many of the topics discussed here. My thanks go also to
Jeremy Aynsley and the School of Humanities at the Royal College of Art, where
a fellowship gave me a valuable opportunity to research and further develop my
ideas. During trips to Florence, Niccolò Capponi was most generous in providing
access to family archival documents.
The staff of various archives and libraries have been very helpful, particularly
at the Florentine State Archive and the Rare Books room in the British Library.
I am grateful to numerous institutions and individuals who have assisted me
in tracking down and identifying images. In addition to those listed in specific
captions, these include Gloria Fossi, Mina Gregori, Betsy Rosasco, and Grazia
Visintainer. The images in the book were made possible by grants from the
Pasold Research Fund and from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with
the Institute of Historical Research. Their vital support is greatly appreciated.
Two earlier articles introduced some of the themes of this book: “Clothing and
a Florentine Style, 1550-1620” (Renaissance Studies, vol. 23, Issue 1, February 2009,
33–52) and “Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the Clothing Trade in
Florence” (“Cultures of Clothing in Early Modern Europe” Special Issue, Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 39/Number 3, Fall 2009, 483–509). I was
able to discuss this material further in presentations at the Renaissance Society
of America conference in Venice, at Royal Holloway, University of London,
the Institute of Historical Research, London, and Ertegun House, University of
Oxford, and would like to thank all the organizers involved for these opportunities.
Several colleagues and friends very kindly read and commented on draft chapters,
including Esther Bannister, Daniel Currie, Maria Hayward, Ann Matchette, Gerry
Milligan, and Ulinka Rublack. As well as being a generous reader, Flora Dennis
was adept at reigniting enthusiasm at key moments. The reviewers of the initial
proposal helped to clarify aspects of the framework, while the reviewer of the
final manuscript offered a great many astute and invaluable suggestions. I am very
grateful for their recommendations, which I have done my best to incorporate.
Needless to say, however, any remaining faults are my own. Many thanks are due to
everyone at Bloomsbury who has helped bring this book to completion, especially
Hannah Crump who has been a pleasure to work with throughout.
Finally, special thanks go to Ferdinando Samaria for stepping into the breach on
many occasions, from untangling sixteenth-century Italian texts to twenty-first-
century technology, and to our children, Arianna and Alessandro, for enlivening
the time spent on this study with their inimitable humor and curiosity.
Acknowledgments xv
Notes on the Text
During this period the Florentine year commenced on March 25. However, in the
text that follows dates have been converted into modern usage.
Unless stated otherwise, translations from Italian are the author’s own.
Money and Measurements

The majority of the prices of goods cited in this book are taken from Florentine
archival records, generally household account books, which used a system of
money of account based on lire with the following ratios:
1 lire = 20 soldi = 240 denari

1 fiorino = 7 lire
1 scudo d’oro (of the Florentine mint) = 7 lire 12 soldi
Measurements for textiles and clothing were given in braccia, which varied in
length from city to city. In Florence 1 braccio equalled approximately 58 cm or
2/3 yard.
Abbreviations
ASCM Archivio Storico Civico di Milano
ASF Archivio di Stato di Firenze

ASM Archivio di Stato di Milano
ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia
Introduction
Clothing makes a revealing appearance in an account of Duke Alessandro de’

Medici’s final hours. As he prepares to go out on the night of his murder, the
doomed Alessandro wavers between choosing his gloves “for fighting” or his
perfumed gloves “for making love,” before finally deciding upon the latter.1 The
choice conjures up opposing aspects of the duke’s character and underlines the gap
between what Alessandro should have been doing (firmly governing his subjects
and state during uncertain times) and what he was actually doing (pursuing sexual
activities with dubious companions). Although there is apparently no factual basis
to this anecdote, it offers a telling insight into the power of male clothing to project
different identities. Until relatively recently, male fashion has been relegated to
the sidelines of dress history. The clothing of early modern Italian men has been
overshadowed by that of their female counterparts, whose wardrobes are often
better documented in sources such as trousseaux inventories and correspondence
between members of elite female networks. And yet, the concept of “Renaissance
man” is so rooted in the historiography of this period that his appearance seems
almost familiar to us, epitomized by Baldassare Castiglione’s ideal of the impeccably
and gracefully clothed “man in black,” described in the Courtier and depicted in
countless portraits [Fig. 0.1].2
Renaissance court dress is also famed for its hierarchical and regulated nature.
The strict rules of decorum and etiquette governing social behaviors and interaction
were vigorously applied to clothing, while legislation attempted to further codify
appearances. However, if we contrast this structured system with the consumption
patterns of Florentine courtiers, it is possible to uncover a more dynamic and
diverse sartorial culture. Although very few garments survive from this period,
individual experiences of dress are relayed by account books that record the
accumulation of a wardrobe in all its laborious detail, as well as its maintenance
and sometimes dispersal. On their own, lists of clothing in family archives can
appear to be little more than an enthralling and sometimes overwhelming array of
costly, embellished garments. This book recaptures the meanings of the clothing of
Figure 0.1 Michele Tosini (Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio), Portrait of a Gentleman,
1575, oil on panel, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of Mr. and Mrs Arthur
Erlanger, G. 55.10.1.
different individuals, viewing them in the light of contemporary attitudes toward

fashion, to show how Florentine men expressed their social, sexual, political,
and professional identities through appearances. Members of the Capponi,
Magalotti, Riccardi, Botti, and Orsini families, these noblemen were all connected
with the Medici and the court in varying degrees. They actively contributed to
court ceremonial, held bureaucratic or diplomatic roles in the ducal regime, or
belonged to the Medici’s circle of confidants. We see how their wealth and political
aspirations, their different ages and familial obligations, all exerted an influence on
the types of clothing they wore.
The varied forms of dress that coexisted within the upper echelons of society
reflected different models of manhood. They also reveal significant scope for
individual choice and agency. In Florence, it is possible to trace men changing
their clothing for specific purposes, wearing one type of clothing for a portrait and
2 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

another to travel abroad or to take part in sporting activities, alternating between
them in the same way that Alessandro de’ Medici purportedly selected his gloves.
Viewed in this light, dress illustrates the kind of fluid and sophisticated identity-
formation discussed in Guido Ruggiero’s analysis of the social context of sexual
play in the Italian Renaissance. Ruggiero describes the creation of “ ‘consensus
realities’—imagined realities that were built up, reinforced (or disciplined), and
shared by the various social groups with which an individual interacted.”3 Different
sartorial rules governed the social scenarios that courtiers operated in, and when
used successfully, dress could assert gender and power, unite families, and forge
reputations. Clothing was minutely scrutinized by all the players in this form of
strategic game, often ostentatiously praised for its quality, value, or ingenuity, and
it was crucial to convince one’s peers in order to pass muster. These distinct modes
of dress represented an advanced means of communication, only fully understood
when embedded in its original political, cultural, and social framework.
Many of the political and economic developments that took place in the first
century of ducal rule in Florence had a direct impact on masculine roles and ideals.4
After the brief reign of Alessandro de’ Medici (1530–37), Cosimo I de’ Medici is
credited with bringing stability to Florence, although at some cost, notably in his
merciless suppression of opponents and the increasingly undemocratic processes
of his government. Contemporary chronicler Giuliano de’ Ricci described how
individuals singled out by the Grand Dukes could rise upward, a view supported
by the growing number of nonelected government offices.5 The Grand Dukes
could pluck an individual out of obscurity or ruin the career of a once powerful
man, increasing the need to ingratiate oneself through actions, manners, or the
correct form of dress. Cosimo established hereditary rule, handing power over to
his son Francesco in 1564, and secured the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569.
Although a time of comparative peace, Florence’s international relations,
particularly with Spain and France, required constant vigilance and diplomacy.
Political developments strongly influenced attitudes toward fashion, prompting
antipathy to foreign dress and warnings about the dangers of excessively haughty
and pompous Spanish fashions, or short, tight French styles. Cosimo’s court
was still in its infancy, and foreign visitors noted its relative informality, lack of
ceremony, and small size compared with its European counterparts. The Venetian
ambassador wrote that the duke did not “live like a true prince with those great
refinements enjoyed by other princes or dukes, instead he lives like a very great
head of a family.”6 Cosimo worked hard to increase the grandeur of the court
and to strengthen his authority within the city and abroad, brokering propitious
marriage alliances as well as putting on eye-catching public spectacles. Highly
skilled propagandists, the Medici exploited the power of visual imagery through
forms such as family portraits and their personal devices. Clothing featured
prominently within the range of cultural expressions that defined the new court
and the changing nature of the Florentine nobility.
Introduction 3
Florence had long been a major center for the production of wool and silk textiles.7
The Medici sought to protect and boost the textile sector, promoting sericulture,
for example, to increase local supplies of raw silk. During the second half of the
sixteenth century, textile manufacture shifted to consist primarily of medium- to
high-quality wools and cheap or medium-priced mixed silks, created to meet the
growing demand for fashion over durability and to compete in a rapidly developing
international market. Guild and court records reveal the difficulties involved
in creating and selling these innovative kinds of textiles, flagging up concerns
about product contamination with substandard dye stuffs or the controversial
practice of watering silks to make them heavier. With such expertise in trade and
manufacturing, Florence was well placed to be a leader of fashion, but various
barriers prevented its wealthy citizens from wholeheartedly embracing ostentatious
dress, not least the usual moral reservations regarding luxury, which was widely held
to pose a threat to the social order, the body politic, and the economy.8 Additionally,
Florentines were proud of their city’s sartorial tradition of modesty and sobriety,
which sometimes made them appear “austere and melancholic,” as characterized by
Niccolò Martelli, consul of the Florentine Academy, in 1545.9
Keen to foster a sense of Florentine patriotism, based on the city’s historic
achievements, Cosimo and his sons did not wish to entirely abandon these earlier
sartorial codes. The Medici stoked residual memories of republican dress, while
simultaneously tolerating and judiciously promoting more ostentatious clothing.
These contrasts are set out in Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo, written between
1550 and 1555, significantly well into Cosimo’s reign. For Della Casa, Florentines
were easily distinguishable from their courtly compatriots in Naples, part of the
Spanish Habsburg Empire. Neapolitans are described as ostentatious, decked out
in feathers, pomp, and embroideries, elements that regularly featured in critiques
of male dress, and which Della Casa considered inappropriate for serious men and
citizens. He explained that each city had its own customs and ways of dressing:
Perhaps what is customary for Neapolitans, whose city is rich in men of great
lineage and barons of great prestige, would not do, for example, for the people
of Lucca or Florentines who are for the most part merchants and simple
gentlemen and have among them neither princes, nor counts, nor barons.
Therefore, the stately and pompous manners of Naples transferred to Florence,
like the clothes of a big man put on a little one, would be baggy and superfluous;
to the nobility of Neapolitans and perhaps to their nature, neither more nor less
than the manners of the Florentines would appear meagre and skimpy.10
From a less politicized standpoint, Cesare Vecellio’s Degli habiti antichi et moderni
also located Naples at the top of the hierarchy of flamboyant clothing, describing
how Neapolitan “men of rank dress very sumptuously” and “the gentlewomen
of Naples are notably refined and luxurious in their dress because they value

adornments that they can wear on their backs more than any furnishings for their
house.”11 Throughout the sixteenth century at least, Florentine noblemen exhibited
caution with regard to sartorial extremes. Florentine versus Neapolitan or Spanish,
conservative versus fashionable, republican versus courtly: these contrasting
modes of dress and the values they embodied continued to be debated without
being entirely reconciled or definitively adopted.
Dress staked out differences between men and women, at a time when
boundaries between the sexes were thought to be porous and amorphous,
influenced by humoral theories and ideas about anatomy and physiognomy
inherited from the Hippocratic corpus.12 Human bodies could be fallible and
deceptive, and although this was particularly true of women, it also applied to
men.13 Unsurprisingly, there are many examples of what has been termed “gender
slippages,” when these ideals crumbled away.14 Too much of the wrong kind of
contact with female bodies could corrupt male ones. According to Giacomo
Lanteri’s Della Economica (1560), unmarried Venetian women were compelled
by law to wear veils to protect men from their lasciviousness so men “would not
become effeminate and soft, but would be virile and robust with their souls and
bodies.”15 Count Lodovico of Canossa in the Courtier warns of certain men who
“were not, by nature, made women, as they clearly wish to appear,” who “not only
curl their hair and pluck their eyebrows [but are also] in their every act . . . so
tender and languid that their limbs seem to be on the verge of falling apart.”16 This
image of disintegration hints at one of the key functions of male clothing, namely
its potential to act as an armor to encase and define the male body, emphasizing
virility. The military-inspired codpiece is an obvious example of this kind of male
attire: it showed and symbolically protected the integral, erect, male form. In her
book on armor and masculinity in the Renaissance, Carolyn Springer sums up
the stark dualism between the sexes: “To be open, permeable, and accessible is the
nature of femininity; virility instead is closed, secure and (literally) impregnable.”17
Metaphors for making and showing manhood or, conversely, undoing, dissecting
or invading it, often revolved around clothing. The quip attributed to Cosimo the
Elder by Niccolò Machiavelli in his Istorie (1526) that “two yards of pink cloth can
make a gentleman” is one such example.18 In Renaissance Clothing and the Materials
of Memory, Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass remind us that early modern fashion
was not simply a “dazzling play of surfaces.” Without a clear “antithesis between
clothes as the surface/outside and the person as the inside/depth,” clothing had a
fundamental, structural role to play.19 Nevertheless, the relationship between these
depths and surfaces was neither static nor easily fathomable. Writing on female
cross-dressing in Renaissance Italy, Frederika H. Jacobs has questioned whether
“clothes were used merely as a disguise or functioned as constitutive signs in the
sense of the aphorism ‘clothes make the man’ (or woman).”20 She holds back from
any overall conclusion, arguing each case should be assessed individually. Similarly,
this book does not offer any hard and fast rules, and proposes that the coupling
Introduction 5
of mind and clothing occurred in numerous, very distinct ways. It is evident that
dress could be used to amplify existing qualities, as hinted at in Ariosto’s Orlando
Furioso when Jocondo decides to buy new clothes to wear to meet Astolfo in
Rome. Jocondo is described ordering “new clothing, to make his appearance
suitably dressed—for beauty is increased by a beautiful cloak.”21 In order to draw
out their natural valor, men might change their clothing, or their hairstyles. This
appears to have been a widespread phenomenon during the Florentine siege, as
diarist Agostino Lapini writes that men:
stopped wearing hoods (cappucci), which beforehand almost everyone used to

wear, and started wearing hats and berets. They began to cut (mozzare) their
hair, whereas before everyone wore (zazzere) down to their shoulders, and
grow beards, while before they were always clean shaven.22
Clothing could also be used to guide behavior, especially in the case of social
groups thought to be particularly at risk. Young men were often targeted: seen to
hang in the balance between women and adult men, not yet tied down by family or
professional duties, more susceptible to deviation from approved sexual practices,
their dress received special attention.23
Over the last few decades, important research has transformed our understanding
of masculine identities in the early modern period. The notion that “masculinity
is multiform, rather than unitary and monolithic,” as proposed by Frank Mort for
the late twentieth century, is applicable to the early modern period.24 Historians
have also underlined the complexity of gender identities that transcend “the
binary opposition of men and women,” one motive for exploring the similarities
and contrasts between male and female clothing in this book.25 The original
emphasis on manhood in early modern England, in studies by Elizabeth Foyster,
Tim Hitchcock, and Michèle Cohen, has become more European.26 However, even
recently Caroline P. Murphy has pointed out that for the Italian Renaissance, aside
from work on male homosocial identity, “there is a distinct absence of published
research dedicated to masculinity, especially when compared to the proliferation
of work on women.”27 Given this comparative lack, it has been useful to make
connections with work on masculinity and consumption in later periods. The
chapters that follow consider masculinity as a process, not dissimilar to Tim
Edwards’ analysis of men “learning to become men” in the twentieth century when
“masculinity is perceived to be increasingly predicated on matters of how men
look rather than what men do.”28 There is a growing amount of research in the
field of literary studies focusing on manhood and specifically the male body in the
Renaissance, analyzing questions of normativity, performativity, and sexuality, all
key to what Tim Edwards terms the “third wave of studies of masculinity.”29 Placing
clothing that was actually worn, not simply conjured up as a symbol, at the heart
of these debates, this study offers a fresh perspective within an already fertile field.

During the period addressed by this book, from the reign of Cosimo I (1537–74)
through to Cosimo II (1609–21), some long-established notions of masculinity
came under pressure. Scholars have argued that noblemen of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries experienced a kind of “crisis of masculinity,” as a consequence
of weakening domestic economies, military defeats, and wider European decline.30
Courts are thought to have played a key role in undermining masculinity by
turning courtiers into “dependents,” an argument first proposed by Joan Kelly as
part of her thesis that the Italian courts were environments that fostered “feminized
behaviour.”31 One of the premises for this was that male courtiers competed against
one another in order to win favor with their monarch, who was sometimes female.32
The emasculation of the courtier is a theme that continues to preoccupy current
scholarship.33 Elizabeth Lehfeldt’s study of the crisis of the Spanish aristocracy in
the seventeenth century shows that dress was frequently referred to as evidence of
an underlying malaise, and that excessive grooming, soft hair, and the adoption of
ever-larger ruffs received particular criticism.34
The new kinds of social activities required of the courtier, traditionally “female”
skills, such as dancing for example, are also considered to have jeopardized
manhood. For Castiglione, however, the courtier had to be adept at a combination
of stereotypically male and female gendered pursuits, evidenced by his advice
to the nobleman to “lead his prince by the austere path of virtue,” by “adorning
it with shady fronds and strewing it with pretty flowers,” “now with music, now
with arms and horses, now with verses, now with the discourse of love.”35 The
tale of a courtier who refuses to dance with a lady because he is above such “silly
trifles” suggests that these might not be easily reconciled. She wittily replies that
because he is not at war he should keep himself well-oiled and store himself
away with his other weaponry until he is needed, lest he get any rustier than he
already is.36 Failures to embody the full range of male virtues were held to account
across Europe. In France, ballet master François de Lauze reported an incident
where Henri IV rebuked a courtier for not having learned to dance. The courtier
defended himself by saying he had served the king well on the battlefield, only to
receive the reply: “Then I counsel you to arm yourself with a cassock in peacetime”
because “a Knight could occupy himself with no more noble exercise than one that
so advances the understanding of his Court and his world.”37
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, the display of manly virtues became
increasingly significant. In 1576, the Florentine patrician Lorenzo Giacomini lent
his voice to the growing debate on the true nature of nobility by presenting his
treatise Della Nobiltà delle lettere e delle armi to the Florentine Academy. It included
the principle, taken from Aristotle’s Nicomean Ethics, that “virtues are habits of the
soul” (le virtù sono abiti dell’anima).38 John Florio’s Italian-English Dictionary of
1611 translates the word abito as “a habit, a fashion, a forme, a custome, a qualitie,
a disposition of mind or bodie. Also an attire or sute of apparell.” The meaning of
habit as both custom and costume implies that clothing could make intangible
Introduction 7
virtues visible. In Renaissance thought, virtues were first and foremost symbols
of virility, suggested by the etymological link between the word virtue and vir,
Latin for man. Virtue covered a whole range of “male” attributes, including action,
efficacy, personal strength, and order, a strong contrast with “female” virtues, such
as modesty and chastity.
The notion of virtue had absorbed different resonances from classical writings,
medieval chivalric codes and Christian values, so that by the sixteenth century,
well-read Italian men would have been aware of various sets of exemplars on
which to model their behavior.39 Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen have pointed out
the conflicting nature of codes dictated by Christian values and the honor ethic,
concluding that Renaissance Romans “sometimes picked their principles to fit
their needs.”40 Even though concepts of male virtue were various and evolving,
their differences were often primarily a question of degree and interpretation.41
Under the Medici, the meanings of virtue were far from rigid. Due to its pivotal
role in Machiavelli’s writings, virtue had accrued strong political and military
values, yet new definitions of nobility also emphasized the importance of “civil
virtue” in Florence. For the sixteenth century, Henk Th. van Veen characterizes the
latter as the expression of the “love of one’s city,” of being “devoted to the honour
and interests of the various communities to which one belongs” rather than being
“self-seeking.”42 Virtue was also shaped by the growing emphasis on civility and
refinement typical of decorum at court.
The struggle between the attributes of continence and excess is particularly
relevant to our discussion of clothing. Physical strength and valor remained
dominant cultural ideals and the period covered by this book was framed by
warfare, involving the Medici’s political allies if not always waged on Italian
soil. Memories of the ten-month siege of Florence from 1529–30, when tens of
thousands died from hunger, disease, and fighting, were still vivid.43 Cosimo and
Francesco’s Habsburg ties spurred on their willingness to intervene in the crusades
against the Ottoman Turks and several galleys set sail from Tuscany to fight in
the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.44 Courtiers’ active participation in warfare was very
minimal but men could demonstrate their virility by mastering the art of fencing
and more violent duels were sometimes fought to settle matters of honor, although
it seems few actually took place in Florence.45 And yet it was imperative that
physical strength was kept in check, for if it descended into brute force, or tyranny
in the case of a monarch, it was associated with some of the worst male vices:
luxury, effeminacy, and excess.46 The increasingly prevalent image of debauched
mercenaries, displacing the fifteenth-century ideal of the manly warrior in body
armor described by Timothy McCall, embodied some of these concerns.47 Just as
opportunities to demonstrate strength diminished in urban and courtly contexts,
the value of the virtues of measure, continence, and civility became more apparent.
The views of classical thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle, that individual control
would result in collective control, that desire was insatiable, and that, in the words

of Seneca, “he is most powerful who has power over himself,” had been elaborated
by fifteenth-century Florentine humanists like Leon Battista Alberti.48 With
increasing emphasis on codes of etiquette and polite behavior, self-possession was
even more prized in the sixteenth century.49
A painting by Jacopo Bassano illustrates these contrasting models of manhood
through clothing and body shape [Fig. 0.2]. The leaning servant in the foreground
represents brute strength but, crucially, elements of his dress were key components
of court fashions that aspired to this muscular ideal, particularly the ripped leather
jerkin and thigh-revealing breeches. Meanwhile, the appearance of the central
king, wearing a striped upper-garment called a saio, and his retinue offers an elite
configuration of valor, alluded to by their jutting elbows, swords, and plumed
berets, recalling the headwear of Swiss mercenaries.50 By analyzing a variety of
scenarios, spaces, and audiences for dress at the Florentine court, we can see how
these different prototypes were referenced at specific moments in typologies of
dress. To borrow a phrase from the Cohens’ discussion of honor codes, they were
“blended in inventive ways.”51
Such alertness to context implies many Florentine courtiers knew, figuratively
speaking, when to fight and when to dance. We see wealthy Florentines exercising
restraint in their taste for modest woolens, or in portraiture, where power is
Figure 0.2 Jacopo Bassano, The Adoration of the Magi, early 1540s, oil on canvas,
Scottish National Gallery.
Introduction 9
internalized through the almost universal adoption of plain, black clothing by male
subjects. This form of continence suggests the influence of Castiglione’s notion of
sprezzatura (“the art of concealing art”), as much about an attitude as any specific
type of clothing, for example how far a courtier should allow his cloak to slip down
his back when dancing.52 Although court dress is associated with conspicuous
consumption, most of the courtiers discussed in this book were not preening
peacocks nor could they be considered models of austerity; instead they navigated
carefully between extremes. The more combative male was also cited in portraiture,
for example with the glimpse of a sword hilt. This, too, was usually kept in check
as displays of body armor are rare. Military overtones were made explicit in more
dynamic situations, such as in everyday dress when Florentines wore accessories
connected with the chivalric Order of Saint Stephen and sporting competition was
the most acceptable arena where war was referenced through clothing.
Honor, the public face of virtue, has often been associated with material
possessions, particularly grand architectural projects, such as palace building in
the fifteenth century. It was also emphatically linked with physical appearances,
measured and acted out on a daily basis in easily discernable ways through clothing.
The very process of assembling a wardrobe was an activity that consolidated social
networks and strengthened men’s reputations as members and representatives of
the Florentine court, as fathers and husbands, as merchants and honorable figures
of the different communities that they operated in. It was a sign of honor to dress
according to one’s social station, to celebrate family events in an appropriate manner
and distribute gifts of clothing to relevant guests and relatives. Such practices had
to be publicly acknowledged with the correct level of display and it is possible
that male dress tended to receive less attention in Italian sumptuary legislation
than female dress because it was self-monitored more effectively through codes
of honor. The ways honor and manhood intersected in Italian court society reflect
Judith Butler’s view of gender as “the appearance of substance . . . a constructed
identity, a performative accomplishment [in which] the mundane social audience
[participates and hence] comes to believe.”53
The importance of “seeing and being seen” can be traced back much further
than the period we are dealing with, indeed it has existed as long as codes of
honor have governed human behavior. Susan Crane, for example, has highlighted
similar concerns in fourteenth- to fifteenth-century England and France: “Living
in the externally oriented honor ethic, secular elites understand themselves to be
constantly on display, subject to the judgment of others, and continually reinvented
in performance.”54 Nevertheless, the need to display honor, and be honored in
turn, became more pressing in Florence not least because of the prevalence of
court celebrations that centered on sartorial display. The increasingly popular
genre of prescriptive writings on behavior, clothing, and etiquette, described
by Stephen Greenblatt as “manuals for actors,” also linked honor with external
appearances, overturning the notion that ancestry and noble blood were the

sole prerequisites.55 It is generally thought to be easier to manifest honor when
social structures are static and well-defined. Certainly, the developments affecting
Florentine noblemen, such as changes in their access to power or the promotion
of new families, offered more opportunities to contest honor and consequently
increased the need to define and demonstrate it more clearly.
There has been substantial scholarly focus on the “topsy-turvy,” transformative
potential of dress in the early modern world: from young boys dressing up as
women on the Elizabethan stage, to courtesans at the vanguard of fashion in
Renaissance Venice. However, dissimulation and dissent are not the main clothing
stories that emerge from this book. The popular Florentine pastimes of Carnival
and football are prime examples of the way early modern societies allowed men
far more leeway than women to participate in potentially disruptive activities,
often tolerated as “sport” when youths were involved.56 Under the Medici, these
festive events became very prominent. However, noblemen usually devised and
financed liveries intended to strengthen, not undermine, the authority of the
court. Equally, the evidence of the Florentine noblemen discussed here contrasts
with contemporary fears that individuals were no longer knowable through
clothing and that the growth of urban centers presented men with opportunities to
dissemble their real identities through dress.57 Overall, the sartorial strategies used
at the Florentine court exemplify individuals carving out their position within the
structure and hierarchy of the court rather than turning their backs on it. This can
be compared with Ruth Mazo Karras’ study of fifteenth-century youth in England
and France. Across the various different models of masculinity she observes:
young men were training for a share in power, a place in the hierarchy from
which they could master other men. In all cases they were learning ways in
which they could be unlike women. In all cases they were competing against
each other and their elders.58
Through the prism of clothing, we see Florentines participating in similar forms of

negotiation as those described by Herbert Sussman for the early Victorian period.
Sussman argues:
the problem of power and patriarchy calls for a double awareness, a sensitivity
both to the ways in which these social formations of the masculine created
conflict, anxiety, tension in men, while acknowledging that, in spite of the
stress, men accepted these formations as a form of self-policing crucial to
patriarchal domination.59
The desire to perpetuate the elite and remain within it while staking out one’s own
authority, is inherent in the way that Florentine noblemen adapted the clothing
assigned to them for court events, in order to achieve the desired amount of
Introduction 11
personal visibility within a larger group display. The sense of anxiety described
by Sussman often features in histories of masculinity and is an emotion that runs
through some of the sources discussed in this volume. Clothing could be the
source of profound troubles, as we can see from the heartfelt complaints about
shouldering the financial burden of dress written by noblemen on the verge of
bankruptcy. However, these are balanced by examples of others congratulating
themselves on their successful and ingenious liveries, underlining how clothing
could further personal interests.
Despite significant cultural constraints, a sophisticated and diverse system
of clothing thrived in Florence, allowing men to mark out pivotal moments in
their lives and the extent of their engagement with the political regime, as well as
their moral fiber and virility. Fashion at this time has been linked with the loss of
manhood. However, by focusing on the clothing men bought and wore, we can see
how they actively used dress to convey ideals they valued, showing how exemplary
models were “always being negotiated with a material reality.”60 One defining
feature of this reality is the specificity of place, and by analyzing the links between
clothing and masculinity, we are reminded of the role played by geography in the
construction of gender. Although some of the ways in which dress was utilized by
Florentine men can be applied to courtly societies across Europe, it is evident that
others were unique to the city and its political and cultural identities.
This study is divided into three sections and the changing culture of clothing
presided over by the Medici is analyzed in Part I, “Fashioning the Medici Court.”
Chapter 1, “The Court on Show,” traces the growing links between power,
authority, and external appearances. The Medici used new sumptuary laws
to consolidate support for their regime, privileging a distinct group of wealthy
Florentines, a contrast with earlier, more democratic laws. Histories of sumptuary
legislation highlight their inefficacy but evidence of the reactions to the Florentine
laws provides new insights into their reception. The subtle relationship of mutual
dependency between monarch and courtier is traced through the use of court
liveries, specifically at celebrations for Maria de’ Medici’s marriage to Henri IV of
France in 1600. Chapter 2, “The Rise and Fall of the Florentine Toga,” examines how
a single garment shaped male identity under the new political regime. The lucco,
a full-length cloak, was central to sixteenth-century discussions on the nature of
nobility and the compatibility of civic, mercantile, and courtly roles. It was thought
to confer dignity upon men who were concerned about their backgrounds in trade,
emphasizing the value of their civic engagement. Much was made of the garment’s
resemblance to the classical toga, adding weight to the belief that Florence was
the rightful heir to Imperial Rome, but the Medici’s interventions to increase the
cloak’s popularity met with some resistance.
Part 2, “The Courtier as Consumer,” builds on recent scholarship demonstrating
that transactions in the Renaissance market place were rarely purely financial and
that consumption practices greatly contributed to the construction of gender

identities in the early modern period. Chapter 3, “The Noble Art of Shopping,”
considers how commissioning clothing was a source of cultural prestige, while
requiring a fine balance between fashion, financial interests, and family ties. The
chapter investigates personal interactions between courtiers and their tailors
as well as wider networks between patrons, artisans and retailers. It provides a
counterpoint to contemporary anxieties that Italians were betraying local fashions
and sheds light on the ways that fabrics contributed to the identity of noblemen,
the fame of the city and its economic stability. Chapter 4, “Ruinous Appearances”
focuses on the pressures experienced by noblemen to maintain their honor. Despite
criticisms of profligate courtiers, it was vital to be seen to live in a manner befitting
one’s social station. The difficulty lay in calculating the appropriate levels of display
and failure to do so meant risking reputations, as illustrated by the examples of the
two noblemen discussed in this chapter.
The concluding section, “Modes of Masculinity,” investigates three contrasting,
and seemingly contradictory, modes of male dress, driven by specific social and
cultural contexts. It shows courtiers using clothing to skillfully negotiate the
demands of peer interactions and competition. Chapter 5, “The Versatility of
Black” offers new insights into the popularity of the color black, by analyzing its
prevalence in Florentine portraiture. It contrasts the portrait of a soberly clad
nobleman with the many kinds of clothing he actually wore, much of it of a more
flamboyant nature, unpicking the specific meanings of black in this image to show
how the color reflected masculine virtues. Chapter 6, “Youth, Fashion, and Desire,”
focuses on one of the most frequent criticisms leveled at male dress, namely its
effeminate nature. It juxtaposes evidence of what young Florentine noblemen
wore with contemporary debates about the effeminate male in medical treatises,
etiquette manuals, and literature. The final chapter, “Festive Dress,” shows how vivid
colors and elaborate embellishments were enthusiastically embraced by Florentine
noblemen for football matches and Carnival entertainments. It is argued that the
clothing worn at these events projected the virtues of the ideal courtier, while also
offering significant freedoms from the customary codes of etiquette at court.
Introduction 13
14
Part oNE
Fashioning the
Medici Court
16
1 The court on show
For everyday occasions, Cosimo I’s clothing conveyed modesty and accessibility.
This has been described as a calculated strategy, whereby Cosimo dressed
“sumptuously and splendidly” in order to demonstrate the power and solidity of his
state to popes, ambassadors, and other Italian princes, but employed moderation
when dealing with his citizens.1 In Florence, Cosimo presented himself as a down-
to-earth, practical man of action and his habit of riding through the city among
his people, dressed in a simple cloak, was praised by various commentators.2 His
wife, Eleonora di Toledo, was also keenly aware that ostentatious dress in Florence
in certain contexts was risky, not least because her subjects were wary of her close
connections with the “haughty” Imperial Spanish court.3
Not surprisingly, therefore, Cosimo emphasized worries about the rising
costs of expensive clothing in his sumptuary laws, a form of legislation
implemented in some Italy cities as early as the thirteenth century.4 Although a
few laws covered the correct etiquette for banquets and funerals, their primary
focus was clothing and, more precisely, exactly who was allowed to wear what
and when. Cosimo introduced three very detailed sumptuary laws over the
course of his reign. His sons passed further laws: Francesco’s law of 1568
mainly reiterated earlier decrees, while Ferdinando’s two laws were unusual
in their very narrow focus. The first, discussed in Chapter 2, dealt with civic
robes, while the second, of 1593, regulated the use of pearls and other kinds of
embellishments made with metal threads, such as canutiglio (purl, a trimming
made of twisted metal threads). Catherine Kovesi’s survey of three centuries
of sumptuary legislation in Italy suggests that there was no overall correlation
between particular forms of government, including courts and republics, and
the frequency or severity of legislation.5 Despite clothing’s obvious potential
to aggravate already entrenched social divisions, some sixteenth-century
writers espoused the notion that sumptuary laws could be democratic in spirit,
minimizing rather than exacerbating outward differences. The republican
sympathizer Giovanni Della Casa was one of these, painting a utopian picture
in his Galateo:
Remember that in many of the best cities it is forbidden by law that a wealthy
man parade about attired much more gorgeously than a poor man, for it would
seem that the poor are wronged when others, even in matters of appearance,
show themselves to be superior to them.6
This view was mirrored in the opening statement of Cosimo’s 1562 sumptuary law,
which linked excessive clothing expenditure with a variety of social ills. Sumptuous
dress was seen as “incompatible with dignity and modesty,” and
amongst all the things relating to civil life and the good government of any
prince or republic, modesty is most necessary and decorous, as it restrains
human actions, and orders and moderates both the universal and public, as
well as the domestic and private.7
This correlation between clothing and moral restraint was a particularly salient one
for a ruler who wished to distance himself from accusations of tyranny. The law
therefore presented an opportunity for Cosimo to forge a link between republican
and princely regimes. Certainly, the law’s prologue had clear, egalitarian aspirations.
In reality, however, Cosimo merely paid lip service to these prevailing views on
the divisive nature of dress, as Medicean sumptuary policies followed a new direction
that made a clear break with the past. Their laws embodied two main strategies,
both of an elitist nature. The first was a desire not to alienate wealthier subjects who
possessed, or might wish to possess, expensive clothing and jewelry. Secondly, and
more radically, Cosimo and his sons used clothing regulations as a means of visibly
marking out powerful, pro-Medicean groups. We are lucky to have evidence of the
decision-making process behind the 1562 law, recorded in a letter from Cosimo to
his secretary, Francesco Vinta, which reveals the duke’s lenient attitude toward the
wearing of ostentatious, expensive clothing in public, for men and women. The duke
stated that he wished to ease the financial burden of clothing on his wealthy subjects
by allowing them to continue to wear banned garments if they predated the new
law.8 He permitted the use of plain gold and silver jewelry, as long as it was not
enameled. As enameling increased the fashionable or aesthetic qualities of jewelry
rather than its intrinsic or resale value, this was presumably intended to preserve
family patrimonies. Overall, Cosimo’s attitude was markedly relaxed:
In the first instance, we do not wish to prohibit pearls, a single string worth not
more than 500 scudi that is. We do this because all gentlewomen have them. We
do not wish to deprive them of a perfumed pair of gloves worth up to 10 scudi,
because that is how much they cost and everyone owns them.9

Pearls and gloves were the kinds of accessories usually included in wedding
trousseaux, a matter that particularly concerned male relatives, as discussed in
Chapter 3. These expensive items contributed to worries that the rising costs of
dowries and trousseaux were delaying marriages and preventing some women
from marrying at all, consigning them to lives in convents.10 Yet this does not
seem to have been at the forefront of Cosimo’s considerations at this point. In
fact, the laws chart a marked shift toward more luxurious sartorial display and
were apparently calculated to encourage rather than curtail investments in articles
of female jewelry and clothing. The 1546 law permitted expenditure of a total of
260 scudi on women’s jewelry, including paternoster beads usually worn as a loose
belt, a “garland” to be worn in the hair, and two rings.11 This rose to 459 scudi
on jewelry in 1562, increasing again in 1568 to 639 scudi, very significant sums
of money, given that 2000 scudi was a sizable marriage dowry for a Florentine
gentlewoman in the 1560s.12 To contextualize it further, the successful court
sculptor Giambologna earned 300 scudi a year in the 1580s, while an unskilled
construction worker might earn 33 scudi.13
Similar shifts occurred in the amounts of fabric allowed to make specific
garments. In 1562, a man’s short cloak could be decorated with three braccia
(1.74 meters) of fabric. In 1568 this increased to four braccia (2.3 meters). In 1562,
25 braccia (14.5 meters) were permitted for a woman’s overgown. In 1568 this rose
to 27 braccia (15.7 meters). These changes were linked to new fashions, including
the use of bands, or guards of fabric in contrasting colors, appliquéd onto garments
such as cloaks, and added to the rising costs of clothing. Cosimo’s proposals to
Francesco Vinta were actually more tolerant than the finalized legislation and the
laws show that some of his suggested changes were modified or abandoned entirely.
His plan for the use of preexisting clothing was not applied until 1568. The 10 scudi
gloves were reduced to 4 scudi for women and 3 scudi for men. The 500 scudi
pearl necklace never materialized: in its place in 1568 women were allowed one
string of pearls of a value “befitting to their status.”14 Overall, the details of the
reforms concur with Marcello Fantoni’s view that Medicean sumptuary laws were
“on luxury and not against it.”15
Cosimo’s dress laws were also distinctive for the number of dispensations they
included. Although exemptions had been introduced in a few Italian laws from
the thirteenth century onward, in Italy they were less common than in various
other European countries, where they were already widespread by the fifteenth
century. In fact, according to Catherine Kovesi, few Italian cities used sumptuary
legislation to formulate a “detailed class structure that in any way resembled
the laws of Spain, France and England.”16 Venetian laws did not contain special
exemptions, for example, possibly because the patrician group was so closed it
was felt there was less need to regulate social mobility in this way.17 In fourteenth-
and fifteenth-century Italian sumptuary laws, exemptions were mainly granted to
judges, doctors of law and medicine, and chivalric knights, so three out of the four
The court on show 19

groups involved were professionals.18 By contrast, Cosimo shunned these more
meritocratic exemptions and restricted privileges to individuals who possessed
noble titles, or enjoyed some form of close connection to the Medici court. In 1546
a contemporary chronicler spotted a similar bias toward the more fortunate in new
sumptuary regulations for street prostitutes. These women were forbidden to wear
silk and forced to wear a yellow badge, a counterproductive measure according
to the anonymous chronicler because it would enable them to “be recognized
and followed by scoundrels.”19 The writer criticized Cosimo for focusing on street
prostitutes and not courtesans, or puttane grandi, who worked from home and
were more prosperous. In his view Cosimo’s sumptuary laws failed to target large
prey. Instead they were punitive toward his weaker subjects and in this respect
they were made “as the philosopher said, just like spiders’ webs.”
Sumptuary laws are often considered to be the consequence of social
upheaval, arising from “circumstances in which a hieratic social order has
come under internal pressure.”20 The fledgling Medici court is a prime example
of this. Cosimo’s precarious position at the start of his reign, opposed by some
powerful figures within the Florentine patriarchy, necessitated extreme caution
about whom he could trust. He worked hard to surround himself with faithful
supporters, sometimes drawn from other parts of Tuscany and beyond. A study
of the process of “nobilization” in Florence during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries has shown that a heterogeneous range of social groups held power
in the city, including old patrician families, mainly of mercantile origins, the
papal and imperial nobility as well as a few, relatively new families who gained
power by serving the Medici. Most of these were functionaries or came from the
provinces.21 Dress was one of a variety of tools used by the Medici to bind together
what Claudio Donati has described as “an amalgamated élite,” formed by these
disparate groups, to some extent distinct from those Florentine families who had
become great under the republic.22 Donati has pointed out a focus on “delineating
social groups” embedded in Medici sumptuary legislation, which highlighted the
correlation between clothing, rank, public service, and aristocracy during the
second half of the sixteenth century. Marcello Fantoni has gone further to argue
that the dress laws were a force for change, part of the conversion process from
mercantile to aristocratic.23 Rewarding trusted individuals with the right to dress
as they pleased, while at the same time increasing their public visibility within
Florence, was a politically bold move.
1.1 Spiders’ webs and legal loopholes

The 1546 law had a typical beginning, emphasizing the need to distinguish
between the clothing of Florentine gentlewomen, country women (contadine),

and prostitutes, well established categories in Italian sumptuary legislation, which
often paid particular attention to female dress.24 However, the following section
introduced a distinction between the clothing of Florentine citizens, in other words
men who were eligible for public office and their families, and noncitizens. Women
who did not have citizenship were allowed to wear paternoster belts worth up to
two scudi, rather than four scudi, and their gowns could contain up to three braccia
of bands of appliquéd textile, rather than four.25 In 1562, daughters or wives of
Florentine citizens were allowed to wear a gold garland and belt, while others were
only allowed silver. Not dramatic differences, they would nevertheless have been
easily identifiable to onlookers. More radically, the law included a list of people
entirely freed from clothing regulations. These included chivalric knights, and
a long list of other official appointees, such as ambassadors and commissioners,
who enjoyed personal dispensation that did not necessarily always extend to their
female relatives.26 At the top of the court hierarchy, marquises, counts, lords, their
wives and sons, as well as non-Florentines (forestieri) were also exempt.
There is evidence that this unprecedented step had an impact on wealthy
Florentines’ perceptions of the significance of personal adornment. Rather than
lessening the social pressures that encouraged sartorial competition, it seems the
laws heightened anxieties surrounding the connection between status and clothing.
Within Cosimo’s government itself, there were fears that such a complicated system
of exemptions would create difficulties. In a letter dated November 1568, Antonio
Maria Petrucci, secretary of the Sienese Balia, argued that Sienese sumptuary laws
should be applied universally to all subjects, with no exceptions. Following a line
of reasoning similar to that outlined by Giovanni Della Casa, Petrucci urged that
the legislation should not give preferential treatment to “men of letters, arms or
any other prerogative . . . for the common good, because otherwise these particular
considerations would cause confusion and damage.”27 The most polemical feature
of the exemptions was the extent to which they included female relatives. The
strength of Cosimo’s relationships with his first wife and daughters has frequently
been remarked upon and so it is perhaps hardly surprising that he was interested
in this area of domestic life.28 He seems to be drawing on his personal experience
in the section of his letter to Francesco Vinta proposing that all wives should be
treated the same as their husbands because:
if God makes husband and wife as one, we do not know why the law should
separate them. And in order to remove troubles and annoyances, of which there
are enough already, without this, in a marriage.29
Despite Cosimo’s feelings on the matter, women whose husbands were exempt
were not in fact allowed to dress as they pleased until 1568 and it took even longer
to instate this policy in other parts of Tuscany.30 In 1582 in Arezzo, the Knights of
Saint Stephen successfully petitioned the Pratica Segreta, or Privy Council, a few

days after the introduction of a new sumptuary law, regarding precisely this issue.
They requested Grand Duke Francesco I to remember:
Our honour, interest and social position, desiring that our consorts be freed
from this law, so that the distinction of individuals will be recognised and we
will avoid further expenses; just as our Lord the Most Serene Grand Master
included our consorts in the privileges of the Religion [of the Order of
St Stephen], considering husband and wife as one and the same person.31
It was considered unacceptable for wives to be forced to wear humbler clothing

than their husbands. Although fashion was often held to be a female concern, it
was one that husbands benefited from vicariously, illustrated by the tendency for
women to be the focal point of sartorial display in double portraits while their
men folk receded modestly into the background, as discussed in Chapter 5. This
petition was not unique and similar reactions were presumably expected, as the
laws stated that the Medici dukes could personally intervene to decide who to
include or exclude. If courtiers were dissatisfied with their sartorial privileges, this
was the accepted route to try to bend the strictures. One such example is that of
Giovanvittorio Soderini and his wife Maria de’ Nerli, who spotted the potential for
flexibility in the laws and wrote to Cosimo just after the introduction of the 1562
law. Soderini presented his case as follows:
Finding ourselves, my consort and I, with a notable quantity of clothing and

jewellery prohibited by the law published by your Immense Excellency, in order
to avoid superfluous expense and as the above mentioned items are new and
fresh and of very honest value . . . we most humbly beg and with all affection
. . . that with his particular grace and favour he would deign to allow that we,
together with our family of servants, are counted among those excluded and
exempt from the above reform.32
Although the response to this letter is unknown, its existence is evidence that
Cosimo was not regarded as the rigid enforcer of a culture of restraint. By
encouraging specific groups of Florentine nobles to dress in a lavish manner,
the Medici were clearly intent on shaping, rather than stamping out, the courtly
lifestyle noted and, often criticized, in sixteenth-century descriptions of Florence.
1.2 Seeing and being seen

Bestowing sartorial privileges was a gift that brought the Medici ample returns.
Cosimo’s own moderate example suggests he did not advocate the indiscriminate
use of valuable clothing and jewelry or ostentation for the sake of it. However, his

legislation certainly did allow the most influential members of the court to dress
up as much as they wished for specific events, to enhance the prestige of the duchy.
A similar result was achieved in Venice, but by different means, as the restrictive
sumptuary laws that targeted the wealthy were waived for specific occasions
when it was crucial for important citizens to appear dressed in fine clothing.33
The Medici pursued a policy of utilizing ever-more impressive court festivities as
forms of propaganda for their regime, increasing the number of suitable occasions
where courtiers were expected to wear the finery to which they were now entitled.
The participation of courtiers in their most splendid clothing was such an essential
component in this projection of power and prosperity that their attendance
became compulsory.34
In itself this was not a new departure: in the late fifteenth century, Lorenzo
de’ Medici had orchestrated public spectacles in similar ways to strengthen the
family’s authority. However, the Medici dukes exercised their statecraft on a much
grander and awe-inspiring scale, exceeding native Florentine traditions to compete
with the pomp of other, larger, and more established European courts.35 A new
festive calendar was introduced under the ducal regime, combining Florentine
public celebrations that had long flourished during the republican period, such
as the Festa degli Omaggi, with imported ones, including papal jubilees, the
elections of emperors, or the visits of foreign dignitaries, calculated to emphasize
Florence’s position on a more international stage.36 The Medici put their mark
on the city’s architecture, the backdrop that ennobled festive ephemera, with an
ongoing program to open up and rationalize areas of the urban fabric, creating
broad, central axes, ideal for state processions and other types of civic celebrations.
Columns commemorating the triumphs of the ducal regime were placed at either
end of via Maggio in the Oltr’arno area, marking out the street that became one of
the main festive routes and most fashionable residential areas in sixteenth-century
Florence. In addition to public spaces, the Medici used their own properties and
those of influential courtiers, to stage increasingly lavish displays and amusements,
drawing on their substantial personal financial resources, swelled by the Grand
ducal coffers. Technological advances enabled elaborate theatrical and operatic
performances, involving breathtaking “special effects,” such as the sea battle
(naumachia) performed at the Pitti Palace as the finale to the celebrations for the
wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici to Christine of Lorraine in 1589 [Fig. 1.1].37 Such
festivities were usually held over several days, weeks, or even months, combining
different events, including processions, football matches, dancing, and banquets.
Written sources reserved a special place for descriptions of dress on festive
occasions, particularly in accounts by foreign travelers who considered it a
measure of a city’s prosperity. On Michel de Montaigne’s first visit to Florence in
1580 he was underwhelmed by what he saw. However, returning to the city for the
feast of St. John the Baptist he was impressed by processions in the streets, chariot
and horse racing, and displays of textiles in the shops, as well as the finely dressed

Figure 1.1 Orazio Scarabelli, Naumachia in the Courtyard of Palazzo Pitti, 1589,
engraving, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi. (® 1990, Photo Scala,
Florence. Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali ).
Florentine gentlewomen at balconies. He enthusiastically recorded: “After all, I

cannot deny that Florence is called ‘beautiful’ for a reason.”38 Dress was also given
prominence in so-called festival books and Florence was one of the main printing
centers of this kind of souvenir guide that became so popular in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.39 Books often listed the noblemen who helped to finance
the proceedings by name, as well as those who participated in masques, jousts, and
triumphal entries. Often rather sterile narratives, with little interest in conveying the
range of sensory qualities, the sounds and smells, of these jostling, vibrant events,
they instead provide a visual schema of the participants, recording combinations
of textiles, colors, and embellishments in great detail. Although the descriptions
of dress are perhaps not always faithful—indeed, reading across different sources,
it is possible to find multiple variations of the same outfit—they provide a
compelling insight into the function of clothing.40 In a crowd, dress offered a key
to decipher political and social hierarchies and by extension the structure of the
court as a whole. It was vital in rendering a large group spectacle instantly legible,
introducing order into a potentially chaotic scene.41 We can see this clearly in
Domenico Passignano’s fresco depicting the Procession of the Body of St. Antoninus
[Fig. 1.2].42 Members of the Medici family helped to carry the baldaquin, including
Ferdinando and Don Pietro, who stand out in white and gold liveries. The figure
behind them in black with a white ruff is thought to be Francesco di Jacopo

Figure 1.2 Domenico Passignano, Procession of the Body of St. Antoninus, fresco,
Convent of San Marco, Florence. (Photo Scala, Florence/Fondo Edifici di Culto—Min.
dell’Interno).
Salviati, his outward gaze and clothing linking him to his relatives, Averardo and
Antonio Salviati, depicted in the middle foreground, patrons of the St. Antoninus
chapel in the church of San Marco. Additionally, the ecclesiastical figures and the
spectators are also differentiated through dress.
Sources suggest that many courtiers relished being on display in this way. A
description of Cosimo II’s wedding to Maria Maddalena of Austria (Giunti, 1608)
relays a strong sense of the performative nature of dress:
Because whoever had come to these festivities wanted to take part in this
chivalric entertainment, enjoying being seen as much as seeing. Given that as
they moved up and down the same street many times, the first group of people
compared themselves with the next and, exchanging greetings, each one came
to know everyone else and just as they were displaying their own fine clothes
they also discovered everyone else’s.43
The participants’ heightened visibility and the overtones of voyeurism inherent

in this scene are hard to reconcile with many other accounts of courtly

Figure 1.3 Giovanni Stradano, Joust Held in the Via Larga, ca. 1556, fresco, Sala
Gualdrada, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (Getty images).
sartorial display, in which the individual is subsumed in the crowd. If we

consider the subtle differences between male and female dress codes at such
events it is evident that complicated power negotiations were involved. As
might be expected, the participation of most women was very circumscribed:
noblewomen, ladies-in-waiting, and other female guests were often unnamed,
and had passive rather than active roles, or were confined to particular spaces.
At festive events, women tended to occupy outlying positions, where they
could nevertheless observe and be observed, promoting the virtue and nobility
of the female population, and by extension the court as a whole. This is clearly
conveyed by Stradano’s fresco of a Saracen joust, where the women are pictured
at balconies draped with textiles, separate from the male onlookers on the
ground [Fig. 1.3]. Orazio Scarabelli’s engraving of the sea battle at the Pitti
suggest the audience was almost exclusively male, apart from a small cluster of
women at the top right [FIG. 1.1]. Bruna Niccoli has characterized the function
of women on such occasions as “spectators, but also a kind of chorus to the
scene.”44 The concept of groups of high-ranking women as a chorus is apt, given
that the sacrifice of individual status was necessary to achieve a more powerful
expression of group unity.
This was true even at events where women dominated, such as the celebrations
for the baptism of Francesco I’s heir, Filippo, in 1577, described in a book printed

to commemorate the occasion, dedicated to court secretary Giovanni Vincenzo
Modesti:
Arriving two by two, approximately 230 married women and gentlewomen,

including the Grand Duchess’s ladies-in-waiting, were all dressed identically in
gold silk dresses (teletta), and some other Ladies and several more Florentine
gentlewomen were dressed similarly. Others were dressed in different colours,
but all of them so richly, in brocades and cloths of silver and gold, and other
very beautiful silks, and with so many gold embroideries and pearls and so
richly and charmingly, that the skill and cost involved in their creation were
both so great that it was impossible to tell which was superior: not to mention
the gold and jewels they wore, which were so numerous and of such high
quality, that it was breathtaking to behold.45
These types of dress and textiles were prohibited to lesser-ranking women and the
reference to art reminds us that we are not only admiring the grace and beauty
of the gentlewomen themselves but, importantly, our attention is also drawn to
the craftsmanship of Florentine silk weavers and clothes makers. Indeed, in such
descriptions the clothes themselves become protagonists, independently from
the bodies they adorn. This degree of impersonal detachment echoes the praise
lavished on shop displays of local textile wares, for example, on the feast day of
St. John the Baptist. The conflation between finely dressed women and shop wares
recurs in Cesare Vecellio’s description of Venetian brides at Ascension time:
The brides set about inventing and adorning themselves in the greatest luxury
and elegance they can, because they will be seen not only by their fellow
citizens but also by the many foreigners of all ages and sexes who come not
only from nearby towns but also from distant ones to see that splendid display
of merchandise.46
The fact that female clothing served a purpose extending beyond personal
glorification was expressed in many different rhetorical forms. Raffaello Gualterotti’s
description of the entourage of Genoese women greeting Christine of Lorraine on
her way to Florence in 1589 underlines the power of the collective, stating that the
clothing of this group of women was so similar that “everything seemed made by the
same hand and by the same will.”47 The capacity of their clothing to visually enhance
the planned entertainments is highlighted in a letter from Christine of Lorraine to
Ferdinando, describing the Ceremony of the Golden Rose during Lent in 1593:
As well as the Princesses, I had invited thirty-five gentlewomen and ladies

from the household, who came so elegantly dressed that the spectacle did great
honour to the festivities.48

1.3 Liveries of the court
Although the appearance of male courtiers en masse also projected the solidity and
unity of the court, it was defined by a greater range of clearly perceptible sartorial
distinctions. Important Medici supporters were not mere onlookers and fulfilled a
variety of key roles, perhaps leading a convoy to meet a visiting dignitary or future
Grand Duchess, or financing and organizing aspects of the festivities themselves.
In many scenarios, dark colors were the norm in male court dress but for festive
occasions brighter colors were required, like the liveries worn by the Medici for the
St. Antoninus translation procession [FIG. 1.2]. This sharp contrast is described by
Federico Fregoso in the Courtier:
Hence, I think that black is more pleasing in clothing than any other color; and
if not black, then at least some color on the dark side. I mean this of ordinary
attire, for there is no doubt that bright and gay colors are more becoming on
armor, and it is also more appropriate for gala dress to be trimmed, showy, and
dashing; so too on public occasions, such as festivals, games, masquerades, and
the like. As for the rest, I would have our Courtier’s dress show that sobriety
which the Spanish nations so much observe, since external things often bear
witness to inner things.49
While women’s festive dress tended to be a more elaborate and expensive

version of their usual attire, the colorful outfits worn by men involved a dramatic
alteration of their customary appearance, and it was presumably tempting to use
such distinctive clothes to stand out from their peers. Souvenir books described
these garments in detail, translating the ephemeral into the permanent, their
spectacular nature functioning as an indicator of the event’s success. After Matteo
Botti attended the wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici to Christine of Lorraine in
1589 in livery, he purchased a book about the event that included a “description
of the liveries and other pomp.”50 Similarly, Riccardo Riccardi features in a “list of
the liveries that were seen during these festivities” in a souvenir book for the 1608
wedding of Cosimo II and Maria Maddalena of Austria.51
In the context of the court of Henry VIII, Maria Hayward defines a livery as
“clothing of a specific style, colour and cloth, given by one individual to another,”
with various different forms, including corporate, household (both royal and
noble), and soldiers’ liveries.52 Originating from the French livrée, meaning
dispensed or handed over, a livery was usually a gift or part payment, primarily
in the form of clothing. As Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass have pointed out,
liveries created a reciprocal relationship between the parties involved: “Livery
was a form of incorporation, a material mnemonic that inscribed obligations
and indebtedness upon the body. As cloth exchanged hands, it bound people
in networks of obligation.”53 Stallybrass contrasts household liveries, denoting

servitude, with guild liveries, indicating seniority and freedom. Nevertheless, he
argues that both forms resulted in “the marking of a body so as to associate it
with a particular institution.”54 The use of livery (la livrea) at the Medici court
also entailed certain forms of dependency, yet the term was applied more broadly.
The kind of liveries seen at court events were essentially matching outfits with
a particular color scheme worn by several individuals. The Vocabolario degli
Accademici della Crusca (the first Italian dictionary, published in 1612) underlines
this wider meaning, describing being liveried as “wearing clothing of the same
style, and uniform.” Sometimes family or heraldic colors were used or striking
color contrasts were selected. As we can see from Sicillo Araldo’s Trattato dei colori
nelle arme, nelle livree e nelle divise (1565), these combinations could be chosen
simply for their aesthetic merits. The treatise offers numerous different options,
including orange with white or pink, adding that it was easier to put two colors
together as three required greater consideration regarding their symbolism.55
Personal preferences dominated when choosing liveries for Maria de’ Medici’s
wedding in France to Henri IV: Christine of Lorraine wrote to Ferdinando that
Maria had chosen a color “she had always loved” for the king himself, while the
pages and other members of the royal household were to wear blue, sky blue,
orange, and white.56
Although the Medici provided liveries for members of the Grand ducal
household at great expense, courtiers often paid for ceremonial liveries out of their
own pockets, significantly affecting our understanding of their ramifications.57 In
such instances, a livery did not solely reflect the stamp of authority. Certainly,
courtiers still demonstrated their allegiance to the Medici by playing a part
within an orchestrated group display but by financing their own clothing they
enjoyed greater autonomy, making these events a perfect platform to fuel sartorial
competition. The scope for personal aggrandizement is treated satirically in
a popular verse by the Bolognese Giulio Cesare Croce about the 1608 Medici
wedding. In this exposition of vanity, titled Croce’s Most Noble Livery for the
Wedding of the Grand Prince of Tuscany, in which he spends and squanders so much
money that nothing remains to clothe himself to attend the splendid festivities, Croce
parodies the fashion for commissioning vastly expensive liveries, using unusual
fabrics and gems imported from faraway lands. He maintains that the Florentines’
hearts will be “pricked with the bitter wound of envy” when they see his own, richly
decorated livery, however due to his lack of funds the clothes never materialize.
His pages are given names such as “Breathless,” “Dry,” “Thin,” “Whipped,” and
“Derelict,” starkly contrasting with the aura of privilege associated with the court.58
Despite the competing interests of the various parties involved, it was customary
in contemporary accounts to admire courtiers’ liveries as a form of tribute to the
grandeur of the monarch.59 Continuing with the analogy of festive clothing as
performance, courtiers’ liveries can be seen as a prologue to the main act. Liveries
were composed of a series of carefully chosen signs, so that a more expensive

silk, a wider ribbon, or a decorated lining helped to pinpoint the exact rank of the
wearer. This obviously required an audience sufficiently aware of the value of dress
to be able to distinguish between these sometimes very small gradations. Such
opportunities for distinction are evident in a sketch for a robe for the Grand ducal
livery, annotated with a series of embellishments, such as braids and buttons, which
could easily be altered to denote different ranks [Fig. 1.4]. That the Grand Dukes
constituted the pinnacle of this display is made clear in Vittorio Baldini’s account
of the 1589 wedding, possibly the version purchased by Matteo Botti. In the midst
of a lengthy description of the different liveries worn by Florentine courtiers and
visiting nobility, the author breaks off to apologize: duty and decorum oblige him
Figure 1.4 Sketch for a man’s robe (described as a veste or zimarra) for the
Grand ducal livery, 1593, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Guardaroba Medicea 143, 418r (with
permission from the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali).

to commence with an account of the clothing of the Grand Duke himself.60 But
before he does this he seizes the opportunity to run through the appearance of
the fifty liveried servants accompanying Ferdinando before culminating—at long
last—with the most splendid outfit of all. However, the reader’s expectations are
ultimately frustrated as the Grand Duke’s clothing is apparently adorned with
most superb and sumptuous embroideries and decorated in such “incredible
and infinite” ways that the author is at a loss for words. This rhetorical flourish
evidently constitutes the only effective form of deference to the Grand Duke, to
truly set him apart from the courtiers whose dress had been minutely scrutinized
before him, including valuations of individual garments and embellishments.
While Ferdinando’s clothing was symbolically indescribable, the clothing of his
courtiers was closely prescribed by their status, festive role, and position in relation
to their ruler.
1.4 The Riccardi host a party

A range of sources allows us to explore the significance of liveries at a single event
held to honor one of the key achievements of Ferdinando’s reign. As the Grand
ducal regime entered a new century, Ferdinando secured a great diplomatic coup
in the form of Maria de’ Medici’s marriage to Henri IV of France. It represented
a further step in consolidating the international stature of the Medici, something
that Ferdinando lost no opportunity in alluding to at the proxy wedding ceremony
in Florence in October 1600, celebrated in the cathedral. This was followed by a
banquet in the Salone del Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio, hung with two vast
canvases by Jacopo Chimenti depicting the two Medici alliances with the French
monarchy.61 After days of celebrations, Florentine courtier Riccardo Riccardi
hosted what he described as a “little party” in the extensive gardens of his villa in
via Valfonda, on the outskirts of the city near the Fortezza del Basso.62 The palace
courtyard was draped with green cloths and around the inner loggia Riccardo
positioned busts, statues, and portraits, probably including the one he had acquired
of the bride herself a few months earlier.63 There were further Medici tributes in
the gardens, with a marble statue of Aesculapius, the god of medicine and healing
used in the Medici’s own gardens as another of the family’s symbols, placed at the
end of an avenue of laurels.64 The striking surroundings of the gardens and the
variety of the festivities, including dances, jousts, hunting, music, and a procession
of carriages, laden with silver baskets containing gifts of fruit for the bride, appear
to have met the necessary high standard. Ferdinando was impressed, reportedly
taking Riccardo to one side afterward to praise him, saying that in comparison
“the rest of us wretches are not capable of giving parties.”65 Described in an account
by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, the occasion was also commemorated in

Figure 1.5 Unknown artist, The Peasant Girls’ Dance, ca.1600, fresco, Palazzo
Giuntini, Florence (Photo Scala, Florence).
a series of frescoes on the ceilings of the hunting lodge, now Palazzo Giuntini
[Fig. 1.5]. Roy Strong saw the event as the prototype for more grandiose displays
held in the Pitti gardens during the reigns of subsequent Grand Dukes, noting the
unique nature of the frescoes as “no other source gives us such a powerful and
accurate impression of the use and importance of the garden as a setting for the
fêtes de cour in the late sixteenth century.”66
The Jacopo Chimenti canvas shows Ferdinando, standing in for Henri IV,
placing a ring on his niece’s outstretched hand. Both figures are depicted in festive
white and gold clothing, a combination reprised in a slightly later painting by
Nicolas Bollery, with Ferdinando at the port of Leghorn accompanying Maria as
she leaves for France [Fig. 1.6].67 The clothing in these two images differs in many
other ways but the colors white and gold are recurrent features also worn by other
protagonists at the wedding, including Medici relatives. One account records
Antonio, Maria’s half-brother, and don Giovanni de’ Medici, in superbissime
liveries embroidered with gold.68 A planning committee for the event assigned
specific duties to individual courtiers and recommended appropriate forms of
clothing. Forty young noblemen appointed to carry the Grand ducal baldaquin
were instructed to wear white outfits set off with black cloaks and berets,

Figure 1.6 Nicolas Bollery, Maria de’ Medici accompanied by Grand Duke Ferdinando
de’ Medici, ca. 1613–14, oil on canvas, Cherbourg-Octeville, musée Thomas Henry,
835.74, © D. Sohier.
obviously intended to echo Ferdinando’s own appearance. The men were to be

clothed:
all equally, and in the same manner throughout, and it pleases us that the outfit
should be white . . . a matching white satin doublet and breeches, decorated
with gold lace, white silk stockings, white leather shoes, gilt swords and dagger,
with a sheath and white belt, black slashed velvet beret with a white feather, and
decorated with a sufficient quantity of braid, a black sarcenet cloak with figured
velvet, with a purple lining or facing as long as the end result is that there is
no distinction between one or the other and they all appear to be of the same
quality.69

Riccardo and Francesco’s account books reveal they also adopted the combination
of white and gold, following a similar dress code to that established by the
committee. However, they invested in far more valuable liveries than those worn
by the forty baldaquin bearers. Their outfits consisted of matching short cloaks,
doublets or cassocks, and breeches made of striped gold and white tabby silk.70
Even though it was purchased from one of their own silk companies the fabric
still cost a substantial 10 ½ lire per braccio. From their account books it is possible
to link approximately 171 scudi with these two outfits, already more than half the
average annual clothing budget for the entire family. Yet this was but a fraction of
the total cost, as it is only possible to identify the main fabric and tailoring expenses
in the account book. The finished garments were probably embellished with gold
lace, on which the Riccardi spent large sums during this period, and completed
with silk stockings, hats, and shoes purchased for the event. To contextualize
this, two years earlier Riccardo had spent 18, 500 scudi on the Valfonda palace
and gardens, a 32-acre estate and “the largest privately-owned property within the
walls of Florence.”71
The frescoes around the ceiling of the hunting lodge show various stages
of the entertainments, including the Peasant Girls’ Dance [FIG. 1.5], each one
repeating the same arrangement of spectators with the villa in the background.
As the frescoes were designed to be legible from a distance, it is not surprising
that the brightly dressed female spectators stand out. Michelangelo Buonarroti the
Younger praised their appearance:
Very many seated gentlewomen leant forwards, ornamenting that very

dignified place in a lofty and noble manner; making such a gracious spectacle
that, combined with the numerous people to be seen all around, in the absence
of any other festivities, very great pleasure would have been had.72
In contrast, the male participants are on the whole less eye-catching: in keeping
with the outdoor setting they are shown with their dark cloaks over their white
doublets and hose. It is probable that the Riccardi are included among the group of
figures under the central canopy. This event and the clothing for it are a reminder
that power derived not only from courtiers’ physical proximity to the Grand Duke,
but also how closely their clothing approximated his.
The Riccardi’s accounts indicate their readiness to invest substantially in
what was essentially an ensemble event aggrandizing the Medici. The elaborate
expressions of respect, deference, and magnanimity embodied in Riccardo and
Ferdinando’s behavior also extended to the clothing of the participants. The dress
expected of courtiers attending Medici festivities required a large financial outlay,
often paid for out of their own pockets, and due to their distinctive colors, there
were few opportunities to wear these outfits again. On the one hand, by donning
colors prescribed by the Medici, the Riccardi brothers renounced a degree of

independence. The authority to suppress the individual identity of his subjects,
by removing their freedom to choose their own clothing, clearly underlined the
power of the monarch. Yet the Riccardi also reaped benefits from taking up their
place in this tightly controlled performance. It was a privilege to wear colors
ordained by the monarch and they were able to turn this sartorial hierarchy, with
its many subtle nuances, to their own advantage, clearly affirming their superior
status in comparison with those around them. The different degrees of personal
choice and financial input involved reflect the very porous boundaries between the
sartorial identities, and honor, of private individuals and court as a whole.

2T
he rise and fall of
the Florentine toga
The persistence of the republican ideal and its influence on Florentine politics
and culture long after its actual demise has fascinated historians from the
sixteenth century onward.1 Mainly in the wake of the conquest of Siena in 1555,
when the political situation in Florence became more stable, Cosimo I drew on
its symbolism to consolidate his authority and dynastic ambitions, instigating a
series of artistic projects intended to portray the new government as a natural
successor to the Medici oligarchy of the fifteenth century.2 This focus on the
identity of the court and its representations was aimed to strengthen the position
of Medici courtiers within Florence and in relation to other European courtly
elites. Henk Th. van Veen argues that Cosimo’s approach “consciously instilled
a systematic and narrow kind of Florentine self-consciousness among the urban
upper echelons.”3 The founding of various academies intended to commemorate
the city’s past and future cultural achievements, such as the Accademia Fiorentina
(1541) and the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (1563), marked another strand
of this strategy.
Such initiatives reflect the Medici’s belief that they would accrue glory by harking
back to the city’s magnificent past, as well as a desire to emphasize continuity
rather than disjuncture. From this perspective, Robert J. Crum has described the
redecoration of the Palazzo Vecchio under Cosimo I as combining a “retrospective,
double-duty iconography—at once princely and Florentine.”4 Cosimo was not
the first Medici to fully appreciate what has been described as “republicanism
as a system of representation.”5 Cosimo the Elder utilized similar methods to
manipulate public opinion to his advantage and it has been argued, for example,
that his patronage of humanist historian Leonardo Bruni was partly motivated by
the hope that such an alliance would help placate opposition toward the Medici
oligarchy. According to James Hankins, this was one of several examples of “the
disguises of power employed by the Medici regime—their attempt to conceal the
true locus of power by exercising their rule under the cloak of republican forms.”6
For Cosimo I, this was a rather precarious balancing act. As John Najemy puts it:
Cosimo regarded the republican past ambivalently: on the one hand, he needed
it to bolster his legitimacy weakened not only by his state’s violent origins but
also by his status as a creature, indeed a vassal, of the emperor; on the other, he
was wary of it because he feared its resurrection.7
Given such preoccupations, it is hardly surprising that Cosimo I, and Ferdinando

after him, took a close personal interest in the literal cloak of republicanism,
seeking to reconfigure it in a new guise fit for court.8 For centuries, Florentine
Figure 2.1 Domenico di Michelino, Dante Alighieri with the Divine Comedy in his Hand,
1465, fresco, Florence Cathedral (Getty Images).
The rise and fall of the Florentine toga 37

Figure 2.2 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Stories of St. Francis of Assisi, 1483–86, fresco,
Sassetti Chapel, Church of Santa Trinita, Florence (Dea Picture Library, Getty Images).
citizens had been associated with this form of cloak, known as the lucco, typically
worn by professional figures, including lawyers, doctors, and government office
holders. It had long been employed in literary and visual representations of
eminent Florentines. In Dante’s Inferno, written in exile between 1304 and 1321,
the poet is recognized as a Florentine as he journeys through the seventh circle of
hell because of his clothing, just as elsewhere in the poem his speech reveals his
identity.9 This, the sole reference throughout the Inferno to Dante’s dress, suggests
he was wearing the type of loose, flowing, full-length, sleeveless red cloak depicted
in Domenico di Michelino’s portrait of the poet dating from 1465 [Fig. 2.1]. The
cloak became a key component of Florentine male identity and was represented
on the backs of some of the most powerful figures in fifteenth-century Florentine
society.10 In Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule in the
Sassetti Chapel at the church of Santa Trinità, the cloak is worn by Lorenzo de’
Medici and members of Francesco Sassetti’s family [Fig. 2.2].
The life-size, wax ex-voto figure of Lorenzo de’ Medici given to the church of
the Santissima Annunziata was also dressed in a lucco, supposedly the clothing he
wore when he appeared in public at the window of the family palazzo in via Larga,
having survived the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478.11 Depicting Lorenzo as a Florentine
citizen was intended to absolve him from accusations of tyranny, while the garment
also acted as a metaphor for the triumph of good government over a nefarious plot.
In his description of the ex-voto, Giorgio Vasari described the lucco as “the civil

clothing worn by citizens.”12 Similar perceptions of the Venetian toga reinforce
a sense of the significance of such garments. Many contemporary observers,
including Marino Sanudo and Francesco Sansovino, praised what was considered
to be its egalitarian nature.13 Vecellio attributes the toga with great powers: “The
dress ordinarily worn by the Venetian nobility is the ancient Roman toga, and its
uniformity is perhaps no small reason for the harmony and concord with which
this immense Republic has always been governed.”14
In reality, the lucco was one of several forms of cloak or mantle worn by
professional adult men or government officeholders. Carole Collier Frick has
shown that among the various styles available, one of the most expensive and
prestigious was the cioppa, a full-length gown with sleeves, sometimes lined with
fur.15 In her study of Florentine civic robes in the fifteenth century, Jane Bridgeman
concludes that there is little evidence to substantiate the statement made by the
sixteenth-century humanist historian and poet Benedetto Varchi that the lucco
and cappuccio were compulsory wear for adult male citizens during the republic.
Indeed, she points out that the lucco does not feature in the list of prices issued by
the Florentine tailors’ guild in 1415, while other types of overgarment, such as the
cioppa and mantello, were included. To counter claims regarding its long history
of use, Bridgeman argues that visual representations of the lucco only became
really widespread in the 1470s.16 If, therefore, the lucco was not the only choice of
Florentine robe, why were the Medici so keen to promote it?
2.1 The cloak of nobility

The style of the lucco differed from several other forms of male gowns in a small,
but significant detail, namely that it was sleeveless. This aspect is highlighted in
the most detailed description we have of the garment, the aforementioned account
by Benedetto Varchi in his Storia Fiorentina. Varchi, a staunch republican, was
recalled from exile by Cosimo and commissioned to write an account of Florence’s
recent history. Varchi gave the impression that the “noble” cloak was ubiquitous
among adult men of standing:
In the city, during the summer the clothing of Florentine men over eighteen is a
gown of fine wool or black serge, reaching almost down to their ankles, longer
for doctors and other more sober people, lined with taffeta and sometimes with
tabby or sarcenet, almost always black, open at the front and sides, where the
arms appear, and pleated at the top, where it is closed at the neck with one or
two hooks on the inside, and sometimes ribbons or braid on the outside. This
cloak is called a lucco and is very comfortable and graceful to wear. Nobler
and richer people wear it in the winter too, either lined with fur or velvet or
sometimes damask.17

The lack of sleeves linked the cloak in Florentine imagination with another
noble garment, the Roman toga. This sartorial connection underscored the
Roman origins of Florence, as well as the popular notion that city’s republican
tradition made it the true heir to republican Rome. When the banker, diplomat
and chronicler Giovanni Villani recorded the arrival of the Duke of Athens in
Florence in 1342, he proudly described the appearance of the Florentine men as
nobler, more handsome, and dignified than those of any other nation, and their
clothing directly descended from the Roman toga.18 The loose hanging folds of
the lucco and its lack of tailoring coincided with Florentine notions of antique
dress, reinforced in turn by the many sculptures and paintings showing classically
inspired garments that Florentines encountered as they went about their daily lives.
These depicted an array of Roman styles, more or less freely interpreted, including
tunics, loose and belted, or full-length overgarments with or without sleeves.
Figure 2.3 Nanni di Banco, St. Philip, ca. 1411–15, Orsanmichele, Florence (Photo:
Gabinetto Fotografico, Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze).

They all shared some salient features, tending to accentuate the volume of the fabric
and the way it was draped around the body. The simple cloak on Nanni di Banco’s
sculpture of St. Philip for the shoemakers’ guild at Orsanmichele, for example, is
not dissimilar to the sixteenth-century toga [Fig. 2.3]. Depictions of the lucco often
embody a classical solemnity, as in a sketch by Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli which
emphasizes the garment’s lack of sleeves and the gathered cloth along the shoulders
[Fig. 2.4]. The central figure, bent on one knee to kiss Duke Cosimo’s hand, holds up
his long cloak around his body in a gesture reminiscent of the sculptural typology of
the Roman orator with swathes of fabric draped over one arm.
Dress historian Stella Mary Newton proposed that Giovanni Villani’s reference
to the Roman toga reflected something bordering on “a tribal memory.”19 Indeed,
Figure 2.4 Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, Preliminary drawing for a chiaroscuro painting
decorating the triumphal arch of the Antellesi corner, representing Cosimo de’ Medici
hailed as Duke. Florence, Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi, no. 7731 F (Photo:

although Florentines felt the connection with the Roman toga keenly, this did not
necessitate a close understanding of its many forms. Not surprisingly, the toga
underwent various changes over the course of the Roman Republic. Its length
and volume decreased or increased and its draperies were arranged in different
styles. A useful reminder that Roman dress was far from static, and that changes in
fashion were greeted with anxiety long before the sixteenth century, can be found
in Appian’s complaint in 120BC:
For now the Roman people are much mixed with foreigners, there is equal
citizenship for freedmen, and slaves dress like their masters. With the exception
of the senators, free citizens and slaves wear the same costume.20
What really mattered was not so much the detail of the garments, but rather their
shared symbolic valence, as both represented active citizenship and consequently
a form of nobility. Caroline Vout has stressed that wearing the toga meant
“participating fully in the political life of Rome.” Indeed, its use was restricted to
citizens, and it came to be thought of as a form of national dress.21 Similarly, only
men who were Florentine citizens, in other words tax payers and longstanding
residents, were eligible to wear the lucco.22 Over time, the toga increasingly became
a ceremonial costume rather than a practical garment, a fate not dissimilar to the
one that befell the lucco.23
The lucco was so emblematic because participation in civic life had long been
a badge of honor for members of the Florentine patriarchy. Debates about the
true nature of nobility were being held across the Italian peninsula but there was a
particularly pressing need to tackle this issue in Florence. Over the last few decades,
various studies have revealed the process of “aristocratization” under the Medici.24
One of the unusual features of the new regime was its lack of an established and
cohesive aristocracy, distinguishing it from other Italian courts such as Milan or
Ferrara, or even Republican Venice. Many sixteenth-century authors addressed the
problem of the Florentine urban aristocracy, which could not boast of a “nobility of
the sword” or an uninterrupted feudal ancestry. Furthermore, the strong mercantile
tradition of many members of the Florentine patriarchy was considered to be
incompatible with aristocratic models, both in other parts of Italy and abroad.
In 1527, Venetian ambassador Mario Foscari described seeing the men in charge
of the Florentine government, together with their sons, in their shops actively
involved in manual labors linked to the wool and silk trade. He concluded that “as
all Florentines are employed in these base occupations, they cannot but be craven
and base themselves.”25 Writing just three years before the establishment of the
court, Foscari’s comments are hardly convincing, given that the role of Florentine
patricians within the textile sector was primarily entrepreneurial, financial, and
administrative. However, similar views continued to persist under the ducal
regime. Mary Stuart reportedly chose to denigrate her mother-in-law, Catherine de’

Medici, by referring to her as “la marchande florentine.”26 Florentine authors, such
as Paolo Mini, in his Difesa della città di Firenze, et de’ fiorentini contro le calunnie
et maldicentie de’ maligni (first published in Lyon in 1577 and then in Florence in
1593), attempted to rebut such criticisms. Mini chose to emphasize the ways in
which Florence’s republican past contributed to the city’s continuing greatness,
including these mercantile links. In a passage that directly echoes the language of
detractors, Mini noted that members of other Italian courts were disdainful of the
fact that Florentines lived by “vile gain, all day long with a spindle, winding on the
warp or at a trellis combing and selecting wool.” However, he proceeded to extol
the virtues of a strong mercantile mind-set and their wider application, stating
that “Florentines are therefore good for more than just negotiating with tailors,
and grocers, and with silk merchants about silk, and disputing with weavers about
velvets and sarcenets.”27
Alongside such justifications of commercial occupations, historians and other
commentators argued that nobility could be proved in a variety of tangible or
demonstrable ways, through a range of noble actions, of a military, cultural, or civic
nature. The centuries-long involvement of many families in government office was
presented as an alternative to signeurial nobility.28 A vital point was being made here,
namely that noble blood was not a necessity and that it was possible to “become”
noble. Vincenzo Borghini’s Nobiltà delle Famiglie Fiorentine (probably written in
the early 1560s but not published until 1584–85), stressed the value of civic deeds
and the potential for merchants to be ennobled through public service.29 Borghini, a
scholar and prior, also argued that a man could become noble through “his things”
(le cose sue), including his house, his name, title, and his clothing.30 But, as in all such
questions of social capital, it was necessary to achieve the right balance. In Borghini’s
opinion the pursuit of nobility was occasionally taken to ridiculous extremes and he
caricatured the fashion for recording, and often inventing, family trees and coats-
of-arms as proof of aristocracy.31 Borghini was not the only author to consider the
potential of dress to convey nobility. For Paolo Mini, the lucco continued to embody
the dignity and honor of the Florentines in the sixteenth century:
Who dresses more soberly and with more simplicity and honesty than the
Florentines? And their head wear, called cappucci, their virile togas, called
mantelli, and their cloaks, called lucchi, testify to this.32
Views like these helped to confirm the link between the republican mantle, the
official garb of the public servant, and the Florentine aristocracy. The emphasis
on tradition and service to the city glossed over the fact that Cosimo and his
successors embarked upon a process of overhauling the structure of Florentine
government. Robert Burr Litchfield has shown that most office holders under
the ducal regime were still picked from same pool of patricians as they had been
during the republic and the qualifying requirements remained very similar.

Increasingly, however, posts were filled in accordance with the personal wishes of
the Grand Dukes rather than through a more democratic process. Furthermore,
the powers of office holders were slowly eroded. Although the overall number of
positions increased between the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, the
amount of rotating, short-term posts, supposedly of a more egalitarian nature,
diminished, replaced by permanent offices whose incumbents were chosen by the
Grand Dukes.33 The decision to retain the same uniform for government members
was a shrewd strategy, helping to disguise the fact that the underlying system itself
was being radically changed.
2.2 Enforcement strategies

The Medici used various tactics to increase the cloak’s prominence. Images of
the gown were incorporated in the frescoes in the newly redecorated Palazzo
Vecchio, a building that represented the intersection between the two regimes.
Flemish artist Giovanni Stradano immortalized Florentine bureaucrats in their
black garb in the Sala di Gualdrada, which was completed in 1562, the year of
Cosimo’s second clothing reform.34 The frescoes illustrate traditional Florentine
public events and festivities, such as jousts and football matches. Figures wearing
Figure 2.5 Giovanni Stradano, Procession in Piazza Duomo, 1561–62, fresco, Sala di
Gualdrada, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (Getty Images).

lucchi appear in several of them, sometimes as the main focus of the composition,
as in a scene showing a procession of government members in the city center
[Fig. 2.5]. Framed by three Florentine landmarks, the duomo, campanile and the
baptistery, the view is dominated by the cloaked men, their grandeur and dignity
admired by clusters of bystanders.
The lucco also appears at several opportune moments in a biography of
Cosimo. After the Grand Duke’s death, Christine of Lorraine commissioned
Domenico Mellini, the official chronicler of many Medici events and festivities,
to write an account of her father-in-law’s life. As the work was not published
until 1820, it had little impact on contemporary attitudes, but the aura Mellini
creates around the cloak is striking. He recollects that Cosimo preferred to wear
clothing “in the Florentine style” in somber tones of black and gray, although it
was sometimes “richly decorated with gold.” In this respect, Mellini was keen to
characterize Cosimo as, at heart, a republican. He underlined this by describing
Cosimo as an admirer of the “grave and dignified” traditional Florentine civic
dress. Furthermore, and here his argument becomes pure propaganda, he praised
Cosimo for introducing sumptuary legislation in order to counteract the new
courtly ways that were corrupting more conservative sartorial practices.35 This
picture of sobriety concludes with an anecdote about Cosimo’s appearance at a
party hosted by Isabella de’ Medici at the Palazzo Medici with three other masked
companions, all wearing lucchi. Putting on the gown in an ante-camera, Cosimo
is reported to have said “I would pay a great deal to be able to go about Florence
wearing this gown; it is beautiful and at the same time noble and grand!”36 The
choice of the lucco to wear at a masque, as a form of disguise, might not seem
coincidental to a reader critical of the ducal regime.
The Medici turned to sumptuary legislation to enforce use of the garment and
to enhance its prestige. Cosimo’s laws included various details on the correct
use of the gown and Ferdinando took the unusual step of passing a detailed
law devoted solely to the subject of civic clothing at the start of his reign in
October 1588. Cosimo’s 1546 law ordered that men aged eighteen years and over
were to wear the lucco, or similar garment, described as a “long civilian cloak.”
Infringements of the laws usually resulted in a fine but in this instance it was
decreed that the culprit would lose their office, a far more punitive measure.37
It also reinforced the notion that without the cloak noblemen were unworthy of
their offices. The 1562 law reiterated that Florentine citizens were to wear a toga
of any type of material, color or lining, as long as no metal threads were used.38
It is likely that Ferdinando’s lively interest in robes of office stemmed partly from
his personal experience as a cardinal in Rome. At the time his law was being
drafted, he had not yet been seen in Florence divested of his ecclesiastical robes.
When his first public appearance in civilian dress occurred on November 30,
1588, it seems that the transition was not entirely successful as one Florentine
noblewoman candidly described him as looking like “a barrel of anchovies.”39

The Florentine diarist, Giuliano de’ Ricci, characterized the 1588 law as evidence
of Ferdinando’s “continual quest to safeguard the honour, reputation and needs of
his subjects.”40 Before plunging into the minutiae of buttons, linings, and metal
threads, sumptuary laws usually included a preamble outlining a series of laudable
aims. In this case the law stated a desire to return to the glories of Florence’s past.
Ferdinando apparently aspired to:
reform and re-order the civilian clothing of his most beloved city of Florence,
which (owing to the nature of recent times, known for their licentiousness both
in public and private) has declined through much neglect and to restore it, as it
deserves, to its ancient splendour and dignity.41
An important new step was to raise the age of those eligible to wear the lucco from
eighteen to twenty-nine. This heightened the sense of privilege associated with the
cloak: it was now a garment that had, in a sense, to be earned, through age and
experience. Under the age of thirty, Florentine men were often excluded from public
office, so this increased the association of the cloak with active citizenship. The law
ordered that a lucco, or similar form of long gown, made of different types of black
wool, had to be worn throughout the day until midnight. It applied to a group of
several hundred people: the members of the main government bodies, including
the Councils of Two Hundred and Forty-Eight, or Senate, as well as the knights of
Saint Stephen who were eligible for these offices. The law specified different types
of fabric, colors and forms of decoration for the cloaks of different office holders,
thereby establishing new visual hierarchies even within the elite togati. The lord
lieutenant and other counselors, who held the most eminent positions, now had to
wear cloaks of crimson red cloth, with matching stockings and black velvet shoes,
while in the winter they were allowed to wear a lined cloak of fine serge or other
type of wool in the same colors. Additionally, the lord lieutenant was to wear a
purple silk hood (cappuccio) over his left shoulder. The forty-eight senators were
assigned slightly less costly black cloth or serge lucchi, lined with red or purple silk.
The 1588 law contained a range of provisions taking into account the reality
of daily life in Florence, a city based on commerce, populated by merchants who
needed to go about their business unhindered. In order to allow greater freedom
of movement, merchants were permitted to wear a shorter length cloak, called a
ferraiolo, until midday. However, in the afternoon up until the Ave Maria bell in
the evening, they were required to put on the correct form of civilian cloak. On
holidays when church bells did not ring, they were to be responsible for changing
their overgarment at the correct time. In the summer months, the lucco was to
be worn only after eleven o’clock in the evening because of the heat. During bad
weather, office holders could wear a more practical, short cloak outdoors on the
condition they were accompanied by a servant carrying a lucco, so that it could be
put on again indoors.42

2.3 The lucco’s shortcomings
This emphasis on the physical experience of wearing the cloak is unusual in
legislation, providing an interesting perspective on the motivations of Ferdinando
and his advisors, who were sympathetic to the fact that a cloak usually made of
about 5 meters of wool, even a fine one, could be hot at times or weighty and
uncomfortable when wet. Despite Ferdinando’s efforts to encourage use of the
cloak, it was not an unmitigated success. Straight after the law was passed on
November 1, 1588, chronicler Giuseppe Settimanni described the “citizens of
Florence” processing through the streets of the city in their different colored lucchi,
as ordered by the Grand Duke. He was particularly impressed by the new style of
hood assigned to lieutenants.43 He was one of several diarists to record ceremonies
at which the cloak was worn in the late sixteenth century, but ultimately it was not
embraced on the scale that the Medici had hoped.44 During the previous century,
various male outer garments and tunics were made from substantial quantities
of fabric falling from the shoulders in pleats or large folds, but these full-length
gowns must have felt increasingly heavy and cumbersome to those accustomed
to the more fitted clothing and thigh-length cloaks fashionable in the sixteenth
century.
Opposition to Ferdinando’s law led one powerful group in Florence to petition
for special exemption: the Buonomini di San Martino. This was a male lay
congregation, mainly made up of members of the Florentine patriarchy. Founded
in 1442, it was involved in charitable activities and attached to the influential
St. Mark’s monastery, which had strong connections with the Medici family. The
lucco was a defining feature of the group’s iconography, appearing prominently in
their oratory frescoes, begun by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop in 1478.
One of the scenes shows three Buonomini giving provisions to a needy woman
and her newborn child [Fig. 2.6]. One figure, wearing a cappuccio, provides
the woman with swaddling bands and blankets. Another, seated on a stool, is
enveloped by his cloak, gathered around him so that its red lining is just visible. In
the foreground, the third figure offers a female servant a capon and flask of wine.
In another scene, two Buonomini provide money for lodgings for two pilgrims. The
younger of the two wears a tunic but the older man’s lucco is a truly monumental
garment, pushed up in great folds over his shoulder so he can retrieve his purse to
pay the hostel owner. Its sculptural qualities convey the sheer weight of the fabric.
Despite the fact that the identity of the congregation was so closely bound up with
the lucco, the Buonomini wrote to the Grand Duke in March 1589 to obtain partial
exemption from the new law. The signatories of the petition included members
of the Strozzi, Gondi, and Carnesecchi families. These noblemen explained that
to carry out their charitable works they usually had to “travel about a great deal
and at all times of day all over Florence, going into small and badly arranged

Figure 2.6 School of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Works of Mercy: Tending the Sick, ca.
1482, fresco, oratory of the Buonomini of San Martino, Florence (Photo Scala, Florence).
houses.”45 In these conditions, they argued, the lucco was not a suitable garment.
Consequently, they requested that all Buonomini of a lower rank than the Senate of
Forty-Eight should be allowed to wear a slighter longer version of the ferraiolo, the
fashionable Spanish-style short cloak, instead. The petition concludes with a note
from Ferdinando I’s secretary, Piero Usimbardi, that the Grand Duke was disposed
to grant their request.
Beyond such practical issues, opposition to the cloak marked another episode
in the ideological and aesthetic battle between the short and tight versus the long
and loose in male clothing, which can be traced back to the fourteenth century.46
The Grand Dukes’ personal tastes reflected this conflict. Cosimo’s clothing
preferences as a young man show clearly how extremely unpopular these robes
could be. Despite Mellini’s assertions that Cosimo admired the lucco, there is
little evidence that this was actually the case. A comprehensive analysis of the
Grand Duke’s wardrobe records that he did not possess a single lucco.47 While
his cousin Alessandro was duke, the youthful Cosimo reportedly wore clothing
inspired by military apparel. Although no details are provided, it is likely to have
included upper garments made of leather, similar to this leather jerkin [Fig. 2.7]
or the slashed jerkin, in spirit at least, seen from the back in Bassano’s Adoration
of the Magi [Fig. 0.2]. Historians have interpreted this as a conscious decision
to emulate and recall his father, the renowned condottiere, Giovanni delle Bande

Figure 2.7 Youth’s dark brown leather jerkin, English, ca. 1550–1600. Museum of
London 36.237 (Getty Images).
Nere.48 According to contemporary historian Scipione Ammirato, Cosimo’s

warlike appearance provoked the displeasure of Pope Clement VII, Giulio de’
Medici, who presumably feared it presented a threat to Cosimo’s cousin, Duke
Alessandro. Clement VII ordered Cosimo to wear the Florentine lucco in line
with the city’s customs, but he was seemingly so averse to the suggestion that
he avoided public appearances until Duke Alessandro relented and decided to
“remove that nuisance from him.”49 Cosimo’s sons later demonstrated a similar
taste for shorter, practical, fitted garments. In several portraits Ferdinando is
depicted in the same short breeches and exaggeratedly muscular legs associated
with his father. The combination of bulbous trunk hose and exposed bulky thighs
was a strong, if relatively short-lived, statement of manhood, almost as overt as a
codpiece, both definitively superseded by the baggier, longer breeches worn in the
seventeenth century [Fig. 2.8]. Vecellio associates this fashion with the clothing
of French noblemen, perhaps another reason it appealed to the Francophile
Ferdinando. Vecellio’s rather visceral description suggests the extreme nature of
this fashion: “They wear short breeches, very tight on the thigh, which practically
reveal the veins of their flesh.”50 In a more dignified version, again from Vecellio,
the show of a well-defined leg encased in short patterned breeches worn by the
rector of Padua University creates an aura of assertive strength that cannot be
dampened even by a full-length gown [Fig. 2.9].

Figure 2.8 Bernardo Strozzi, A Betrothal, 1620s, oil on paper, 18.5 × 28 cm, WA
1946.338 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
Ferdinando met with opposition when he tried to enforce the use of academic
gowns, outside the lecture halls as well, at the University of Pisa.51 Galileo Galilei
was one of the academics fined for not wearing a gown in 1590, inspiring him to
compose a 300-line poem titled Contro il portar la toga (Against the Wearing of the
Gown).52 Galileo followed the model of burlesque Florentine poets who expounded
their views in poetry on a surprising range of topics, from salads to syphilis,
sometimes in the demanding form of terza rima. Rather than being evidence of
Galileo’s nonconformist nature, the poem reflected a widely held aversion to the
toga. Listing the gown’s many shortcomings, the author complained:
What do we believe it matters

Having a toga of black velvet
And someone who carries your cloak in your wake
...
Because the toga won’t let you walk,
It gets in your way, impedes you and ties you in knots
So that it’s a trial to attempt to walk.
And yet it doesn’t seem to be unsuitable
For those who go about their business slowly53
Galileo lambasts the sense of pomp and ceremony embodied by the garment,
including the fact that a servant was required to carry it when it was not being

Figure 2.9 “Rector, University of Padua,” Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et
moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice: Sessa, 1598), facing page 121. Wellcome
Library, London.
worn, and pokes fun at wearers who become tangled up in and slowed down by
its folds. While some of his gripes, including the fact that it was not easy to visit
a brothel wearing a toga, were humorous, his suggestion that the toga wearer was
hampered and ineffectual was particularly damning, suggesting a passive rather
than active male, thereby calling into question the wearer’s sexual potency.
It is significant that Galileo wrote the poem in his twenties, as the toga was not
perceived to be a garment for the young and active, a point reinforced by the new
age restrictions for the lucco. As the poem underlines, limb-constricting garments
that forced the wearer to walk in a particular way were hardly thought to be virile.
Indeed, Vecellio praises the clothes of “young men of the city of Venice and of
students” because they are “handsome and elegant, and [they] allow the wearer

to move easily and quickly.”54 Eugenia Paulicelli also notes the toga’s associations
with old age, quoting from a 1581 description of Doge Sebastiano Venier putting
on armor, “abandoning the toga and with it his old age, he is dressed with new and
strong limbs.”55 Like the young Florentines discarding their civic hoods during
the siege, removing the toga is seen to give him a new agility and lease of life. The
toga began to be widely perceived as the binary opposite of the kind of fashionable
dress associated with soldiers, the epitome of male strength and action. Indeed,
Aldo Manuzio’s biography of Cosimo de’ Medici praised the lucco, “that grave and
most dignified garment, which brought the City honour and grandeur” by directly
contrasting it with new male fashions in Florence, the “light, base, and soldierly
clothes worn by the citizenship.”56 Luca Valoriani’s poem, In Praise of Breeches, also
suggests that men were seduced by fashionable dress because they were attracted
to the striking attire of the off-duty soldier. Valoriani describes berets, slashed
doublets and breeches as the clothing of soldiers and “civette.”57 Tellingly, the latter
constituted another disreputable social group: “Wanton or effeminate lads, night-
sneakers” according to John Florio’s World of Words.
Soldiers were increasingly viewed as fashionable, sexualized figures, feared
for their corrupting influence upon the male populace at large.58 In the decades
following the siege of Florence, German troops continued to have a visible
presence in the city. Cosimo paid thousands of mercenaries to fight for him in
the Battle of Marciano against the Sienese and his German Guard (Guardia de’
Lanzi) often features in depictions of important court events, for example, at the
investiture of the Order of Saint Stephen.59 Some key elements of military dress
can be seen in an image of an unfortunate soldier undergoing a head operation,
from Andrea Cesalpino’s De Plantis (1583) dedicated to Grand Duke Francesco de’
Medici [Fig. 2.10]. An obtrusive codpiece and low-necked shirt, of the kind that
had long been replaced by high collars or ruffs, compound his rather degenerate
look. The large, open slashes on his doublet sleeves and breeches clearly offer
complete freedom of movement. His clothing recalls that of Landsknechts depicted
in engravings by German artists including Sebald Beham and Daniel Hopfer in
the first half of the sixteenth century, a sartorial type that dominated until the
seventeenth century when the increasing professionalization of military forces led
to greater conformity and the provision of uniforms and equipment.60 However,
official opposition to militaresque clothing perhaps enhanced its appeal. When the
fiery Benvenuto Cellini recalls being stopped by the Otto di Guardia for wearing
a short cloak (cappa) instead of a civil cloak and hood, like many other aspects of
his autobiography it amounts to a boast.61
Given the emasculating connotations of full-length cloaks, it is not surprising
to discover that the lucco has a patchy presence in the wardrobes of the courtiers
investigated here.62 The records of Giovanbattista Capponi do not list any
payments for a lucco, although he is represented in one in the only portrait that
survives of him.63 The Riccardi brothers were more enthusiastic in its uptake.

Figure 2.10 An operation on the head from Andrea Cesalpino, De Plantis Libri XVI
(Florence: Marescotti, 1583). Wellcome Library, London.
Francesco acquired one of the full-length gowns even before he held a position
that necessitated its use. His accounts record three lucchi, one for summer of silk
twill lined with taffeta and the other two made of rash, a fine serge.64 His younger
brother, Riccardo, purchased five different lucchi.65 Perhaps these purchases can
be understood in light of the Riccardi’s social standing. Although the brothers
possessed an extremely large fortune, the family was a relatively new presence
among the Florentine elite. Francesco was made a senator in 1596, but he was
the first member of the family to receive a political honor. These factors could
well have increased the brothers’ willingness to be seen in public in such a
cumbersome status symbol.66 The extensive wardrobe of the diplomat Marquis
Matteo Botti, inventoried after his death in 1621, contained seventeen long
gowns, although only two of these are described as lucchi, compared with forty-
four ferraioli and numerous other short cloaks called cappe.67 The wardrobes of

all these individuals reflect the unassailable demand for shorter, lighter garments,
including the Spanish ferraiolo, a growing shift in fashion that was to influence
the textile industry, boosting the production of a range of cheaper, lightweight
silks and mixed cloths during the mid-sixteenth century.68 Indeed, the lucco was
the antithesis of contemporary court fashions and it appears that Florentines were
turning to other forms of clothing to affirm their status.
The garments and accessories that formed part of the chivalric robes of
the military Order of Saint Stephen seem to have been adopted with greater
enthusiasm. The foundation of the Order in 1562 was a coup for Cosimo, an
honor previously confined to emperors and popes. Aspiring knights of Saint
Stephen, who were mainly Florentine but hailed from all over Italy and abroad,
had to prove the pedigree of their ancestry by demonstrating the nobility of
their parents and grandparents on both sides.69 In March 1590, shortly after his
lucco law, Ferdinando reformed the constitution of the Order, including a series
of provisions on its robes, which were based closely on other existing military
orders, particularly the Knights of Malta. The main component of the robes was a
mid-length white wool cloak with a crimson cross. The 1590 reform emphasized
the religious meaning of the cloak. White so that onlookers would gaze upon
purity, the color also signified the candid nature of the members’ souls. The
red cross was placed on the left so that members would “love and adore it with
all their heart.”70 The full regalia was restricted to important ceremonies, when
the knights processed through the streets of Florence in order of seniority.
However, the new law required members to always wear a cloak with a cross
appliquéd in fabric on it and a chain around their neck with another, small gold
cross, edged in vermilion.71 Ferdinando exploited yet another opportunity to
mark social difference through clothing by ordering the top ranking knights,
including Priors and members of the Balia, to wear crosses surrounded with
gold fringes. The injunction was followed by Giovanbattista Capponi, whose
accounts contain frequent purchases of crimson and white silk as well as what
seem to be ready-made crosses supplied by mercers in order to sew onto cloaks.72
The manifest advantage of the chivalric dress code was that it was possible to
demonstrate membership while still wearing fashionable clothing. These cloaks
and chains became so popular that a law was passed in Milan in 1584 to prevent
nonmembers from wearing them in public.73 An individual named Scipione
Aurelio, working across the region of Lombardy, was accused of selling various
goods including “clothing and red crosses in form and material very similar to
the cross and militia of Saint Stephen, of which the Grand Duke of Tuscany
is Grand Master, without given proof of nobility or legitimate authority.” All
involved in the fraud were charged to appear before magistrates and it was ruled
that in future artisans and merchants had to apply for special permission to sell
such products.

The 1588 sumptuary law exemplified the first Medici Grand Dukes’ propensity
to use their subjects’ clothing to affirm their own stature. By conferring greater
importance on the lucco and carefully formulating the way it was to be worn,
Ferdinando acknowledged and legitimized the significance of public service for
Medici courtiers. But whereas once the gown had encapsulated strong political
values and plucky republicanism, now it was worn by men who had placed
themselves directly in the service of the Grand ducal regime, a steadily growing
proportion of the Florentine nobility. While its reincarnation was gradual enough
to not entirely alienate Florentine subjects, by the late sixteenth century the lucco
perhaps resembled an extension of the Medici household livery, compounded by
the fact that individuals risked losing their positions if they did not wear the gown
correctly, which was also true for Grand ducal liveries.74 The Medici’s focus on the
cloak was a rare instance of “positive” sumptuary legislation, in that it promoted,
rather than prohibited, a specific type of clothing. Nevertheless, from the responses
to the legislation and the evidence of Florentine families’ clothing accounts, it is
clear that sumptuary privileges were most welcome when they accorded with
the prevailing aesthetic, an indication of the increasing force of fashion over the
course of the sixteenth century and possibly also of Florentine willingness to adapt
to court life. Despite the Medici’s varied strategies to emphasize the prestige of
Figure 2.11 Justus Suttermans, The Senators of Florence Swearing Allegiance to

Ferdinando II de’ Medici, 1621, oil on canvas © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

the gown, it could not shake off its archaic, emasculating image. A painting by
Justus Suttermans seems emblematic of the garment’s fall from grace [Fig. 2.11].
It represents a group of senators, rather disheveled men past the prime of youth,
shrouded in their civic robes, swearing their allegiance to the newly crowned
eleven-year-old Grand Duke Ferdinando II, the scene dominated by the more
imposing figures of his mother, Maria Maddalena of Austria, and his grandmother,
Christine of Lorraine.

Part two
The Courtier as
Consumer
58
3T
he noble art
of shopping
Account books reveal that Florentine courtiers often had weekly contact with
clothing artisans and merchants, evidence that they invested substantial amounts of
time and effort, as well as money, in maintaining and replenishing their wardrobes.
Rather than being a frivolous pastime, procuring clothing was viewed as a serious
activity, one that was demanding and potentially risky, requiring expertise and
good judgment. In recent years, studies on domestic consumption patterns in
the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have explored the extent to which
clothes buying was a female activity, both in real terms and in contemporary
perception.1 As retailing developed, clothes shops were frequently represented as
locations for amorous trysts, where a woman might be enticed by her suitor as
much as by a pair of gloves, a scenario conjured up in Abraham Bosse’s famous
engraving of the Galerie du Palais in Paris (c. 1638).2 We can trace the beginnings
of this kind of “spectacle of consumption” in the sixteenth century with the growing
prominence of mercers’ shops, some of which specialized in the sale of trimmings
such as ribbons, braids, and laces, and provided a range of services including
bespoke and ready-made fashionable accessories often intended for female use.
The connection between these shops, with their striking array of merchandize, and
female consumers is suggested in Pietro Belmonte’s derogatory remarks on female
followers of fashion, “adorned in such way that I cannot tell if I am gazing at the
Rialto and the Mercery of Venice or just a simple, silly little woman.”3
Our knowledge of the extent to which clothes buying was divided along gender
lines in this period is limited by the surviving sources. Although family account
books tend to record the recipients of clothing purchases, they rarely name the
individuals who ordered the work, collected the finished goods, or had direct
contact with shopkeepers. More ephemeral sources, on the other hand, such as
loose receipts, regularly mention the participation of married women, highlighting
their role in specific aspects of clothes buying. For example, Florentine receipts
suggest that it was customary for women to buy directly from velettai, or veil
makers, who specialized in making and selling goods for female dress, sometimes
encompassing a wide range of accessories and textiles, made from linens and
other light fabrics. As these items also tended to be made in a domestic context,
Florentine noblewomen were well equipped to judge the quality of goods for
sale.4 However, within the well-run home, purchasing goods was traditionally
considered to be an area of male competency while the female head of a household
was responsible for the care and management of these possessions.5 Being able
to buy good quality products at the right price was an important aspect of the
patriarchal ideal of the “effective administrator.”6 As Torquato Tasso wrote in 1580:
“The office of acquiring should be attributed to the man and that of preserving to
the woman.”7 This compartmentalization reflected concerns that women might
fritter away family wealth, instead of preserving it to pass on to future generations.
There were also practical reasons for such a division of labor, given that
patrician men could go into shops and move around the city streets with greater
freedom than their female counterparts. This was particularly true in Italy, where
scholars have shown there was more control over women’s movements in public
places than, for example, in England or the Netherlands.8 In 1549, a Welsh visitor
to Florence, William Thomas, was struck by the sheltered nature of members of
the female population: “Florentines . . . love a modesty in their women’s apparel
and . . . they keep their maidens in so strait a manner that no stranger may see
them.”9 In contrast, mercers, among the most important purveyors of goods for
clothing, offered a cosmopolitan experience that was presumably considered
more appropriate to the male shopper. In his encyclopedia of arts and science,
the Bolognese physician Leonardo Fioravanti praised: “the skill and foresight of
the mercer, in knowing so many new fashions of things.”10 Filippo del Vivo has
suggested that the shops of successful mercers were utilized to disseminate political
information in Venice, acting as meeting points to exchange news garnered by
merchants who traveled across Europe, and to the East and West Indies.11 Similar
curiosities were perhaps satisfied in the central shopping areas in Florence, such as
the via de’ Servi, where there were about thirty shops, belonging to mercers, veil
makers, shoemakers, and perfume sellers.12
Buyers usually supplied artisans with nearly all the materials required to make
up their clothing and consequently took a very active role at different stages
of the production process, in terms of choosing, overseeing, and sometimes
coordinating aspects of the work. By necessity, therefore, many individuals,
sometimes including extended family relatives and servants, could be called upon
to play a part. Although a group concern, acquiring clothing was divided up in
ways that can be clearly related to gender roles and family hierarchies. Men’s desire
to control the appearance of their family members is evident from the way they
took responsibility for the acquisition of clothing at significant life events, such as
weddings. Even though women generally bore the brunt of moralists’ tirades on

the evils of fashionable dress, the very items singled out for blame were usually
condoned and often commissioned by male relatives. Very expensive outer
garments were purchased by male members of the family, drawing on the support
of a larger network of friends and relatives for advice and sometimes also for
financial assistance. This was a centuries-old tradition. As Carole Collier Frick has
shown, in 1381 no fewer than eight relatives were involved in selecting and buying
the wedding dress of the Florentine Caterina del Bene.13
In fifteenth-century Florence, men were heavily involved in the acquisition
of items for marriage trousseaux and counter-trousseaux. The counter-trousseau
consisted of clothing purchased by the groom, often including the wedding dress
itself, and was highly significant not least because it was a means of acknowledging
and symbolically balancing the substantial financial benefits the bride brought to
the marriage in the form of her dowry.14 The male members of the family who had
negotiated the marriage were therefore keen to seize the opportunity to visually
and publicly underline the union between the two families involved. Samuel Cohn
has pointed out that such gift exchanges did not in fact favor the bride, describing
them as “a man’s game,” as they involved male relatives, promoted the interests of
the groom’s family, and were often financed ultimately by the bride’s dowry.15 In
the late sixteenth century, the purchasing and giving of wedding finery, trousseau
garments, and linens was still a collective male enterprise. In Bologna, for example,
male members of the Gozzadini family took the initiative in commissioning
clothing items for the trousseaux of their sisters, daughters, and future wives.16
Florentine Cosimo di Donato Tornabuoni typically provided his wife’s wedding
outfit, described in his account book in 1578 as a white grosgrain undergown,
gown, and doublet “for the morning that she went out.”17 A contemporary view
that this was a far from disinterested gift can be found in the Spanish tale The
Miser Chastised by Donna Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, published in a collection
of novellas in 1637, in which a miserly man is unusually generous in one particular
aspect of the wedding preparations. Zayas explains that Don Marcos,
on this occasion so far overcame his parsimony, as to present his wife with a
rich wedding dress of great cost and fashion; calculating very wisely that the
expense was but trifling in comparison with what he had to receive.18
This was just one occasion when men were able to utilize the clothing of their
female relatives to their own advantage. Some made testamentary provisions to
ensure that this control was maintained after their death. In 1581 the Milanese
Giovanni Pietro Visconti left instructions that his wife Livia Tollentina should
remake some of her gowns into ecclesiastical hangings.19 Similarly, Renata Ago
has noted the tendency of men to dispose of their wives’ clothing in seventeenth
Rome, with the example of Giacomo Anguillara who bequeathed his wife’s purple
brocade and lace gown to one of his heirs.20
The noble art of shopping 61

3.1 Supporting local textiles
Two specific aspects of clothes buying are examined in this chapter, namely the
acquisition of textiles and tailored clothing, to show how adept many Florentine
noblemen were at negotiating and navigating the world of merchants, retailers, and
artisans, and how these quotidian activities can reveal key aspects of male status
and identity. Despite changes in fashion from the early sixteenth century onward,
which placed increasing emphasis on the cut of clothing and added embellishments
including haberdashery, the fabric a garment was made from was still the most
expensive component of dress. When large-scale designs were involved, like the
black damask in this portrait of an unknown man, the pattern was not always
matched up in order to conserve as much fabric as possible [Fig. 3.1]. The saying
“measure twice cut once” was particularly pertinent as expensive textiles placed
burdens upon both clothes buyers and artisans. A tailor had to be absolutely sure
of his calculations before taking his shears to a fabric that he often would have
been unable to afford himself.
Figure 3.1 Florentine School, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1550, oil on panel (Inv. 104).
Dea/Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Getty Images).

As well as the issue of cost, the origins of the fabrics you wore had strong political
and social implications. A recurrent criticism of male fashions at this time focused
on their provenance. Across Europe men were increasingly chastised for wearing
foreign-style clothing. Giuliano il Magnifico in the Courtier lamented, for example,
that “some dress after the French style, others like the Spaniards, and others again
like the Germans, and there are also those who dress in the manner of the Turks.”21
This problem was often framed in highly dramatic terms. Encased in the clothing
of different nations, the male body was symbolically hung, drawn, and quartered.22
In other versions, the divided body was fought over by competing armies, and the
wearer was seen to be subjugated to a more powerful enemy reflecting, as Gerry
Milligan points out, unease about Spanish and French domination of Italy.23 In her
work on the architectural body in fifteenth-century Florence, Liane Lefaivre argues
that in many cultures “the body serves to project an image of the unified organic
whole or congruity on the world.”24 In contrast with this ideal, across sixteenth-
century Europe the clothed body reflected irreparable divisions, although there
were many authors, including the English William Harrison, who chose to put a
more humorous spin on this trope:
Such is our mutability that today there is none to the Spanish guise, tomorrow
the French toys are most fine and delectable, ere long no such apparel as that
which is after the High Almain [German] fashion, by and by the Turkish manner
is generally best liked of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the Barbarian sleeves,
the mandilion worn to Collyweston-ward, and the short French breeches make
such a comely vesture that, except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see
any so disguised as are my countrymen of England.25
Such criticisms referred mainly to styles of clothing but the fabrics they were
made from were also implicated. The brightly colored or patterned silks worn
by wealthy English citizens in the sixteenth century were nearly always foreign
products, imported from Italy, Spain, and France, and were therefore construed
as treacherous in many literary forms of the time.26 Despite this, Henry VIII
purchased many foreign goods, including silks from Italy, linens from the Low
Countries, and furs from merchants trading in the Steelyard.27 Fabrics woven
on the continent were not just available in London. It was possible, for example,
to buy textiles imported from Milan, Genoa, and Ulm from a mercer in Ripon,
Yorkshire, in the late sixteenth century.28 As Fynes Moryson remarked in
his Itinerary of 1617: “If I should begin to set downe the variety of fashions
and forraign stuffes brought into England in these times, I might seeme to
number the stares of Heaven and sands of the sea.”29 In contrast, English wool
was represented as a useful, sober, and manly textile, a symbol of the nation’s
backbone and moral fiber. Promoting local goods therefore became an act of
statecraft. Ronald Berger points out that the “most expensive English goods

could have almost nationwide market areas,” just as luxury imported fabrics
circulated across the country.
The domestic textile market in Italy differed markedly, as the existence of several
flourishing, often quite closely located, production centers ensured strong regional
variety and competition.30 Silk weaving was first established in Sicily and a few
northern Italian centers in the eleventh century and by the Renaissance period
production thrived across numerous cities, including Venice, Florence, Genoa,
Bologna, Lucca, Naples, and Milan.31 Different centers specialized in particular
types of wool and silk fabrics, leather and linen goods, accessories and haberdashery.
If they wished, wealthy Florentines could buy and wear these items with relative
ease. Tracing the provenance of the textiles they purchased we can gain a sense of
the strength of their allegiance to local goods and consider whether their choices
were influenced by negative attitudes toward foreign products or by other factors.
Correspondence relating to clothing purchases provides substantial evidence
that the desire to fit in was a key consideration, which encompassed the kind of
textiles worn. Adherence to local customs was often a priority, even if that meant
altering one’s dress when traveling abroad. When the postmaster general of
Bologna requested his annual gratuity from the Medici court in 1543, Cosimo I’s
Major-domo Pier Francesco Riccio conferred with other members of the ducal
household on what should be sent, suggesting “a lot of damask or jujube-coloured
satin to make a dress for his daughter-in-law.” Cosimo himself was drawn in to the
debate, saying that satin would be best because “women in Bologna rarely wear
damask,” unlike the Florentines.32 In 1575, when the daughter of the scholar and
dramatist, Sperone Speroni, moved from Padua to Rome, he suggested she change
her clothing because the Romans, unlike the Paduans, were not in the habit of
wearing silk, “except for sarcenet in the summer.”33 Clothing helped to integrate
or camouflage the wearer, as Federigo Gonzaga made clear in a letter written from
France to his mother Isabella d’Este in 1516 asking her to have new shirts made
up in the local style and sent out to him so that he could dress like everyone else.34
In diplomatic circles, dressing in order to blend in with new surroundings was
an important element of etiquette and deference, illustrated by the experiences
of Matteo Botti, discussed in Chapter 4. On a diplomatic assignment to Paris in
1610, Botti explained in a letter to the Medici that “when one has to commission
a livery, caparisons, or wedding garments with a lot of gold, it is necessary to plan
well in advance and it is not a good idea to stray from the customs of the country
you are in, or at least as little as possible. Even the Spanish ambassador does this.”35
Here Botti’s view differs from that of Gaspare Bragaccia, author of L’Ambasciatore
(Padua, 1626), who suggests Spanish and French diplomats were so powerful they
were absolved from this gesture.36
Florentine textiles did not just provide noblemen with a sense of belonging; they
could also further their financial interests and duties of patronage. Over the period
from 1550 to 1620, Florence’s prosperity derived from three main commercial

activities: the wool and silk industries, and banking.37 Most of the largest textile
companies continued to be run, or at least largely funded, by members of the
Florentine nobility. Florentines were naturally keen to invest in their own products
and their account books demonstrate their fidelity to local ventures during
this period. According to Jordan Goodman, well into the seventeenth century
Florentines preferred to “place their funds in silk and banking in Florence, rather
than abroad.”38 The Grand Dukes also publicly promoted local textile production
at opportune moments. When Christine of Lorraine reached the bustling port
of Genoa, before her marriage to Ferdinando de’ Medici in 1589, it was noted
that she went shopping for silks on the via dei Toscani, a street named after
the silk merchants originating from Florence and Lucca.39 During the wedding
preparations, the Medici ensured that their influential subjects benefited from their
patronage. James Saslow points out that the names of many of the most prominent
members of the Florentine nobility feature in the list of companies supplying
large quantities of textiles used for the celebrations.40 As a consequence, Medici
wardrobe records constitute a veritable “who’s who of patrician families.”41 Most of
the textiles purchased for the theatrical costumes and clothing for the Grand ducal
family and its retinue, a vast total of 7134 meters, were made in Florence.42
Florentine household accounts reflect a variety of considerations when it came
to textile buying, combining the purely financial with the personal. By the end
of the sixteenth century, the Riccardi had invested about 30,000 scudi in silk and
wool businesses.43 They bought many clothing fabrics from a silk company based
in Pisa trading under their name, and from other companies in which they had
invested substantial sums of money, allowing them to obtain textiles at reduced
prices. One of Francesco Riccardi’s account books records him buying silk fabric
“at a discount of my choice.”44 Not surprisingly, this was standard practice: Niccolò
di Luigi Capponi and Giovanbattista Capponi both purchased from Capponi silk
merchants. Overall, however the Riccardi purchased dress silks from a total of
twenty-five different merchants, including companies owned by the Medici, Strozzi,
Panciatichi, Salviati, Bonsi, da Filicaia, Rinuccini, and Corsini. Similar patterns
emerge from Medici wardrobe accounts. During Eleonora di Toledo’s lifetime,
the family used more than forty silk merchants.45 This strategy meant noblemen
relied on the services of a number of favored, long-term suppliers but continued
to shop around for unusual or hard-to-find items. In the late seventeenth century,
the Gondi family’s accounts show a similar pattern, although with rather smaller
numbers of suppliers. This could be seen as a reflection of the very extensive
range of textiles goods available in Florence and the fact that many merchants
specialized in specific types of silk or wool. Furthermore, it was a shrewd strategy
to distribute patronage widely, in the hope of future reciprocation.46
As well as buying from local merchants, the Riccardi also purchased local goods
for which Florence was renowned, especially rash and silk sarcenet. Portraits
showing subjects in their finest clothes can give a false sense of the predominance

of silk in male wardrobes. In contrast, the Riccardi family’s account books show
the textiles purchased most frequently for their own clothing were in fact two types
of wool: perpignan and rash. These alone accounted for approximately 20 percent
of their total expenditure on textiles and haberdashery for clothing purposes, over
the period 1575–1600.47 Although both were in origin foreign fabrics—rash had
come from Raskia in Serbia and perpignan wool from the French town of the same
name—by the fifteenth century they were produced in Florence.48 Rash suited the
growing demand for lighter fabrics, and it cost the Riccardi on average 10 lire per
braccio, more than they paid for some silks, including damask, satin, and taffeta.
Silks purchased by the Riccardi for their clothing also reflected changes in local
production, which had shifted focus from high-end polychrome brocaded velvets
and damasks to lighter fabrics such as taffeta and tabby silks. These were now
considered acceptable wear for even the grandest occasions, such as the Medici
wedding festivities described in Chapter 1. Even plain velvets rarely featured in the
brothers’ accounts: out of the almost three hundred lengths of fabric purchased by
the family during the last decade of the sixteenth century, only six were velvets.49
Like many wealthy Florentines, they preferred light, plain silks, or ones with
smaller motifs, which could be embellished with slashing or embroidery.
However, local goods did not satisfy all the needs of Florentine courtiers, who
also sought out specialized items, unusual types of haberdashery or fabric that
were not produced in the city, often drawing on their network of friends and
relatives to do so. Clare Walsh has described these kinds of transactions as “proxy
buying,” in her study of shopping in early modern England, which underlines their
social significance.50 They show men looking for the same characteristics as they
might when purchasing silverware or furniture, such as quality and durability,
and suggest they had a good knowledge of what the market had to offer. For
example, when Cosimo Tornabuoni commissioned a particularly fine dress for
his wife, decorated by the sought-after court embroiderer Antonio di Ubertino
Verdi, brother of the artist known as Il Bachiacca, he chose a green tabby silk
from Venice, purchased on his behalf by a Florentine nobleman, Marquis Orazio
del Monte, who was visiting the city.51 Letters written between the Florentine
nobleman Filippo Magalotti and the Genoese Stefano Spinola demonstrate a
shared desire to obtain the best products available. In 1595 Magalotti sent Spinola
a straw hat, a typically Florentine product, which turned out to be too tight and
had to be returned to the maker to be widened. Spinola wanted some Florentine
rash, but was dissatisfied with the first piece sent by Magalotti. He wrote:
That sample of rash that your Lord had sent to me, although it is good and
beautiful it is not much like the one I want. And so I am including a sample so
that you can show it and see if you can get some more made and if so order up
to 50 braccia, as in addition to my gown I would like a dress for my wife, who
is expecting.52

Spinola was confident that Magalotti could find a weaver to copy the sample
exactly and have it sent to Genoa in time for it to be usefully made into a garment
for his pregnant wife. His letter reveals the planning involved in clothes buying
and the extent that men assumed their high expectations could be met by local
artisans. In return, Spinola assisted his friend by ordering a quantity of purl made
by Genoese nuns, replicating a sample sent by Magalotti. Not only did noblemen
go to great lengths in order to hunt down the best velvets or particular types of
haberdashery, their correspondence hints that this could be a source of enjoyment.
Alongside other social pursuits, such as fencing and dancing, the cultivated
courtier or gentleman also had to be familiar with the language of clothing, and
possess a degree of connoisseurship when it came to the finer points of dress. This
is reflected in the tone of a letter from written by the knight Orazio Urbano from
Venice in 1572 to the Grand Duchess Joanna of Austria:
The diligence used in dyeing and in all other aspects is very great and the silk
itself is beautiful and of an excellent color. However, all those who know about
this art agree that Venetian silks are not of the same finesse and perfection as
the Neapolitan ones.53
Urbano’s description conveys the esteem and cultural capital associated with
textiles. Diligence, beauty, art, finesse, perfection were certainly all qualities worth
pursuing despite the practical obstacles.
Imported goods were also available to purchase directly from shops in Florence,
bypassing the possible complications of proxy buying. Nevertheless, household
account books from the second half of the sixteenth century very rarely refer
to textiles that were actually produced abroad. Of these, cheap mixed wool and
silk draperies from Flanders were the most common (such as burattino, saietta,
and ferrandina, which generally cost about 2 or 3 lire per braccio). Goods from
other parts of Italy, such as Naples, Venice, Milan, and occasionally Bologna, were
more prevalent. Given that the provenance of a textile was not always known or
recorded, it is impossible to calculate what proportion of any individual’s wardrobe
these “foreign” goods represented, but it is clear they were not common. We can
trace small quantities of medium-cost silks, such as taffeta, from Venice and from
Naples various types of silk passementerie and what is generically described in
accounts as seta and setino, the latter referring to either a lower-quality pure silk
or a mixed-fiber silk, and very occasionally linen from Pozzuoli. Milanese goods
were more varied, including the accessories the city was famous for, such as hats
and belts, but also types of haberdashery, including embroidered guards, and
several kinds of mixed-fiber silks, called burattino, saietta, and ferrandina.
Even for contemporary consumers and retailers, it was not always obvious
where a fabric came from, what it was made of, or even what it should be called.
Mixed-fiber silks evolved rapidly enough for their old names to be left lagging

behind. Ferrandina, for example, originally a fabric woven entirely of low-quality
silk, tended to be a combination of a silk warp and a wool or cotton weft by the
second half of the sixteenth century. A 1589 petition from two veil makers based
in Florence, seeking permission to weave narrow-width, striped cloths from a mix
of silk, flax, and metal threads to be used to make doublets, focused partly on the
“identity” of the textile.54 Part of the request hinged upon whether the proposed
fabric would be classified as a silk or not and what the implications of this would
be. Luca Molà’s study of the silk industry in Venice has shown that weavers often
disregarded regulations concerning the markings of cloths and therefore it was
not always possible to identify different types of fabrics accurately.55 Equally,
when accused of trading in contraband fabrics Venetian tailors and merchants
sometimes used the defence that they did not, themselves, know where goods
had been made.56 With the increasing range of mixed cloths, ambiguities
abounded, presumably also shielding the wearers of foreign fabrics from possible
criticism. The kinds of imported fabrics bought by Florentine noblemen tended
to be plain, lightweight and, relatively speaking, cheap, characteristics that hint
at an increasing desire for fashionability, a key factor that tested local loyalties
and prompted consumers to look for goods further afield. The prominence of
Florentine products in courtiers’ wardrobes therefore depended heavily on the
ability of the city’s textile manufacture to stay abreast of fashionable tastes.
Certainly, natural inclinations to buy local were put to the test when Florentine
wool production began to flounder. In 1570 the Wool Guild noted that the industry
was performing poorly and that “woollen cloths were no longer made of the same
quality and quantity as they used to be.”57 Various measures were taken to protect
locally made fabrics, including a ban on the importation of quality woolens, such as
rashes and perpignans, into Florence from other parts of the Grand Duchy.58 These
initiatives were ultimately unsuccessful and Richard Goldthwaite has outlined the
effective collapse of the Florentine cloth industry in the early seventeenth century,
partly due to the “new draperies” from Holland and England “flooding all the
Mediterranean markets.”59 The increasingly competitive international textile trade
stimulated demand for fashionable goods, no longer satisfied by local production.
Indeed, consumer attitudes toward textiles were undergoing a sea change that had
repercussions for many years to come. This shift was noted by textile merchants
and agents in Italy and abroad. In the 1540s, for example, an Antwerp-based
firm selling says in Italy reported that “it is the colours that sell the says, not their
quality.”60 In 1723 the Venetian Board of Trade submitted a report that contrasted
the new consumer attitudes with those of the sixteenth century, when
the only consideration was how cloth would wear: a suit was purchased for the
whole life time of a man, more or less, therefore people thought in terms of
perfection and not at all about cost. [Now] Everyone buys a new suit of clothes
twice a year and so they look for bizarre and lively colours and for novelty: they

no longer think about the strength of the material, since this does not matter,
and they all go for outward appearances and attractive prices.61
Although the report focused on middling-status consumers, it echoes the quest

for perfection revealed in sixteenth-century letters and has wider relevance in
highlighting classic tensions between intrinsic value and fashion value, frequently
identified in histories of consumption and consumer goods.
From the early seventeenth century onward we see increasing acquisitions of
textiles from abroad at the most elite levels of Florentine society. Roberta Orsi
Landini has shown that fabrics for Cosimo I’s wardrobe were rarely made outside
Florence but that the situation was radically different when it came to Cosimo
II’s reign from 1609 to 1621.62 Various pairs of his breeches, for example, were
made from silks from Naples, England, Piacenza, Milan, and wool from Flanders
and Milan.63 Orsi Landini and Stefania Ricci note that provenance begins to be
recorded regularly in the Medici Wardrobe at this time, including fine woolens
from Spain, England, Flanders, and Milan.64 The example of the Salviati family,
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, also shows an increase in
imported goods, totaling about thirty to thirty-five percent of the textiles they
purchased, while the rest were Florentine. In addition the Salviati bought foreign
accessories, mainly made in France, such as wigs, fans, fur muffs, and crests.65
Boutier paints a similar picture of the textile consumption of the Gondi family,
during the same time period. Niccolò Gondi combined local goods with imported
textiles, while the proportion of northern European textiles among his purchases
increased, including cloth from Bavaria and Brittany and serge from Scotland.
Although it is possible that some of the goods listed were actually Florentine-made
copies, such patterns are certainly in line with what we would expect from broader
market changes. The increasing circulation of these foreign products was more
damaging in economic terms than the much-condemned Spanish cloaks and
French breeches in the previous century.
3.2 Tailors and their apes

In the same way that noblemen purchased textiles from many different sources,
they also depended on the services of a sizable group of artisans. The records of
Niccolò di Luigi Capponi, dating from 1569 to 1579, show transactions with around
seventy-five different artisans and merchants.66 Some of these only appear once
or twice in his accounts, while others, such as his preferred shoemakers, worked
regularly for him for years. The different craftspeople named in Niccolò’s accounts
include tailors, hose makers, beret makers, knitters, veil makers, and perfumers.
Typically, his mother also carried out sewing work for him, as the production of
linen underwear was a task often entrusted to female relatives or nuns from the

city’s convents. Over the decade covered by his account books, Niccolò used five
different tailors, another standard practice. Rather than exclusively patronizing
one tailor, the noblemen discussed here generally ordered clothing from several
different ones, over long periods of time. By the second half of the sixteenth
century, the more specialized occupations of breeches makers and doublet makers
had been swallowed up by the tailoring profession. This form of streamlining in
the clothing trade meant that tailors were able to offer the whole range of garments,
thus playing a major role in shaping men’s appearances.
Fueled partly by anxiety about the amount of power they wielded, cultural
stereotypes of tailors were often negative. Across Europe, the image of the affluent
man as a monkey or puppet controlled by his tailor became increasingly diffused
in the sixteenth century. Ulinka Rublack cites a pamphlet written by German
theologian Johann Eberlin von Günzburg in 1520 entitled I Wonder why there
is no Money in the Land, which states that “clothing artisans make people into
monkeys.”67 The idea that you were created, literally fashioned, by your tailor
can be found in Ben Jonson’s On English Monsieur, in which the Monsieur “must
prove/The new tailor’s motion, monthly made.”68 Later in the seventeenth century,
Randall Holmes commented “for indeed we are all his [the tailor’s] Apes” in his A
Storehouse of Armoury and Blazon (1688).69 The Bolognese Leonardo Fioravanti’s
discussion of the profession in his Dello Specchio di Scienza Universale (1572)
appears to be a deliberate riposte to claims that the tailor emasculated his clients
and seeks to rebalance their relationship, putting the customer firmly in control:
“The person who is ordering the clothes, he tells the tailor what style they are to be
in, in other words if they are to be long, short, wide or tight, plain or embellished.”70
In reality, it was a more subtle relationship involving a degree of mutual
dependency and courtiers had to be able to trust the men who made their clothing,
both in terms of their skills and discretion. Once the expensive fabrics purchased
by customers were handed over to the tailor, waste or damage became a major
concern. Regulations introduced by the different cloth guilds tackle the issue of
“disappearing” or wasted textiles. Although often intended primarily to safeguard
the interests of their members, the impact for consumers is evident. To reduce
such incidents, the silk guild stipulated that tailors had to pay for any goods they
damaged.71 The trial of a Milanese tailor, Gian Giacomo Prata, reveals the lengths
artisans might go to in order to conceal an error from a wealthy client. Having
mistakenly cut through an extra layer of fabric, Prata attempted to buy an identical
piece of Venetian tabby silk to replace it. Unsuccessful in this, he then pieced
together the remaining fabric as best he could but the customer still noticed the
sleeves of the finished garment were too small.72 In 1578, the Florentine guild of
linen drapers dealt with incidents of this nature, stating that if a tailor was found
guilty of such an offense he was to repair the damage done to the relevant party
and pay a fine of up to 50 lire.73 The guild also sought to maintain a distinction
between the work of tailors and the business of buying and selling fabrics and

haberdashery. It claimed that tailors did not always use the full amount of textile to
make up a garment so that they could sell on the remnants afterward. To prevent
this practice, tailors were forbidden to sell goods without specific permission
from the guild.74 Sometimes tailors came to work at a family’s home, requiring a
further level of trust. An account book kept by Bartolommeo Botti and Caterina
de’ Medici records that in 1589 their tailor Giovanbattista di Bastiano Pivelli was
paid for “work done in the house, ordered by Signore Matteo.”75 In 1603, one of the
Magalotti’s tailors, Domenico Fontani, was paid for “various expenses and making
clothing in Florence and at the villa,” about 14 km outside Florence at Pieve di
Santa Maria all’Antella.76 While we might assume that in such cases courtiers would
require their tailors to be reliable, sometimes the tailor was in fact the one at risk:
a memoir of Florentine life by the tailor Bastiano Arditi reports that a tailor was
the victim of theft while working for the Guicciardini in their palazzo in 1574.77
Not all tailors had access to their customers’ homes but most had an intimate
knowledge of their bodies and important life changes. The idea that a tailor had to
know his clients even better than they knew themselves is hinted at in Le Tailleur
Sincère (Paris, 1671). Tailor Le Sieur Boullay recommended,
it is very necessary to observe a man well before measuring him, so as to note

his ordinary posture, and that without warning him, for he may stoop naturally
or hold himself erect, or else lean on the one side or the other; if he expects that
you are going to take his measure, he will think he is doing right to hold himself
more erect than usual and you will fail with your measure.78
Clothing artisans would have been privy to their customers’ physical weaknesses,
as evidenced by Cosimo I’s struggles with his digestion and circulation. Roberta
Orsi Landini notes Cosimo’s need for special clothing for his ailments, such as
stockings for his gout as well as several martingale breeches worn during bouts of
diarrhea. The Medici Wardrobe sent instructions to “quickly, quickly” have some
breeches of scarlet cloth “with a martingale” made up so that Cosimo could take
advantage of their “comfort.”79 Martingale breeches were a new and apparently
popular invention and Cosimo’s burial outfit provides an example of them, seen
here displayed at the Palazzo Pitti [Fig. 3.2]. The silk breeches have disintegrated
badly, including the padded front of the codpiece. Nevertheless, it is still possible
to make out the integral flap at the top, which laced to the front of the breeches,
and the hanging strip of fabric that would have fastened behind.80 This innovation
made it possible to undo and take down the codpiece without entirely removing
the breeches. Before hooks and eyes replaced eyelets, points, and laces in around
1620–30, undoing breeches was a laborious affair.81
The shortcomings of breeches are outlined in a poem “Against Breeches”
(Contro alle calze) by Messer Bino, written in a rather earthier vein than Galileo’s
“Against the Wearing of the Toga.” The author calls breeches “dishonest and not fit

Figure 3.2 Cosimo I de’ Medici’s doublet and martingale breeches. Displayed in the
Galleria del Costume, Palazzo Pitti, Florence (Getty Images).
for purpose,” suggesting that if their main purpose is to “cover those things,” then
underpants (mutande) would be sufficient, and complaining that “they always do
us some detriment or bring us shame.”82 Francesco Baldelli’s poem, “In Praise of
Martingale Breeches” (In lode della martingala) is far more positive, stating that
the “blessed martingale” was more useful to a man than his hat, beret, gloves,
and shoes. Baldelli enumerates the garment’s merits, including the fact that “you
can let them down by undoing a single string, oh what comfort!,” you can open
your thighs to ride a wide horse without exposing yourself, and finally “you are
safe with a martingale—even if you get the runs you won’t soil your breeches.”83
Not surprisingly, martingale breeches appealed to the scatological humor of
Rabelais, appearing as the title of one of the books in the imaginary library of
St. Victor in Paris: Martingale Breeches with Back-flaps for Turd-droppers.84
However, the impracticality and discomfort of male clothing was also a matter
for serious consideration. From the same period of Cosimo’s illness in 1543 we
learn that one pair of breeches was unsuitable because it was not “soft and fit for
humans” but that a nightshirt (camiciola) “satisfied him divinely” and that he “was
enjoying it.”85 A tailor who could produce good results was a prized asset. While
other craftspeople and suppliers might change with some frequency, if a skilled
tailor could be found, who would retain a record of customers’ measurements
and build up an understanding of their needs, it was vital to retain his services.
Florentine courtiers were often tardy in paying their clothing bills and while this

had its disadvantages it served to lock both parties into a potentially beneficial
relationship, ensuring that the customer would return while also retaining the
artisan’s interest.86
A tailor did not offer practicality alone; he was capable of providing something
possibly even more sought after: the most up-to-date fashions. Tailors had far
greater input in the final appearance of a garment than Leonardo Fioravanti
claimed. Certainly, there were collaborative aspects to the process, but it is
clear tailors had the potential to propose innovative and unique designs, which
were beyond the expertise of courtiers. Although only one tailor’s workshop
book survives, owned by the Milanese tailor Gian Giacomo del Conte, it was
presumably not unique. The sketches and designs it contains for male and female
garments indicate that tailors might have offered and discussed different options
with their customers, who could look at, consider, and admire new proposals.87
The ability of some members of the craft to supply new and desirable clothing
styles is evident from a petition brought by Venetian tailors complaining about
competition from foreign artisans and their “diabolical inventions.”88 We know
that the Medici themselves were prepared to pay substantial sums of money
to their tailors. Orsi Landini notes that Cosimo I’s tailors received 12 scudi a
month, placing them roughly on a level with artist Agnolo Bronzino who was
paid 150 scudi a year.89 Similarly, the tailors hired to work for the 1589 Medici
wedding received the same rate as Bernardo Buontalenti, one of the most
sought-after Florentine architects and designers.90 In both cases, tailors were
viewed on a par in financial terms with artists who were admired for their
design skills. Interestingly, tailors did not work exclusively for the Medici. Both
Cosimo di Donato Tornabuoni and Aldobrandino Orsini used the same tailor
as Ferdinando de’ Medici, one Andrea del Marinaro, presumably a connection
that brought with it some cachet. Marinaro was capable of producing the finest
garments: Aldrobrandino purchased an elaborate and sophisticated outfit from
him consisting of a black slashed satin doublet, figured velvet breeches, an uncut
velvet jerkin and a slashed grosgrain cloak lined with figured velvet in 1581, for
which the tailoring alone cost a substantial 65 lire.91
There is some evidence that tailors benefited from the patronage of their
customers in ways that were not only expressed in monetary terms, indicating both
that they were highly prized and that courtiers were keen to please artisans who
could produce the desired fashions. Carole Collier Frick discusses a letter from
February 1472 addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici, written by his tailor inquiring about
the possibility of work for a relative. The familiar tone adopted by the tailor and
the assumption that such a request would be well received leads her to conclude
that their association had moved from the “economic realm into the social.”92 In the
sixteenth century, we can find more examples of what Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel,
and Ilja van Damme have described as “long-standing personal relationships, albeit
often of an informal kind” between retailers, makers, and their clients.93 In 1615,

Francesco Riccardi’s second wife gave 70 lire to her son’s tailor for his daughter’s
dowry.94 The Magalotti’s papers contain a tenancy contract for one of their
favorite tailors, Francesco di Cesare Mazzanti, to rent a house and orchard behind
Santissima Annunziata for three years for thirty-six florins a year.95 Although
none of the Magalotti brothers are mentioned in the contract, it seems they knew
the landlord and probably arranged the agreement or acted as referees for the
tailor. The Orsini had various links with one of their tailors in Rome, the wealthy
Giovanbattista Pacetti, which appears to have extended beyond commissions for
garments as Pacetti appears on a list of Alessandro Orsini’s creditors from 1609
owed the huge amount of 2210 scudi.96 In 1604 Pacetti was the tailor who supplied
all the mourning clothes for Alessandro’s funeral in Rome, including an outfit so
that he himself could take part in the funerary procession, an event discussed in
further detail in the following chapter.
Despite concerns that the money plowed into clothing was wasted, garments
retained substantial value. Even for wealthy noblemen, clothes were precious
and were often altered, mended, and recycled to the point of consumption. The
numerous considerations involved in selecting fabrics and ordering garments
show us that Florentine men did not place their commissions lightly. The stages of
planning and acquisition were crucial, phases when a nobleman could follow the
advice given in the Courtier that he “ought to consider what appearance he wishes
to have and what manner of man he wishes to be taken for, and dress accordingly.”97
The second half of Federico Fregoso’s recommendation, “that his attire aid him to
be so regarded even by those who do not hear him speak or see him do anything
whatever,” was far harder to fulfill. Once a man put on his new clothes, how they
were received was not necessarily within his control.

4 Ruinous appearances
Both outsiders and members of the Grand ducal court noticed a shift among the
Florentine elite away from a mercantile way of life focused on generating money,
to a courtly one that placed greater emphasis on spending it, partly on outward
trappings such as clothing and carriages. The Florentine Paolo Velluti’s description
of his relative, Antonio di Piero d’Andrea Velluti, sums up a common view that
these different occupations were fundamentally irreconcilable. While discussing
Antonio’s skills at horse riding, Paolo Velluti complained that Antonio was “more
dedicated to being a courtier than a merchant, and so he frittered away most of his
worldly goods.”1 Bartolomeo Cenami, an ambassador from Lucca, also described
how the Florentine nobility had “abandoned its old parsimony in private life, and
given itself over to courtly habits.” According to Cenami, these families scorned
commerce. Instead they took to carrying swords and “lived with such splendour
at home and abroad that they rivaled some titled lords from other parts of Italy.”2
Many observers felt that this love of fine clothing was an escalating problem. In
1573, Florentine chronicler Giuliano de’ Ricci wrote of “such intolerable expenses
in clothing, houses and games and in all sorts of things, that it seems impossible
for anyone to sustain.”3
As we have seen from Giulio Cesare Croce’s satirical poem, splendid clothing
could provoke ridicule. The fashionably dressed man who needed to be taken
down a peg or two was a well-established trope, a famous example of which can
be found in Vespasiano da Bisticci’s account of the hapless Sienese ambassador,
whose showy garments attracted the disapproval of the discreetly black-clad
King Alfonso of Naples. To put the ambassador in his place, courtiers deliberately
jostled him until the pile on his expensive velvet cloak was ruined.4 And yet, there
was a direct correlation between physical possessions and honor. Agostino Lapini’s
diary describes Joanna of Austria’s 1573 pilgrimage to the shrine at Loreto, where
she offered the Madonna a “beautiful gift” comprising “six silver candlesticks of
a very significant height and weight, it was therefore a gift that was appropriate
to the person making it.”5 Equally, the decorum of dress necessitated clothing
that was consonant with the wearer’s status, in order to maintain honor, and by
extension, enhance a good reputation. Numerous sartorial requirements had
to be fulfilled: not just the kinds of textiles and embellishments worn, but also
whether the clothing was appropriate to the context, in terms of types of outfits,
liveries for servants, and so on. The enmeshed relationship between dress and
honor, appearances and behavior, are highlighted in Leon Battista Alberti’s Della
Famiglia, written in the 1430s, in which the narrator Gianozzo advises his son to
pay special attention to his clothing: “Your clothes honour you, is it not true? You
must honour, therefore, honour your clothes.”6 Similar arguments were proposed
by sixteenth-century authors, such as Della Casa, who reasoned that although
everyday life presented relatively few opportunities to express more noble virtues
such as bravery and justice, through pleasant habits and appearances it was
possible to demonstrate an honorable nature.7
Gauging the correct degree of display was not a simple matter, particularly at the
courts of Cosimo and his sons, where modesty was frequently lauded as a moral
virtue. The Paduan Lucio Paolo Rosello’s, Il ritratto del vero governo del prencipe
dall’esempio vivo del gran Cosimo de’ Medici (1552), dedicated to a ten-year-old
Francesco de’ Medici, reveals some of the contractions bound up in princely
display. He suggested that Cosimo chose to “dress down” and as a consequence
Florentine noblemen had to curb their levels of ostentatious display. However, the
clothing of the prince still had to embody his virtue and authority:
Given that he has no need of any external pomp in order to demonstrate the
splendour of his dignity, while it is fitting for the Prince’s clothing and other
external appearances to be more magnificent and distinguished than the
clothing of the people, he should, however, avoid too much delicacy. Aristotle
says that the prince’s splendour is derived from foods, clothing, many servants
and horses, and an abundance of all things necessary for human life, but that
they should not exceed measure, which is decided by the common agreement of
the wisest. But whoever lacks these things is reputed to be uncivil and miserly.8
The Aristotelian concept of measure was not easily translatable into real life, as
without any hard and fast guidelines it required a degree of personal interpretation.
Bearing in mind Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder’s supposed remark that two lengths
of pink cloth made a gentleman, we have seen there was much debate about what
actually constituted a gentleman, let alone how exactly he should dress a century
later. Sharon Strocchia points out that the new standards of civility impacted on
notions of honor, resulting in even less clarity in the sixteenth century. She argues:
“to accept new standards of honour that prized restraint and greater control of
emotions placed Italian gentlemen in an ambivalent moral and social position as to
whether they had fully discharged their debt of honour as men.”9 Maria Hayward
has analyzed similar concerns about distinguishing between magnificence and

luxury in the context of Henry VIII’s wardrobe. Here, too, it was hard to define the
exact degree of ostentation required of the monarch without it turning into excess,
although it remained vital that the sartorial display of courtiers never rivaled that
of the king.10
It has been argued that how a “society conceived of the relationship between
the personal and the public, and between the projection and perception of one’s
character” is key to our understanding of honor and reputation.11 Certainly, the
affirmation of honor necessitated an audience. The dress of Florentine courtiers
was intensely scrutinized and perceptions of appearances were at the forefront of
processes of honor and shaming. The mismatch between intention and reception
could result in the loss of honor. Writing about a very different, twenty-first century
context, journalist Ben Jackson sums this up very succinctly: “shaming occurs
when there is a conflict between a story we want to tell about ourselves and a
story that it is being told about us.”12 These tensions are usually most prominent in
literary narratives and such an incident arises in the Courtier when three gentlemen
react to a noblewoman’s treatment of a beggar asking her for alms. The woman
distractedly ignores the beggar, simultaneously prompting “severe censure, modest
praise, and biting sarcasm,” from the three male observers.13 In his analysis of this
passage, Ian Frederick Moulton points out both the “overwhelming importance of
interpretation” and, even more crucially, that Castiglione does not single out any
one of these opinions as being “correct.”14 This instability is characteristic of other
aspects of social interaction at court, epitomized, for example, by attitudes toward
effeminate clothing discussed in Chapter 6.
Honor could therefore only be tested and proved with the presence and
consensus of others. As David Gentilcore has suggested, it was complicated by the
fact that honor was not a static quality but subject to a process of change. Honor,
and reputations, could be acquired, maintained, lost and possibly regained.15
Renata Ago touches on this in her discussion of the financial strain of maintaining
family honor by wearing appropriate clothing. She refers to the strategies devised
to deal with this potential problem, such as differentiating between clothing for
private and public occasions, recycling, and hiring clothing.16 In a similar vein,
this chapter will consider the issue of honor through the processes of acquiring
and disposing of clothing. It will suggest that although it was important to act
honorably on all occasions, there were key moments when it was necessary to
affirm it more publicly. The relationship between the consumption of clothing and
the manifestation of familial standing and prestige was more fluid than we might
think and was perceived and exploited in a variety of ways.
In the previous chapter we saw that clothes shopping depended on a network
of social and business relationships and allowed wealthy Florentine men to affirm
their authority as husbands, merchants, patrons, and connoisseurs. Using court
correspondence, it is possible to trace another side to these activities, one that
reveals that expenditure was often approached with trepidation and that ostentation
Ruinous appearances 77
could be curtailed by anxiety. It suggests an ongoing struggle bound up in the daily
practice of dressing and the continual renewal, or maintenance, of honor. Several
significant documents survive to illuminate the practical processes and decisions
involved in maintaining reputation taken by two courtiers, Baron Alessandro
Orsini of Pitigliano and the Marquis Matteo Botti. Both men dramatically failed
to reconcile the demands of honor with the financial resources at their disposal,
demonstrating that keeping up appearances could become a heavy burden that
caused damage in public and private spheres. They provide excellent illustrations
of what Clare Haru Crowston has termed the “economies of regard,” as well as
revealing the intimate connection between the honor of the individual and the
court and the delicate negotiations between the interests and reputation of the
Medici and their courtiers.17
4.1 Honor and family rituals

The vicissitudes of the Orsini of Pitigliano during the reign of Ferdinando I reveal
the tensions between internal family divisions and the need to maintain a public
appearance of collective honor. A branch of the famous Roman baronial family,
the Orsini had ruled the imperial fiefs of Pitigliano and Sorano for centuries. On
the border between Tuscany and Lazio, the walled fortress town of Pitigliano was
much prized for strategic reasons. Disputes over the sovereignty of these territories
had greatly reduced the family’s financial resources. In 1593, the engagement of
Alessandro Orsini’s eldest son, Giovanantonio, to Nannina, daughter of the Baron
of Porcigliano, Nero de’ Neri, presented an opportunity to assert the family’s social
status and reputation in Florence. As we have seen, members of the groom’s family
tended to be responsible for arranging and acquiring the most significant visual
markers of this rite-of-passage. Indeed, Sharon Strocchia has described Florentine
weddings, the “supreme act of familial alliance,” as indicative of the “asymmetrical
terms in which they [the Florentines] cast honour and gender,” because of the
prominence of male participants.18
Shortly before the wedding, Ferdinando I de’ Medici expressed his displeasure
that Alessandro was not living up to these expectations and that his preparations did
not do justice to the Orsini’s public reputation. Ferdinando wrote to Alessandro’s
illegitimate brother, Aldobrandino, praising the merits of the bride-to-be, adding
that it was Alessandro’s duty to make “the demonstrations appropriate to the
honour of his house” instead of giving the impression “he would more willingly
go to honour the wedding of a servant at the church of San Lorenzo” than be
involved in his son’s nuptials.19 Ferdinando also criticized Alessandro for allowing
his second son, Bertoldo, to waste thousands of scudi on “less legitimate desires,”
presumably a reference to his predilection for gambling. Furthermore, he noted

that Alessandro had still not presented the bride and bridegroom with the
traditional gifts. In conclusion, the Grand Duke advised Aldrobandino to reason
with his brother, so that “this act of holy matrimony can be celebrated with the
honour and reputation it requires.”20
Ferdinando was far from being an innocent observer, given the history of
enmity between the families. Most recently, Niccolò Orsini, Alessandro’s father,
had supported Siena in the war that ended in its surrender and integration
into the Duchy of Tuscany. Although Alessandro had opposed his father,
Ferdinando was keen to keep Orsini power in check. However, the Grand Duke’s
distinction between the money wasted by Bertoldo and the socially acceptable
expenditure necessitated by celebrations such as weddings would have been
recognized by all members of the Florentine aristocracy. While apparently
no records survive of Bertoldo’s expenses, making it impossible to compare
the amounts involved, the twenty-four-year-old Giovanantonio managed to
spend a vast total of 10,898 scudi almost entirely on items for the wedding.
A few months after the event, Alessandro was forced to write to Ferdinando to
request a loan from the Monte di Pietà to help pay off his son’s massive debts.
Alessandro resorted to the same discourse of family honor to justify the need
for such a considerable loan:
It is appropriate that always, everywhere and on all occasions he [Giovanantonio]
will be revered and appreciated in accordance with the status and level of our
house.21
Alessandro argued that the annual 2000 scudi stipend he already provided
for his son was no longer sufficient to maintain a style of living appropriate to
Giovanantonio’s social station, now he was a married man planning to raise a
family. As he did not himself have the financial resources to increase his son’s
allowance, Alessandro requested that the Grand Duke intervene to help them
reach a compromise.22
In this letter, Alessandro included a list of some of the wedding expenses,
providing an idea of the level of opulence, as well as the range of status symbols
necessitated by such an event. Clothing and textiles accounted for most of the
outlay. Giovanantonio’s tailors received the very large sum of 200 scudi. At a time
when labor represented a small proportion of the total cost of clothing, we can
assume that the outfits purchased by the groom cost as much as ten times that
amount. In addition to the outfits for himself and his bride, Giovanantonio probably
also purchased clothes and accessories for a substantial group of family members
and household servants. Visibly swelling his retinue, this had the added advantage
of consolidating patronage networks as such goods were offered as gifts. Other
fashionable refinements included 200 scudi paid to a perfume seller, who would
have supplied not only valuable scents but also accessories such as leather gloves
perfumed with musk and amber. An embroiderer received 60 scudi, an upholsterer
120 scudi for fitting out the inside of the coaches, while almost 5000 scudi were
spent on lengths of fabric purchased from mercers, veil makers, silk merchants,
and metal embroidery threads from a gold beater. These precious textiles were
not just used to clothe human bodies. Both the church of San Lorenzo, where the
wedding took place, and Giovanantonio’s house were draped with textile hangings.
60 scudi were paid to a banner maker for a “hanging to be carried to the holy
house of Loreto” in order to commemorate the event. The shrine was a popular
pilgrimage site and such gifts were intended to improve the couple’s chances of
producing heirs.
The wedding was a highly public ritual, designed to proclaim Giovanantonio’s
social and economic stature, and it contrasts with a more private rite-of-passage
from about the same time, when Arsilia, Giovanantonio’s sister, joined the
convent of Sant’Anna in Rome. Merchant Girolamo Chellini, who also supplied
items for Giovanantonio’s wedding, received a much more modest 109 scudi for
clothing and other goods taken by Arsilia to the convent. While some of this
money was spent on clothing, it is likely that a significant portion of it was also
used to purchase textiles for ecclesiastical hangings. This bill does not record
all the belongings purchased for Arsilia’s new life, and by the standards of some
conventual trousseaux 100 scudi was generous enough but it is notable that
Arsilia’s expenses were less than the amount spent by Giovanantonio to upholster
his coach.23 The decision to place Arsilia in a convent was a typical strategy
designed to preserve family honor, dispensing as it did with the need to provide
her with a costly dowry and marriage trousseau. But despite these economies
in one area of family life, the cost of Giovanantonio’s wedding created debts the
family could ill afford.
The Orsini of Pitigliano took out two Monte loans and later sold off some lands
in Tuscany to partly repay their debts.24 In 1597, the Grand Duke’s appointment of
Alessandro Orsini as superintendent of the palace stables presumably represented
a further dent in the family honor. In a letter to Alessandro, Ferdinando took pains
to portray the office as a mark of his esteem but such a role was hardly consonant
with the Orsini of Pitigliano’s earlier standing.25 Ferdinando I was finally able to
take control over Pitigliano and Sorano after the death of Alessandro in 1604,
in exchange for the smaller and far less sought-after Monte San Savino, on the
condition that the Medici paid off the Orsini’s debts. Letters from Christine of
Lorraine to the Marquis di Riario in 1604 provide further details of the Medici’s
side of the bargain. It was agreed that the Medici would provide Bertoldo with 1000
scudi a year and would “find as rich a wife as possible for him, on the condition
that he would never enter or stay in Pitigliano” again.26
The Orsini became, once again, the center of a public display of material
possessions but this time of a very different nature. After Alessandro died, his
household goods were auctioned off by the Magistracy of the Wards of Court
(Magistrato dei Pupilli) to pay back part of the Monte debt.27 Only one of the two
auction catalogues survives, listing goods worth 7000 scudi after taxes. Of this

total, the family’s textile hangings and silver raised the most money, including a
single lot of forty-three silver plates. All the garments and clothing accessories
raised a comparatively modest total of 2115 lire (approximately 300 scudi). This
was possibly a reflection of Alessandro’s already straitened means. The first four—
most valuable—lots were outfits belonging to his wife, Virginia. One was a gown
made of silver-gray moiré tabby silk, lined with pink and green taffeta, slashed and
decorated all over with a type of gold lace or embroidery called giglietto, in the
shape of a gillyflower or a fleur-de-lis. One of the finest items from Alessandro’s
own wardrobe was a matching suit of a cloak, breeches and cassock of black moiré
tabby silk, lined with gold brocaded tabby, sold for 177.10 lire. His wardrobe
was predominantly black but the sale also included a more eye-catching suit
of a matching scarlet cassock and breeches, decorated with gold passementerie
and a cassock and breeches of green cloth decorated with silver passementerie.
Several pairs of breeches were sold separately, all of striking colors, such as yellow,
“seawater,” and turquoise, also decorated with gold giglietto. In contrast with these
finer, fashionable garments, more intimate and meager items were sold, such as
two pairs of fine knitted stockings to wear under boots, and three pairs of silk
stockings of different colors with a pair of tawny brown laces with gold giglietto.
Even Alessandro’s personal undergarments, twenty-four shirts, were put up for
auction.
The Orsini’s turquoise and black household liveries represented some of the
most expensive garments in the auction. A group of thirteen black cloth cloaks,
decorated with turquoise and black lace, with matching breeches and cassocks
as well as a coachman’s large cloak altogether fetched 630 lire. Additionally, fifty-
six pieces of velvet from unpicked cassocks, breeches and sleeves of the livery
along with three pairs of different colored taffeta roses, thirteen pairs of turquoise
laces, sixteen hat braids of turquoise taffeta, and two pairs of canions were sold
for 82 lire. The buyers are not listed in the auction records, but a second-hand
dealer might have broken up the lot and sold the pieces individually. Alternatively
the liveries could have been purchased by another family and adapted for use by
their household. Recycling clothing was a common practice in Florence and even
families as wealthy as the Riccardi bought items of furniture and textiles from
second-hand dealers. Others sometimes sold old clothes privately through dealers
who came to their houses. Such forms of reuse were seen as an appropriate means
of preserving patrimonies and eliminating waste and as such rather different from
the context of a public auction necessitated by rising debts.28 This confirmation of
the reduced circumstances of the Orsini must have dented the family’s reputation
just as the wedding of Giovanantonio had affirmed it a decade beforehand. In a
culture where even festival books and souvenir accounts included estimates of the
financial value of clothing worn by prominent figures, this event laid open the
Orsini’s entire household contents to highly informed scrutiny. Not a single aspect
of their clothing was spared, from their underwear to the household livery, what
had once acted as a signifier of the family’s standing was now offered up in bulk to
the highest bidder.
Despite the family’s vast debts, Alessandro set aside 300 scudi in his will to
cover some of the costs of his funeral, and two receipts show that the family went
on to spend a further 1600 scudi on clothing and textiles alone.29 It was possible
to preserve honor and have a relatively modest funeral, in line with a belief that
as worldly riches had no place in heaven, austerity and death went hand in hand.
This was purportedly the desire of Ferdinando de’ Medici, who stipulated in
his will that money should be given to the poor rather than spent on a lavish
ceremony.30 The exceedingly wealthy Alessandro Capponi, uncle of Niccolò di
Luigi Capponi, also requested that his house should not be hung with mourning
drapes after his death in 1587.31 Further manifestations of a disregard for
material possessions included wearing panni bastiti, clothing haphazardly sewn
together, originally derived from the Jewish practice of Keriah where clothing
is torn as an expression of grief, or a long train (strascico) that dragged in the
dirt, used at Florentine state funerals.32 However, several documents reveal that
Alessandro Orsini’s heirs intended this funeral to be a lavish affair.33 The monks
of San Bartolomeo all’Isola Tiberina were paid for the burial place in the family
chapel and for saying two hundred masses for the dead man. No fewer than a
hundred priests, accompanied by a group of orphans, were paid to accompany
the coffin to its resting place. Lengths of black cloth were purchased to drape
about the façade of the family palazzo near Santa Maria in Trastevere and a black
velvet hanging with a gold and black silk fringe, embroidered with the arms and
emblems of the Orsini, was made to hang over the coffin. As often happened,
the funeral apparently took place at night as 120 scudi were spent on candles
and torches. The event had all the hallmarks of the funerals of wealthy men in
the seventeenth century, distinguished by their increasingly theatrical qualities.
The body was often laid out in full view upon the coffin during the procession
to the burial place. A typical display was the somewhat later Florentine funeral
of Giovan Vincenzo Salviati, who was borne aloft into church dressed in black
garments decorated with lace and surrounded by two hundred candles in silver
candlesticks.34
To increase the sense of gravity, such ceremonies were usually very formulaic,
intended to conform to universally accepted standards rather than be unique.
The Orsini’s funeral expenses reveal not simply a concern for the size of the
entourage, but also the extremely hierarchical nature of such events, mirroring
the kinds of court celebrations described in Chapter 1. Within the narrow
limitations of mourning dress, small distinctions were magnified, and working
from variations noted down in clothing bills it is possible to recompose the order
of the procession. The groups of religious representatives led in front, followed by
the open coffin, while the mourners took up the rear, commencing with the most
important family members. Complete mourning suits were made for about thirty

people and at least fifty hats were purchased. Hundreds of meters of different
qualities of black cloth were purchased to make cloaks, cassocks, and breeches,
along with a staggering total of 193 dozen buttons. While most individuals
already possessed mourning dress, it was considered a necessary expense to
have new outfits made for a funeral. In addition, it was customary for wealthy
families to distribute smaller items, such as gloves, among their circle of friends
and relatives, who would swell the numbers of mourners honoring the memory
of the dead man. When Francesco Riccardi’s father Giovanni died in 1569, for
example, veils were provided for female members of prominent families such as
the Baldovinetti, Rucellai, Tosa, Botti, and Medici.35 From the evidence of their
accounts, the Orsini funeral procession was exclusively male and the participants’
clothing was designed to reflect social distinctions and to indicate the wearer’s
relationship with the deceased. Three different grades of hat were bought:
very fine, lined Milanese hats for the four chief mourners, Alessandro’s sons, a
further twenty fine Milanese hats were supplied for the “gentlemen,” followed
by twenty-four fine hats from Lyon for the “ordinary family.” Silk stockings from
Perugia were also bought for extended family members, who do not appear to
have been clothed entirely at the immediate family’s expense. Mourning clothes
were provided for several members of the procession who were not relatives,
such as the family’s tailor, their barber, a silk merchant, a priest, and five other
religious figures. Sixteen household servants received outfits, each one slightly
differentiated from the last, down to “the hunchback,” three coachmen, and, in
final place, the stable and serving boys.
The preparations for the Orsini wedding and funeral, attentive to the smallest
details, reflect a culture that demanded observance of well-recognized codes
of etiquette. In order to put on the best display possible, families sometimes
jeopardized their own interests. In some cases, familial rites-of-passage could
be seen as an opportunity for social control, hinted at here by Ferdinando I’s
interventions in the Orsini wedding preparations. As we have noted, manifesting
one’s own honor and being honored in turn were by necessity public activities.
In the case of Alessandro’s funeral, the audience ranged from the closest family
members and the local priest to the humblest servants and the spectators who
gathered to witness the procession. The diverse nature of these participants
indicates that a family’s reputation depended upon affirming its position within
a wider local community as well as its peer group. The importance of being seen
to pay respect is evidenced in the family accounts for the funeral: a mercer’s bill
records payment by Cosimo and Bertoldo, “for the love of the most excellent Lord
Count, their father,” while Alessandro’s gravestone is inscribed Bertoldus Filius
Posuit, with no mention of his three other brothers. Although demonstrating little
virtue in their dealings with one another, the Orsini’s collective and individual
investments indicate their strong attachment to a notion of reputation, which
bound together the family as a whole.
4.2 Diplomatic codes of honor
As a high-ranking diplomat, the success of Matteo Botti’s career depended
equally upon honoring the court and being honored in his turn. J. G. Peristiany’s
explanation for the importance of the notions of honor and shame in modern-day,
largely rural, Mediterranean communities is also applicable here. Peristiany argues
that such cultural values thrive in specific contexts, “small scale, exclusive societies
where face to face personal, as opposed to anonymous, relations are of paramount
importance and where the social personality of the actor is as significant as his
office.”36 Like the Riccardi brothers, Matteo Botti and the previous generation
of his family worked particularly hard to be accepted within the most exclusive
circles of Florentine society. Exiled from their native Cremona at the beginning
of the fifteenth century, the Botti’s rise to prominence under the Medici regime
can be attributed to the business acumen of the brothers, Francesco, Matteo,
Simone, Jacopo, and Giovambattista, who rapidly acquired great wealth in the
sixteenth century.37 In the 1550s and 1560s the brothers invested in land and
various companies, mainly connected to the textile trade, and were involved in
banking activities, based partly in Antwerp. Matteo and Simone consolidated
their financial successes in a manner characteristic of members of the Florentine
ruling class: Simone acquired a palazzo in via dei Serragli in 1550–51, while
Matteo became a member of the Council of Two Hundred.38 Both were known
for their cultural patronage. Giorgio Vasari refers to them in his Life of Raphael,
as discerning collectors as well as personal friends.39 The Botti brothers also
made advantageous marriages: Matteo to Lucrezia Tosinghi, Simone to Lucrezia
Strozzi, and Giovambattista to Caterina de’ Medici. The latter had three sons: the
eldest died in infancy, the middle son became a cleric, and the youngest, Matteo,
inherited his uncles’ great wealth. Instead of concentrating on these mercantile
interests, Matteo became a diplomat under Ferdinando I and Cosimo II.40 He took
on many, often demanding, ambassadorial roles that required extensive travel to
Savoy, Transylvania, Poland, Spain, France, and England. Building on the stature
established by his father and uncles in Florence, in 1591 he was made a member
of the Order of Saint Stephen and later became a Marquis and Major-domo to
Cosimo II. Moving in the upper echelons of these European courts, he sought
greater visibility, spending exorbitant sums of money on an impressive wardrobe
designed to express his nobility, cultivation, and refinement. However, over the
course of a few decades he dissipated the entire fortune accumulated by his father
and uncle, estimated at more than 250,000 scudi in 1591–96.41
We can begin to trace Matteo Botti’s clothing acquisitions in an account book
kept by his mother, Caterina de’ Medici, dating from 1589 to 1590, when he was
in his twenties. He took an interest in the clothing of other household members,
commissioning garments for one of the family’s pages, Girolamo. He was a regular
customer of a perfume seller in via dei Corazzai, named Alessandro Lioncini,

from whom he purchased gloves scented with civet and on one occasion two
hundred painted eggshells, filled with perfume, to be thrown during Carnival.42
He spent substantial amounts on various garments, including a short cloak
made of a very expensive Spanish wool (7 braccia at 28 lire per braccio) with an
uncut velvet collar.43 The fine wool, purchased directly from Cavalier Sebastiano
Ubaldini, responsible for the wardrobe of Don Pietro de’ Medici, younger
brother of Ferdinando I, might have been brought back after one of Don Pietro’s
prolonged stays at the Spanish court. Some ten years older, Don Pietro acted as
a mentor to Matteo Botti.44 Giuliano de’ Ricci describes a masqued event during
Carnival in 1587 when some of the organizers, Antonio Salviati and Girolamo de’
Rossi, refused to allow Botti to join their team, as they considered him to be “less
noble than they were.” Pietro de’ Medici intervened and asked Botti to join him,
in order to “demonstrate that the young man deserved every good and every form
of honour.”45 The anecdote underlines the importance of Medici patronage for the
twenty-year old Botti, whose social position was clearly still considered marginal,
compared with that of older Florentine families.
Two years later, Botti took part in the festivities organized for the wedding of
Ferdinando I de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine. In his Memorie Fiorentine,
Giuseppe Settimanni describes how Don Pietro de’ Medici, Lorenzo Salviati, and
Matteo Botti organized three masques in the square of Santa Croce on May 24,
1589. Their livery, according to Settimanni, was “so rich and beautiful that it surely
surpassed the value of 4,000 scudi.” This event was followed by other masques and
liveries, and the participants,
in competition with one another were all most diligent to exceed the invention,
expense and beauty of the others; and each masque represented something,
such as Dawn, the Day, Gods and similar things, but a sudden downpour spoilt
the beautiful festivities.46
Botti was able to participate and stand out at these courtly events thanks to his
inherited wealth, which allowed the family to “lead a splendid and cavalieresque
life,” according to Giuliano de’ Ricci.47 Others who knew Botti shared this view. In
1611, Scipione Ammirato the Younger, thought not to have been an admirer of
Botti, was nevertheless forced to admit that he traveled in style: with two litters,
three carriages drawn by a total of twelve horses, with four horses and eight mules
laden with all his ambassadorial accoutrements, and accompanied by more than
forty gentlemen and servants. Ammirato concluded “in truth he behaves more like
a prince than anything and there is no danger that he will not be honoured.”48 Such
assessments imply that Botti was at this stage adept at controlling his reputation.
Appearances were key to successful diplomacy. As well as the trappings
mentioned by Scipione Ammirato, it was necessary to dress magnificently, to have
a liveried retinue, and maintain an opulent household in order to reflect power,
move in the right circles, and favor the good outcome of diplomatic negotiations.
Diplomatic correspondence regularly foregrounds details about dress, as Maria
Hayward has demonstrated for the court of Henry VIII. In 1516 the Bishop of
Worcester reported from Rome that “Poland and Portugal have both sent splendid
missions. In the train of Portugal there are over forty collars,” notably using an
element of clothing to convey the size of the ambassadorial retinue. In 1518
Sebastiano Giustiniani, Venetian ambassador to the English court, wrote to the
Doge: “The English ambassadors to France have taken leave. They go with very great
pomp, rather regal than ambassadorial, endeavouring in every respect to outvie
the French ambassadors.”49 Conversely, a poorly dressed functionary besmirched
the honor of all the parties involved. The agent sent to present Thomas Wolsey
with his cardinal’s hat was reported to be inappropriately clad and so was detained
until he could be “newly furnished in all manner of apparel, in all kind of costly
silks, which seemed decent for such a high ambassador.”50 When Botti arrived in
Madrid during the night of September 5, 1609, he wrote back to Florence that he
had immediately made arrangements for his livery, which would be completed
very quickly. Only when it was ready would he seek an audience with Philip III
of Spain to officially announce the death of Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici.51
Engaged in sensitive Habsburg-Bourbon marriage negotiations in Paris in
1612, Botti wrote to the Florentine secretary of state, Belissario Vinta, giving a
sense of his engagement with the competitive nature of courtly display and the
importance he attached to his visibility:
I have always thought that a livery would provide an important occasion to make
the court here talk about the merits of this family [the Medici], but it was even
more so than I imagined: in the first place because the Duke of Pastrana’s livery
was not in the end as rich as expected, and then the one I commissioned proved
to be so well-conceived and such a rich example of its kind, that it was infinitely
pleasing; and even this morning Cardinal Suardi sent his servant, who was here
on other business, to congratulate me on having the most beautiful livery that
his Illustriousness had ever seen in France. It comprised six pages, six servants,
two lackeys and a coachman, and even though everything here is very expensive,
as your Highness knows, it will not come to more than two thousand scudi.52
Botti reiterates all the standard tropes of diplomatic livery, such as the number
of participants, the cost, and the financial burden undertaken by the servant of
the ruler, together with the honor it confers upon the latter. We can find a similar
account from Francesco Contarini writing to the Venetian Senate, from Florence
in 1589 about his appearance at the Grand ducal wedding:
I procured, with the greatest expense that my weak forces and the limited
wealth of our family will permit, to represent with as much dignity as possible
your Highness, in whose service thirty gentlemen, both Venetian and foreign,
offered to accompany me, with no limit to the cost and effort involved.53

Although diplomacy was becoming more professionalized, it was still the
preserve of aristocrats who had to be able to dig deep into their own pockets to
support such an extravagant display. Diplomats received allowances, sometimes
of a very generous nature, but it was not unusual to struggle with maintaining a
show of magnificence, and there were frequent complaints that work expenses were
eating into private funds, aggravated by the fact that promised payments often failed
to materialize. Catherine Fletcher writes, for example, of Gregorio Casali’s view
that he had bankrupted himself in the service of Henry VIII.54 Gaspare Bragaccia’s
L’ambasciatore gave advice on how to manage these expenses: “Even if, upon the
first entrance at court, you can and should appear for a few months as you would
at a wedding, and even more elegantly, then carefully diminish your spending little
by little,” ensuring, however, that it is not a “violent and ridiculous metamorphosis.”
Bragaccia also advised that the ambassador should not overdo his clothing so
that he is “considered vain and judged proud,” warning that trying to outdo other
ambassadors too much would lead to envy and hate, followed by derision and
laughter.55 Perhaps Botti did not approve of such tactics. In any case, he evidently
found it increasingly difficult to finance a diplomatic lifestyle. On September 11,
1612, he wrote from Paris to Cosimo II with a request for more money, pleading that
“for many, many years I have served with great devotion and with many expenses
for weddings and travels without any provision or recompense.”56 He sent a further
begging letter to Christine of Lorraine, on September 18, 1613, saying that he had
paid out “thousands and thousands of his own scudi” and that he could demonstrate
that this had all been on necessary expenses “apart from books and clocks.”57
Impoverished and in poor health, Botti returned to Florence in 1615. The court
donation given to noblemen returning from service abroad was modified in view of
his situation. Cosimo II took ownership of all Botti’s goods, in return paying off his
debts of more than 130,000 scudi and providing him with a pension. The inventory
of his possessions was not taken until August 1621, several months after Botti’s
death, indicating that he had retained the right to use them in his lifetime. His
wardrobe alone totaled more than 3600 scudi, with some individual outfits being
valued at 300 or 400 scudi. The sheer quantity of garments is striking, even when
compared with the total number of garments purchased by Cosimo II de’ Medici
over the course of his thirteen-year reign. Cosimo II’s wardrobe accounts recorded
a total of 168 cassocks, 165 breeches, 166 doublets, 191 cloaks, 12 long gowns, and
15 jerkins.58 Botti’s single inventory, providing a snapshot of his wardrobe at the end
of his life, included at least 75 cassocks, 65 breeches, 76 doublets, 76 cloaks, 17 long
gowns, and 19 jerkins. The clothes were made of costly materials, including nine
different types of fur, such as ermine, sable, lynx, squirrel, and otter. The silks were
woven with gold and silver threads, embroidered with small-scale designs of leaves
and scrolling vines, the kind of sinuous floral motifs typical of early-seventeenth-
century fashionable male dress, illustrated on the gold embroidered doublet worn
by twenty-one-year-old Stefano della Bella on the cover of this volume.59
Botti’s passion for clothing can also be understood in the light of his other
possessions and activities, all reflecting key spheres in which a courtier was
expected to show competency. Although his letter to Christine of Lorraine
placed clocks and books in a separate category, describing them as “unnecessary
expenses,” there was much to link the various objects he spent his money on,
suggesting they embodied similar qualities for their owner. Clocks and books
were both the accessories of the cultivated courtier and collected by many
other wealthy Florentines. Niccolò di Luigi Capponi, for example, purchased
various types of watches and clocks. In addition to their aesthetic appeal, these
objects also satisfied an interest in novelty and technological advances. Botti’s
extensive library, begun by his uncles, numbered 3000 volumes at his death,
including no fewer than five copies of Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier.60
Botti himself had some literary pretensions. In 1580 he joined the Accademia
degli Alterati, using the pseudonym Insipido, and was also a member of the
Florentine Academy, where in 1583 he gave “a beautiful oration, in which he
discoursed upon the virtues and exercises of the body.”61 His enjoyment of
public performance was indulged not only at the Florentine Academy, but
also in taking part in football and Carnival as discussed in Chapter 7. In 1619,
Ottavio Rinuccini published various verses entitled Lodi de’ giocatori di pallone,
celebrating a football match that took place in the Piazza di Santa Croce in
1615. Rinuccini dedicated the volume to Botti and compared football matches
to other kinds of “very splendid cavalieresque festivities” carried out under the
aegis of the Grand Dukes.62
The garments recorded in Botti’s inventory relay both his personal experiences
and the significance he attributed to the art of dressing appropriately. The
complexity of his clothing is conveyed by the intricate descriptions. Every possible
space crammed with decoration, his wardrobe suggests the desire to surpass
all previous precedents typical of the highest levels of court display in Florence
during the early seventeenth century. The entry for a single pair of shoes, valued at
6 scudi, reads as follows:
A pair of black leather shoes pierced all over, covered with a plain white silk,
embroidered all over with gold and silver purl and beaten gold lamé decorated
with little chains of gold purl and edged with a small ribbon of spun gold with
large white silk ribbon rosettes, ornamented with a deep band of large fleur-de-
lis made with gold and silver threads.63
His diplomatic travels are reflected in the number of French-style clothes, a cloak
made of English fox fur and the ruby colored semi-precious stones from Bohemia
(granati di Boemia), used on breeches, a jerkin, belt, and sword belt.64 At a more
practical level, he had various small- to medium- sized bags, mostly lavishly
embellished, some intended to hold money and another watches.65

The after-life of Botti’s wardrobe reminds us again of the power of interpretation,
as the significance these clothes held for Botti contrasts sharply with the attitude of
Cosimo II’s wardrobe staff, in charge of disposing or reallocating them after Botti’s
death. The inventory included the preface:
There are many clothes, which cost a great deal of money but are now worth
little so they should not remain in his Excellency’s wardrobe. Apart from the
furs, everything should be sent to the Magistracy of the Wards of Court and
sold to the highest bidder.66
A note was added underneath: “sold as recommended and the gold buttons and
furs were kept for the Grand ducal Wardrobe.” The question of value here is
clearly subjective. Botti’s clothing was still worth a great deal, as many outfits were
estimated as being worth hundreds of scudi. It is possible that Cosimo II was keen
to recoup the debt he had taken on and it was thought that the best way to achieve
this was to auction off the goods. Perhaps they were considered too flamboyant, or
recognizable, to pass on to members of Cosimo’s household or alternatively they
had become outdated.67 The features that had made Botti’s wardrobe so fashionable
and had given him such pleasure, had probably decreased their intrinsic financial
worth. Once the textiles had been embroidered, slashed, pinked, and appliquéd,
the furs and gold were the only surviving transferable goods.
Both the Orsini of Pitigliano and Matteo Botti supremely failed in achieving
measure, putting themselves in situations in which they were increasingly
subservient to the power of the Medici. While we have little evidence about how
the Orsini’s public manifestations of stature were perceived, their love of ceremony
did not secure their social standing. Their struggles were compounded by the fact
that different members of the family had conflicting notions about honor and
the correct use of material possessions to convey it. The men discussed in this
chapter were competing at the highest levels in order to impress the Roman and
Florentine elites, the Medici, as well as international diplomats who represented
the monarchies of Europe. In such contexts the preeminence of competitive display
is to be expected. In the following chapters, reputation and the management of
perceptions are shown to have been vital in other ways that extended beyond
demonstrations of financial wealth.
90
Part Three
Modes of
Masculinity
92
5T
he versatility
of black
From the early years of the ducal regime up to the end of the sixteenth century,
Florentine male portraiture embraced black clothing to a degree almost unrivaled
in other parts of Italy, establishing a model from which very few artists or patrons
deviated. The brighter colors sometimes glimpsed in portraits by Venetian or
Lombard artists, such as Bartolomeo Veneto or Giovanni Battista Moroni, are
even rarer in representations of Florentine noblemen.1 Of course, such enthusiasm
for male sartorial austerity both on and off canvas was far from unique, both
in terms of time and place. It evolved as part of a European-wide trend, whose
origins have been traced back to at least the fourteenth century. Over time, black
became firmly established as the color of power and authority, as John Harvey and
Michel Pastoureau have both shown, and to this day it is used for professional garb
or for significant events, festive, ceremonial, or commemorative.2 However, color
symbolism in dress was far from static and could assume different connotations
according to the identity of the wearer. In Grand ducal Florence, yellow was one of
Cosimo I de’ Medici livery colors, despite the fact that it was employed across Italy
to mark out marginalized social groups, such as Jews or prostitutes.3 White could
embody purity, holiness, and cleanliness, but each of these individual qualities
was emphasized to differing degrees depending on the circumstances in which it
was worn.4
No other color was as heavily laden with meaning as black, not least because of
the very diverse nature of the different individuals or groups who chose to wear it.
This chapter explores the significance of black clothing in paintings of Florentine
men and argues that its polyvalency contributed to its appeal. At first glance,
we are struck by the similarities between sixteenth-century portraits of men in
black. However, on closer inspection the nuances of black clothing shift markedly
depending on the sitter’s age, status, profession, or political affiliations. A study of
dyes and pigments in the early modern period argues that colors “possess value
in three distinct but overlapping categories of human activity: the aesthetic, the
economic, and the social.”5 To fully appreciate the significance of black we need
to take account of the material aspects of clothing, such as dyeing processes and
variations between textiles, in conjunction with contemporary aesthetic, cultural,
and political beliefs.
Count Federico Fregoso’s speech in the Courtier cited in Chapter 1 is often
referred to as a manifesto for black in male clothing. The fact that Fregoso
associates black primarily with “ordinary apparel” tends to be overlooked and, as
we see in Chapters 1 and 7, it was not appropriate for every occasion. Moreover,
Fregoso’s link between black and ordinary dress does not account for its popularity
in paintings, given that a portrait was an extraordinary event even for the wealthy
and clothing was often represented in such loving detail that it almost eclipsed the
wearer. Patrons were prepared to leave valuable garments at an artist’s workshop so
that they could be copied at leisure, while they themselves were rarely accessible for
such lengths of time. Unfortunately, although clothing was selected for portraiture
with some care, little evidence survives to explain why specific garments are
depicted. Aileen Ribeiro notes that even for the eighteenth century we know very
little about “the processes of choice” that led to the inclusion of particular types of
clothing.6
In exceptional cases, documentary sources have survived to shed light on the
meaning of the garments represented. A well-known example from this period is
Agnolo Bronzino’s portrait of Eleonora di Toledo and her eldest son, Francesco
[Fig. 5.1]. In January 1550, the family’s secretary, Lorenzo Pagni, wrote to their
Major-Domo, Pier Franceso Riccio, with the Duchess’ instructions regarding her
son’s clothing for the painting. Eleonora asked Bronzino to include a red satin
gown (robba) over Francesco’s doublet and hose.7 In the first instance this followed
standard dress decorum, as Eleonora considered it inappropriate to have her eight-
year-old son and heir depicted in a simple doublet and hose without a more formal
overgown. The second reason was more personal and would be impossible to
reconstruct without the letter, which recalls that Francesco had worn a very similar
garment on one of his first official engagements, a trip to Genoa just over a year
before, with a group of ambassadors sent to greet the future King Philip II of Spain.
Eleonora was keen that the portrait should serve as a reminder of such a significant
event, not least because it was commissioned as a diplomatic gift for Antoine
Perrenot de Granvelle, the Bishop of Arras, who later that year became Charles
V’s Secretary of State. It seems likely that this level of consideration regarding the
representation of clothing was by no means exceptional. Given that insights of this
nature are extremely rare, it is fortunate that clothing in paintings often followed
conventions that are easier to read. Small boys destined for ecclesiastical careers
might be shown in cardinal’s robes, for example, while other sitters were depicted
wearing the colors of their family coat-of-arms. Agnolo Bronzino painted the
young Florentine courtier Ludovico Capponi in a white doublet and black jerkin

Figure 5.1 Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora di Toledo and her son, Francesco de’ Medici,
ca. 1549, oil on panel. Pisa, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale.
and hose, referencing the Capponi family coat-of-arms, and it has been suggested
that the black jerkin in a Jacopo Pontormo portrait thought to be of Carlo Neroni
alludes to the sitter’s name, although given the prevalence of black this cannot be
certain.8
5.1 Clothing owned and painted

For each outfit that was chosen, many other possibilities were discarded. The
elimination process is an intriguing one, which can be explored further when we
know exactly what was in the subject’s wardrobe. In the case of the Florentine
Niccolò di Luigi Capponi, it is possible to do just that by comparing his portrait,
which has been attributed to Giovanni Stradano, with the clothes he recorded in
his account books [Fig. 5.2].9 Niccolò kept two household account books during
the 1570s, which list 281 separate payments for clothing, totaling approximately
5800 lire (almost 830 florins). By piecing together all the individual transactions
over this decade, it is possible to identify forty-two outer garments, combined
with an extensive range of other items such as footwear, silk stockings, shirts, and
accessories such as belts and bags.
Niccolò belonged to one of Florence’s oldest and wealthiest families. His
father, Luigi Capponi, together with his uncle Alessandro, headed a hugely
The versatility of black 95

Figure 5.2 Attributed to Giovanni Stradano, Niccolò di Luigi Capponi, 1579, Gift of
June Pilliod Torrey, class of 1939, 1987.16. Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar
College.
successful network of banking and textile companies, operating in Spain,

Portugal and France, as well as Italy. Niccolò pursued various business activities,
being involved, for example, in one of the family’s companies of wool merchants
and indigo dyers, one of the ingredients used to produce black textiles.10 After
suffering from long periods of ill health, he died just before his thirty-third
birthday, only slightly older than the average age of marriage for Florentine
noblemen. In the last years of his life, Niccolò spent increasing amounts of time
outside Florence, at the family’s extensive property in Vico d’Elsa near Siena: a
noble residence complete with an orchard, vineyard, an olive press, and various
outlying buildings, including stables and a weaver’s workshop.11 From here he
continued to follow developments at court with interest. In 1578 he purchased a
copy of Baccio Baldini’s newly published Life of Cosimo de’ Medici: First Grand
Duke of Tuscany. An academic and doctor who attended the Grand Duke, Baldini
was also a personal acquaintance of Niccolò and provided him with medical
advice.12 Niccolò’s favorite pastimes were those we might expect of a cultivated
courtier, such as playing music and expanding his library. His book purchases
included four volumes on the art of the duel by different authors.13 Like Eleonora
di Toledo, he was also partial to betting on the sex of his friends’ and relatives’
babies, losing 331 lire in the process.14

Although no documentary evidence has been found in connection with
Niccolò’s portrait, it is thought to have been commissioned posthumously by
his father and, just like Eleonora di Toledo, Luigi must have deliberated over
the appropriate clothing for his son. In the portrait, Niccolò’s pallid face is
gaunt and pinched. Despite his direct gaze, he remains detached and remote, an
attitude compounded by the gesture of pulling his cloak across his body, which
simultaneously gives greater prominence to the ring with the Capponi arms on
his left hand. The clock on the table behind him is inscribed with his age and the
year of his death.15 He wears a black wool doublet edged with silk guards, black,
slashed velvet breeches, a black short cloak with a contrasting silk lining and black
silk, knitted hose. His bright white linen ruff, set into scrolling shapes, and his
detachable cuffs stand out against this dark background. In the years before he
died, Niccolò purchased various black garments, including a “pair of breeches of
black sarcenet decorated with rivets and braid” and a “cassock of black grosgrain,”
which might possibly have inspired the clothing shown in the portrait.16 While the
modern viewer’s knowledge of Niccolò’s outward appearance is based entirely on
this sole surviving image and a smaller copy of it, now in the Uffizi, his circle of
acquaintances would have known him in several other guises.17 If we turn to the
kinds of clothing worn by Niccolò during his lifetime, it is evident that the artist
could have constructed numerous versions of his subject.
Niccolò’s wardrobe contained many practical clothes suited to a life led in the
countryside, including a winter hat made of beaver fur and different pairs of boots
that were either waxed or lined with fox belly furs for extra warmth. He owned
woolen gloves with a raised nap for riding, and for falconry he wore a coarse
woolen cloak and a pair of goat’s leather gloves “to hold birds on a fist.”18 Hunting
was a favorite pursuit: his accounts show purchases of gunpowder and a harquebus
made in Brescia, a city renowned for its manufacture of armor and weapons, as
well as expenses for rearing dogs and falcons and large quantities of netting used
for catching birds. He purchased several buricchi, for himself and his servants,
a type of cloak that is more often found in the records of Tuscan peasants than
those of the wealthy.19 Niccolò also owned a padded leather jerkin, of the kind
favored by Cosimo de’ Medici as a mark of valor. Domenico Mellini suggests that
Cosimo used to wear a jerkin or tunic (giacco tondo) of this type during Florence’s
war against Siena and this is confirmed by Roberta Orsi Landini’s findings that
Cosimo owned sixty leather jerkins, half of which were made between 1546 and
1551.20 Their aggressive overtones are underlined in a 1585 law passed by the Otto
di Guardia magistracy banning garments described as “Dante’s jerkins” (colletti
di Dante), “designed as protection rather than ordinary garments,” made of thick
leather or sometimes more unusual materials such as paste-board or fish skins.21
Similarly, an English proclamation in 1579 on the use of guns also prohibited
men from wearing “privy coats and doublets of defence, thereby intending to
quarrel and make frays on others unarmed.”22 The decoration of pinking on this

English leather jerkin in the Museum of London, typically reinforces its soldierly
appearance [FIG. 2.7]. Niccolò also owned two pairs of martingale breeches, the
style discussed in Chapter 3, considered to be particularly comfortable for riding.
As an alternative to these kinds of clothing, the portrait could have represented a
more colorful view of Niccolò, who participated in Carnival celebrations as well
as hosting various small gatherings and parties at his family’s country villa. On
his trips to Florence he borrowed his uncle’s coach to attend commedia dell’arte
performances. This was likely to have been the kind of event where he would have
worn one of his outfits combining more vivid hues and striking decorative effects.
His wardrobe included breeches made of shot silk, mixed serge with bands of
green velvet, black velvet slashed to reveal a pink silk lining, and other pairs in
green and brown taffeta, silver and gray camlet and damask. His doublets tended
to be in subdued colors, black or tawny, apart from one made of yellow wool.
Rather than choosing to preserve the memory of a son who enjoyed falconry
and hunting in the Tuscan countryside as much as evenings at the theater, Luigi
favored a far more cerebral image, almost as restrained as Luigi’s own portrait, which
probably dates from about 1560 [Fig. 5.3].23 In it we see a somber individual in his
mid-fifties, dressed in a black doublet and cloak with a plain white down-turned
collar and cuffs with a tiny border of lace, lacking even the most restrained forms
Figure 5.3 Anonymous/Giovanni Stradano/Jacopino del Conte, Portrait of Luigi

Capponi, ca. 1550, oil on wood panel, Gift of Henry White Cannon Jr., Class of 1910, in
memory of his Father, y 1935–59. Princeton University Art Museum (Photo: Scala, Florence).

of male ornamentation, such as silk buttons. As Niccolò’s portrait was painted
posthumously, black dress might appear to be an obvious choice. However, there is
nothing to indicate that his clothing was intended primarily as a reference to death
or mourning. In the many sixteenth-century portraits of widows, it has been shown
that mourning apparel was often not limited to black clothing but denoted with a
series of specific markers, such as head veils or black jewelry and accessories.24 If
props or accessories were used to allude to mourning, in Niccolò Capponi’s portrait
this function is amply fulfilled by the inscribed carriage clock. The role of the clock
as a memento mori is heightened by his gesture pointing toward it. Given that strict
mourning clothes were very plain, the fact that Niccolò’s garments are embellished
and partly made of silk places them within the realm of fashionable dress. Wool
was considered to be the most appropriate fabric for mourning, partly because
it conveyed a sense of sobriety, but also because the sheen and light-reflecting
qualities of silk were thought to be too festive.25 Various sixteenth-century treatises
laid out the correct decorum for female mourning dress, including Giovan Giorgio
Trissino’s Epistle (1524), which typically emphasized the need for moderation. To
achieve this, widows had to perform a careful balancing act, avoiding too much
ornamentation and attention to worldly goods on the one hand, and excessive
abjuration and neglect of appearances on the other. This call for restraint, which
governed sartorial appearances in various contexts, as we have seen, is one of the
key values embodied in Florentine male portraiture.
5.2 Representing restraint

Being seen to distance oneself from the fickle nature of fashion was vital to
constructions of male identity in many portraits. At a time when both portraiture
and fashion were becoming increasingly affordable, black lent the sitter greater
dignity and gravity.26 The sense of family lineage associated with portraits
coupled with a desire for long-term posterity made black, with its connotations
of timelessness, an obvious choice. With future generations in mind, it was felt
that paintings should depict conservative rather than fashionable dress, as modish
garments might seem absurd with the passing of time. In his Treatise on Painting,
Leonardo da Vinci had recommended:
As far as possible avoid the costumes of your own day. . . . Costumes of our
period should not be depicted unless it be on tombstones, so that we may be
spared being laughed at by our successors for the mad fashions of men and
leave behind only things that may be admired for their dignity and beauty.27
Da Vinci’s unpublished treatise reflects a view that held currency over a very long
period of time.28 The simplicity of black commended it and for many Florentine

men its appeal surely lay in the fact that it came to represent a kind of “anti-
fashion,” despite its popularity. According to many sixteenth-century Italian color
theorists, one of the most important properties of black was the fact that it was
unchangeable. Nine out of the fourteen authors discussed in Jonas Gavel’s study
of color and art theory in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy referred to the
permanence of black.29 This was especially pertinent at a time when clothing was
a highly recyclable good at all levels of society, and garments were regularly cut
up, re-trimmed, and dyed, until they were totally worn out. Although these were
common practices, Alessandro Piccolomini satirized them in his dialogue La
Raffaella, ovvero dialogo della bella creanza delle donne (1539), poking fun at a
woman who repeatedly alters her wedding dress, dyeing it a different color and
eventually wearing it inside out.30 In contrast, black clothing intimated stability.
In his Dialogo dei Colori, first printed in 1565, Lodovico Dolce went a step
further, linking the properties and symbolism of the color with the virtue of the
men who wore it. His underlying message was that men should rise above the
concerns of dress, and that the steadfastness of black would express male disdain
for fashionable clothing’s inevitable propensity to evolve and mutate. He asserted
that “in addition to being virile and temperate, black also demonstrates firmness
[fermezza] because this colour cannot be changed into any other.”31 Dressing in
black from head to toe suggested that the wearer was capable of the kind of single-
mindedness that was associated with masculine action and strength. With this in
mind, Dolce recommended that no more than two colors be worn at one time:
“indeed a variety of colours of different sorts, combined in one outfit, signifies a
very bizarre mind, full of different appetites.”32
The various virtues of black, including this aura of moderation, were bound
up in the raw materials and dyeing processes necessary for its creation. Although
black was beyond the reach of many men in this period, it was by no means the
most costly of dyes to produce. Workshop books belonging to Tuscan tailors based
outside Florence, show that their customers, who included military officers, hostel
owners, barbers, cobblers, sailors, and builders, regularly purchased black clothes,
usually made of relatively cheap fabrics, such as Sangallo wool, camlet, fustian,
or linen-cotton mixes.33 John H. Munro underlines this point in connection with
Flemish woolens, stating:
there is no statistically significant difference in the costs of dyeing woollens in

any of the colours other than those created by using the scarlet kermes: that is,
the prices for black-dyed woollens are no higher or lower than those for greys,
browns, purples, greens, standard reds, and medley and striped woollens.34
Even for silks, black was far from the most expensive dye. An early fifteenth-
century Florentine codex, repeatedly copied until the first printed version appeared
in the nineteenth century, includes prices by the pound for different dyes. Of the

nineteen colors listed, as many as eleven are more expensive than black, which
is priced at fifteen soldi per pound. The most expensive is twice-dyed cremisi
(crimson from kermes) at forty soldi, followed by verde bruno (greeny-brown),
alessandrino (deep violet), and different types of pagonazzo (purple). The only
dyes cheaper than black cost twelve soldi per pound and include tane (tawny), and
inciannomati (light blues), sbiaditi (faded colors), and bigi (grays).35
And so the primary purpose of black clothing in these portraits was not the
manifestation of worldly riches. The successful production of black textiles was
more about skill than cost, translating into further cultural prestige for the wearer
of high-quality black clothing. It was perhaps the thought of a perfect black that
excited Isabella d’Este when she ordered some “black cloth for a mantle, such as
shall be without a rival in the world. . . . If it is only as good as those which others
wear, I had rather be without it!”36 To achieve a good, fast, black the fabric had to
be immersed in successive dye baths, to obtain an increasingly darker, even, and
steadfast hue. The Venetian Giovanni Ventura Rosetti’s Il Plichto dell’Arte (1548)
recommends following techniques used in Florence and Genoa, boiling the fabric
in a bath of gall and the following day in a mix of green vitriol or ferrous sulfate
(vetriolo Romano), iron filings, and gum Arabic.37 If the color was not strong
enough, the immersion would be repeated with the same three ingredients, up
to four times.38 It is striking that Rosetti includes about twenty different recipes
for dying textiles black, superseded only by the number of recipes for different
shades of red, including vermilion, scarlet, and crimson. The obsession with
creating a perfect black reflected both its popularity and the level of skill required.
The techniques for producing black improved significantly during this period. As
José Luis Colomer explains, the discovery of logwood in the Bay of Campeche,
Mexico, by Spanish settlers and its subsequent exportation in the early to mid-
sixteenth century was a significant development. Although it met with some initial
resistance, it became a highly sought-after ingredient used to create black, as it
reduced the reliance on corrosive iron filings as a mordant.39 Florentine guild laws
focused strongly on the need to preserve the quality and reputation of local black
cloth, highlighting both the difficulties involved in these processes, as well as the
opportunities for malpractice.40
5.3 Gendered portrait conventions

Women were frequently imagined as desiring and encouraging the process of
fashionable change, a need that was attributed to specific traits of the female
physiognomy and psychology. In medical and popular literature, cold and moist
female humors were usually viewed as being more susceptible to metamorphosis.
Being more malleable, women could take impressions more easily, but they
were also more capable of inventiveness, which could be extended to the arenas

of physical appearance and self-fashioning.41 Taking this further, writings on
fashion often described women’s use of cosmetics and clothing to create false
appearances as indications of their innate capacity for deception and trickery.42
It is not surprising, therefore, that Cesare Vecellio chose to compare his struggles
to keep abreast with new forms of female dress with the waxing and waning of the
moon, which was thought to have such a strong influence on women’s bodies. He
lamented that
because women’s clothes are so quick to change, and are more variable than the
forms of the moon, it is not possible to include everything there is to say about
them in one account. Rather, I am concerned that while I am in the midst of
describing one garment, it will be transformed into another, so that it will be
impossible to do justice to all.43
Up until Anthony Van Dyck developed his style of impressionistic undress in the
early seventeenth century, dress in portraiture tended to be rendered in painstaking,
minute detail. Consequently, plain black garments fulfilled the necessary function
of distancing men from the negative, female associations of fashionable dress.44 This
is most evident in double portraits, where wives’ flamboyant dress and costly jewelry
often contrast dramatically with the more modest clothing of their husbands.
Although by no means solely an Italian phenomenon, this dialectic has been
fruitfully explored through a series of companion paintings by artists such as Piero
della Francesca, Raphael, and Titian.45 Agnolo Bronzino’s portraits of the courtier,
diplomat, and scholar, Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife, Lucrezia di Sigismondo
Pucci, continue this tradition in a rather more subtle way [Figs. 5.4 and 5.5]. The
dark, undifferentiated background in Lucrezia’s portrait draws the viewer’s attention
to her crimson dress and the brilliance of this most expensive of dyes overshadows
the relatively plain surface of the garment. The decorative elements are refined,
including her voluminous shoulder rolls and striped under-sleeves glimpsed through
slashed over-sleeves ornamented with ribbons and aglets. The mandatory string of
pearls around her neck, the longer, gold necklace, and the paternoster beads in her
hair and her belt all underline the prosperity of the Panciatichi family. In terms of
color, Bartolomeo’s clothing is an exact mirror image of his wife’s. He is clad in black,
apart from the crimson sleeves of his doublet, which emerge from underneath his
dark jerkin. In contrast, Lucrezia’s sleeves are the only dark component of her
crimson dress, the color linking the two portraits. Unlike the rather hermetic image
of Lucrezia, several elements in the composition of Bartolomeo’s portrait, such as
the palace façades behind him, the source of daylight in the background to the left,
the family arms, the large hunting dog, the closed notebook, point to a more public
and active social presence. These features, according to Charles McCorquodale,
are intended to ensure that Bartolomeo Panciatichi “obtains our respect for his
accomplishments rather than his social status or his sumptuous clothes.”46

Figure 5.4 Agnolo Bronzino, Bartolomeo Panciatichi, ca. 1540–45, oil on panel.
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico, Soprintendenza per i Beni
Artistici e Storici di Firenze).
Although on occasion Cosimo I and his sons were represented in clothing

expressing extreme pomp and circumstance, most notably when they were
shown in the Grand ducal regalia, in the case of double portraiture they tended
to follow this formula of vicarious consumption. In 1581, Alessandro Allori was
commissioned to paint double portraits of Francesco de’ Medici and Bianca
Cappello and the clothing for the portraits were left at his workshop. An entry
in the artist’s workshop book records Francesco’s rather modest outfit of “grey
breeches and doublet and a simple black sarcenet robe.” In contrast, Bianca was
depicted in a far more costly and sumptuous “overgown of cloth of silver and
purple, that is, of purple figured velvet.”47 When black-clad men were not offset by
the brighter colors of their wives’ clothing, a similar function was performed by a
vivid backdrop, often in the form of a green silk draped curtain.

Figure 5.5 Agnolo Bronzino, Lucrezia Panciatichi, ca. 1540, oil on panel. Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence (Getty Images).
While the fashionable clothing of the female elites was typically characterized
by bold statements like Bianca Cappello’s patterned silver and purple velvet dress,
representations of male dress tended to hinge upon subtle variations on a single
theme. This prefigured a trend that has characterized male dress in later centuries,
both worn and depicted. We can trace underlying parallels, for example, with the
mentality of the nineteenth-century “hidden consumer,” described by Christopher
Breward. Although many Victorian men cultivated the semblance of a disregard
for fashion, they succeeded in projecting sartorial distinction by operating in
a different register from women, with innovations often being based on subtle
alterations, perhaps in the fit or length of a jacket.48 Similarly, in the sixteenth
century, rather than gaining prestige through applied surface ornamentation or
elaborate figured textiles, it was possible to convey male authority by using more
understated elements of dress, such as the quality of a plain silk, a half-glimpsed
lining, or the number of buttons down the front of a doublet. In keeping with these
sartorial codes, in portraiture it was often only the lower, baser half of the male
body that was “feminized” with added embellishments and brighter colors. We
can see this in Niccolò di Luigi Capponi’s portrait where his silk slashed breeches
are more ornamental than the rest of his outfit. This custom extended beyond
visual representations as Medici sumptuary legislation was particularly concerned
with curtailing expenditure on breeches. The 1562 law focused first on jewelry and

over-gowns for women, the most expensive elements of their wardrobe, while the
section on male dress described the quantity, type, and decoration of the textiles
allowed to make their breeches, before moving onto upper garments.49
Florentine artists seem to have relished the challenges of distinguishing
between black surfaces, creating a compendium of small differences. The
depiction of relatively plain, black garments allowed artists to concentrate more
on the silhouettes and sculptural forms of dress, as well as contrasting types of
textiles, rather than prioritizing surface decoration. Representations of male
clothing in Florentine portraiture generally place far more emphasis on surface
texture than applied ornament. Black on black clothing was popular partly
because it exaggerated the contrasts between different fibers, weaves, and heights
of pile, together with the way they reflected or absorbed light, as illustrated in a
portrait of an unknown gentleman [Fig. 3.1] in a black damask doublet. This is
also exemplified in a portrait by Michele Tosini (Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio),
painted in 1575 when the unknown subject was thirty-one, details inscribed on the
letter in his hand [FIG. 0.1]. Despite the differences in technique, the picture bears
some obvious similarities with Niccolò di Luigi’s portrait. Tosini picks out a range
of highly refined details: the braid down the doublet front, the cloak decorated
with thin bands of velvet and the snipped edging on the collar, its contrasting
satin lining revealed to full effect where it is pulled across the subject’s chest. The
same aesthetic is eulogized in Giorgio Vasari’s commentary on a portrait of Pietro
Aretino from about 1525 by Sebastiano del Piombo, now badly deteriorated.
Vasari wrote that “it is a very wonderful painting to see the difference between the
five or six different shades of black he is wearing: velvet, satin, sarcenet, damask
and cloth, and a very black beard above these other blacks.”50 Appreciation of this
particular effect was surely increased by the knowledge that these various shades of
black perceptibly altered according to the wearer’s movements and surroundings.
By candlelight, for example, the differences between even a limited range of blacks
and dark grays would have been thrown into greater relief.
5.4 The social values of black

As we have seen in Chapter 2, in Grand ducal Florence black was the color of
clothing worn by the professional classes. According to Lodovico Dolce, members
of the togati in Italy now included lawyers, procurators, notaries, solicitors,
doctors, and so theoretically its use was becoming more widespread.51 Robert
Dallington, visiting the Medici court in 1596, connected black with civic garb,
writing of the Florentines: “As touching their apparel, it is both civil, because black,
and comely because fitted to the body.”52 In his view, Florentine male clothing was
restrained, and his choice of the word “civil” was presumably intended to signify
both modesty and the association of black with civic life. As an Englishman, these

links would have been familiar to Dallington. Although black is not mentioned
specifically, it is obviously alluded to in William Harrison’s 1587 description of
English merchants’ clothing, which also connects the color with civic virtue:
Certes of all estates our merchants do least alter their attire and therefore
are most to be commended, for albeit that which they wear be very fine and
costly, yet in form and colour it representeth a great piece of the ancient gravity
appertaining to citizens and burgesses.53
Italian merchants were also identifiable by their black clothing. Michel Pastoureau
offers the intriguing, although hard to substantiate, theory that wealthy patrician
merchants first adopted the color in the second half of the fourteenth century as a
form of “rebellion” against sumptuary legislation that forbade them from wearing
more expensive, brighter colors such as scarlet and crimson.54 By the fifteenth
century, in several countries, black was already associated with attributes that were
fundamental for mercantile success. In his early fifteenth-century treatise Blason
de Couleurs, first printed in Italy in 1593, the Burgundian author Jean Courtois
wrote that when worn by merchants black signified loyalty, because it indicated
reliability and honesty, both essential characteristics in the eyes of a potential
customer.55 According to Cesare Vecellio, you would see “few colours except black”
among Venetian merchants and well-to-do shopkeepers.56
In contrast with the black of the professional classes, black worn by courtiers
was a more recent phenomenon. It is thought to have been first worn in a courtly
context by Philip the Good of Burgundy, who continued to appear in black long
after the normal period of mourning for his father, John the Fearless who was
murdered in 1419, had run its course.57 As a consequence, his courtiers also
began to demonstrate a preference for the color. The prevalence of black among
the European elites in the sixteenth century was clearly boosted by many factors,
including the religious asceticism of the Catholic Reformation, as well as the
continuing involvement of the Spanish Empire in Italian society and politics.
Although various scholars have shown that its popularity in the late fifteenth
century at the courts of Northern Italy developed at the same time as its use in
Spain, it nevertheless came to be seen as emblematic of Spanish court dress.58
The associations of black with Spanish fashions could be a source of antipathy,
as intimated in an oration given by Scipione Ammirato following the death of
Francesco, praising the Grand Duke for being free from “all vanity.” Ammirato
enthused that although Francesco’s mother was Spanish and he had been
accustomed to the ways and fashions of the Spanish court, he did not himself
possess any trace of what Ammirato termed “Spanish haughtiness”:
The honours, the grandeur and the sovreign glory of this century consist in
laying out a magnificent table, gambling very large sums of money, dressing

in very expensive robes, and the highest and most supreme peak of all is
disparaging one’s inferiors. All these things were very far from the nature of
Grand Duke Francesco who, having more illustrious, and longstanding goals,
of greater benefit to humankind, refuted vanity.59
This emphasis on Francesco’s modesty was doubtless partly a way of compensating

for the oddities of his character, his reclusiveness, and lack of what might now be
called charisma. This was an important statement that Francesco, who did not
assert his authority particularly well during his reign, was not subjugated to the
will of the Spanish court.
Even black was possible to misjudge, therefore, and if it did not appear too
haughty it could also be accused of being a sign of subservience. Castiglione’s
promotion of it was partly related to his emphasis on the necessity for
understatement, or sprezzatura, which he considered to be a form of grace in male
behavior.60 However, writing on court protocol, Daniel Javitch argues that the code
of understatement was motivated by a combination of factors, which included the
ruler’s need to assert his own authority, and the court’s rigid, hierarchical structure
of decorum. He elaborates that a court forces “its members to subdue or at least
mask their aggressive and competitive drives. That is why such qualities as reticence,
detachment, and understatement are so valued at court.”61 Although this leads
Javitch to take a critical view of the courtier’s appearance, Jennifer Richards has
interpreted this as an opportunity for the courtier to wield a positive, moderating
influence, pointing out Castiglione’s conception of temperance as a “moral,
political and aesthetic value,” taken from Cicero’s De Officiis, which suggests that
the courtier’s example was intended to actively inspire similarly moderate behavior
in his monarch.62 Far from being simply an aesthetic preference, wearing black was
a way of masking desires, vanity, and unbridled masculinity, of oneself and others,
a prerequisite for survival at court.
The ubiquity of black, worn by so many different social groups, contrasts sharply
with the notion that social hierarchies should be easily distinguished through
dress. Stefano Guazzo was just one author who outlined this widely shared view
in his Civil Conversazione (1574), where he argued that merchants and courtiers
should be distinguished by different forms of clothing. He complained that this
ideal was no longer reflected in contemporary fashions:
You see that peasants dare to compete in their clothing with artisans, and
artisans with merchants, and merchants with noblemen, so much so that once
a grocer has taken up the habit of carrying arms and wearing the clothing of a
noble, you cannot tell who he is until you see him in his shop selling his wares.63
However, the fact that black was such a fluid signifier might in fact have been one
reason why Florentines were so eager to be portrayed wearing it.

As we have seen, the true nature of nobility was the source of much debate at
this time. Pastoureau speaks of the “dual nature” of black, in other words the black
of kings and princes versus black of monks and clerics, yet it could be argued
that for wealthy Florentines the color had three primary meanings simultaneously;
it acted as a summation of their mercantile, civic, and courtly identities. The
fact that restrained and steadfast black was fitting for men of different political
persuasions and occupations perhaps contributed to its almost uncontested rule
in Florentine portraiture throughout the second half of the sixteenth century. The
notion of black as the universal color of the elites would have had a strong appeal
in Florence, where it was still possible to combine roles that were considered to
be incompatible in many other parts of Italy and abroad. As such, black glossed
over some of the social and sartorial distinctions that were inconvenient truths
for many Florentines. While there might have been other noticeable sartorial
differences between professionals, merchants, and courtiers, it is significant that
black had key associations with each of these groups, all gaining in different ways
from the color’s inherent gravity. Black was therefore highly suited to what Wayne
Rebhorn has termed the “protean nature” of the courtier.64
When the portraits of Luigi and his son Niccolò Capponi were commissioned,
black was able to create visual harmony where others might have perceived
dissonance. In Luigi Capponi’s portrait, his very plain black gown was presumably
intended to emphasize his mercantile and civic, rather than courtly affiliations. His
advancing age was perhaps also a deciding factor in the choice of this particularly
sober attire, but, more importantly, it alluded to his position as a businessman and
diplomat.65 Despite their wealth, the family had a public reputation for restraint.
Luigi’s brother Alessandro avoided all forms of self-aggrandizement, preferring
to wear a modest cape rather than a civic gown and, as we have seen, he chose
to forego the customary mourning drapes on the family home after his death.66
Niccolò’s black is more aristocratic: the fine fabrics perhaps referring to his family’s
silk trading interests, while the elegance of his outfit pushes at the boundaries of
black as the renunciation of fashion. Furthermore, the three-quarter-length pose
relates to developments in international court portraiture, while his cloak draped
over one shoulder and drawn around the waist is a typically courtly gesture, also
employed in the Tosini portrait. A deep-rooted preoccupation with circumscribing
sartorial display in Florentine portraits continues to strike modern viewers. In
the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of Medici portraiture, two of the most
successful Florentine artists working on the cusp of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Tiberio Titi and Cristofano Allori, are described as embodying an
“austerity that limited sumptuous excesses,” “free of any heroic overtones.”67 This
muted quality is apparent in the two, earlier portraits of Luigi Capponi and his son
and such a marked continuity reflects a caution regarding flamboyance in male
dress in paintings that belied the extravagance of court display in other areas of
Florentine life.

6 Yo
uth, fashion, and
desire
The relationship between advancing age and sartorial restraint is central to a

portrait of four brothers from the Magalotti family [Fig. 6.1]. Painted in 1601,
just after the death of their father Filippo di Antonio Magalotti, it is suffused with
a sense of loss, poignantly heralding approaching adulthood and its accompanying
responsibilities. In the absence of a paternal guide, it is also a powerful didactic
image.1 Tiberio Titi’s painting alludes to the momentousness of this occasion in
various prominent ways.2 The date of the portrait is inscribed on the architrave
of the door next to the conjoined Magalotti-Capponi arms while the children’s
ages are painted onto their clothing or the objects they hold: Marcantonio, 11 ½,
Orazio, 6 years 4 months, Luigi 4, and Filippo 2 ½.3 Baptized Ottavio, the youngest
boy was renamed in memory of his father. Now the eldest male member of the
family, Marcantonio’s pose reflects his new responsibilities. His hand gently resting
on the shoulder of his youngest brother, he closes the small group of children and
solemnly regards the viewer. The interplay of the boys’ hands focuses attention on
the objects they hold, each with its own symbolism. The youngest brothers, Filippo
and Luigi, still occupied with the pursuits of childhood, clutch a small bunch of
flowers and a ball. In contrast, Orazio and Marcantonio hold a pocketbook and a
letter, respectively, hinting that they are poised to enter the world of adult affairs.
The boys’ clothing was selected equally carefully to represent the upward
trajectory toward masculine continence and adult codes of conduct. Unlike
widows, children did not tend to wear mourning clothes for extended periods
of time. Instead, Filippo, the youngest, is shown in a crimson damask gown, an
ungherina, woven with a fashionable small-scale geometrical motif. Although
wealthy children were often dressed as miniature adults, there was a growing
feeling that they required new types of clothing suited to their specific needs. The
ungherina was the first garment designed specifically for children. Popular in Italy
at the end of the sixteenth century, it was worn by both boys and girls up to around
Figure 6.1 Tiberio Titi, Portrait of Marcantonio, Orazio, Luigi, and Filippo Magalotti,
1601. Private Collection (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico, Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici
e Storici di Firenze).
four to six years of age.4 As its name suggests, it was inspired by the Hungarian-style
overgarments as depicted by Cesare Vecellio, with loose, floor-length skirts, and
long sleeves, fastened down the front with frogging.5 It was a practical alternative
to breeches for boys who were not yet toilet trained and its long, hanging sleeves
could be gripped by an adult, like leading reins. A rare illustration of this particular
function can be seen in a Florentine depiction of a betrothal or wedding ceremony
from the 1620s [FIG. 2.8]. It was also felt that looser garments were appropriate
because they would not impede a child’s growth.6 A wider range of colors was
considered suitable for young children’s dress, as advised by philosopher and
theologian Tommaso Campanella in his La Città del Sole (1602).7 The bright,
patterned silks worn by the younger Magalotti boys and their pure white, silk
stockings and white-and-gold striped doublets conform to his recommendation
for “beautiful and multi-coloured” dress.

This portrait predates early English family records that convey the excitement
and anticipation marking a boy’s breeching in the seventeenth century.8 Visually
it relays this same transition from unisex infant clothes, redolent of a feminized,
domestic world, to a form of male dress appropriate to public society. The three
older brothers are shown in adult dress, composed of matching outfits of breeches
and tight-fitting doublets worn under jerkins, with subtle variations in keeping with
their different ages. The eldest two wear more sober, plain fabrics. Marcantonio has
a dark red, satin doublet, black stockings, and dark shoes in place of his younger
brothers’ white doublets, stockings, and shoes. Like Orazio, he sports the cropped
hair of an adult, whereas Filippo and Luigi still have the fair hair of infancy,
encouraged to grow into longer curls. Similar male dress codes are employed in
the depiction of a group of children in Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli’s painting of
St Ives, Protector of Widows and Orphans [Fig. 6.2]. Two young boys and a girl
wear vivid yellow, blue, and scarlet clothing, but with the older boy bright colors
Figure 6.2 Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, Saint Ives, Protector of Widows and Orphans,
1616, oil on panel, 291 × 215 cm, Palatine Gallery, Florence (Photo: Gabinetto Fotografico,
Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze).
Youth, fashion, and desire 111

and decoration are confined to the lower half of the body, or semi-concealed
garments.
Fragments of silk damask and velvet woven with motifs almost identical to
those worn by Filippo and Luigi can be found in the Textile Museum in Prato.9
It is certainly possible that the Magalotti boys owned the garments depicted here,
although they have not been traced in the family’s surviving archival records and
paintings were not necessarily faithful representations of clothing possessed. Yet
the Magalotti accounts do show that Camilla used clothing to visually enhance the
strength of the family unit, creating a coherent group with a dignified, and often
uniform, appearance. As in the portrait, the two youngest boys often dressed in
a way that distinguished them from Marcantanio and Orazio. On one occasion,
Camilla purchased about 15 meters of white mock-velvet (mocaiardo) to make
clothing for the “little boys” (fanciulli piccini).10 White was a color she avoided for
her oldest child, for whom she selected muted greens, browns, and blacks.
Camilla also dressed the children in identical garments. In 1605, the family
stayed in Basilicata with Camilla’s brother in order to make a pilgrimage to the
holy house of the Virgin at Loreto and Camilla ordered large quantities of goods
from a mercer, paying a tailor to make them up into matching outfits of green
perpignan wool with green Neapolitan silk stockings and four Spanish-style cloaks
decorated with lace.11 Similar examples of family members dressing in matching
clothing have been traced in archival records dating back to the fourteenth
century.12 From the mid-sixteenth century, when portraits of whole family groups
gained popularity, this was an arresting way to assert group identity and status. The
predella panels to Alessandro Allori’s altarpiece of Christ and the Adulteress at the
church of Santo Spirito also show similarly attired family members, with the two
sons in matching doublets and hose with black Spanish-style capes [Fig. 6.3]. The
visual unity created by the complementary clothing of these relatives gains greater
force when juxtaposed with the drama of the divided family enacted above them.13
As the boys grew older, they reaped the benefits of the advantageous marriage
of their older cousin, Costanza Magalotti, to Carlo Barberini, brother of the future
Figure 6.3 Left predella panel to the altarpiece Christ and the Adulteress attributed
to the workshop of Alessandro Allori, 1577. Cini Chapel, Santo Spirito, Florence (Photo:

pope Urban VIII. During the first two decades of the seventeenth century, Camilla
Magalotti prepared her sons for Roman noble society. She hired tutors for them,
including a dancing master, and sent Marcantonio to lodge with Carlo Barberini
in Rome, where he probably participated in the celebrations for the coronation of
Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici as Pope Leo XI.14 Marcantonio stayed on to attend
the prestigious Clementine College and the younger boys also began to visit. Little
is known about Marcantonio’s career, but the three other brothers all benefited
from Grand ducal or papal patronage. Orazio was elected master general of the
papal post and officially accepted as a member of the Roman patriciate in 1643.
Luigi became a knight of Malta and a colonel in the papal army, commanding
troops in Avignon. Filippo became director of the University of Pisa and prior of
the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen.15
During their first visits to Rome, Camilla continued to replenish her sons’
wardrobes, sending them basic garments, such as linen shirts and more luxurious
items, including an embroidered stomacher.16 The boys began to order and record
their own clothing purchases, increasingly controlling their own appearances.
The kinds of clothing they purchased strayed far from the sartorial ideals of male
sobriety formulated in Tiberio Titi’s portrait. In the first decade of the seventeenth
century, their combined clothing cost on average was 141 florins per year,
compared with the 75 florins Camilla spent on her own wardrobe. In contrast, a
single cache of clothing receipts recorded in Rome from 1617 to 1621 for all four
boys comes to a grand total of 1430 scudi. Unfortunately, no account books survive
for these five years, so we can only gain a partial sense of their overall outlay. Yet
this demonstrates that their total average annual expenditure had at least doubled
from 141 florins to 286 scudi.17
The nature of the clothing the brothers purchased was even more striking than
the sums of money spent. In 1614, Orazio Magalotti purchased a pair of gloves for
24 lire from Orazio Veli, one of several perfume sellers patronized by the young
men. The receipt described the gloves in detail:
A pair of gloves perfumed with amber with pink silk stitching on the outside
and gauntlets in the French style, of pink checked satin embroidered in gold
with naturalistic silk flowers with gold lace around the lace border. The ruffle
around the edge of the gloves is made of two widths of pink silk ribbon edged
with gold lace.18
The pink, checked gloves were typical of the twenty-year-old’s whole wardrobe.
Like his brothers, Orazio was drawn to a style of dress remarkable for its complexity
and profusion of ornament. Marcantonio’s first independent purchase was a
doublet made of cloth of gold and purple silk, far more valuable than anything his
mother had procured for him.19 All the brothers favored silks with the smaller-scale
motifs that were popular at the time, with a variety of floral or geometric designs,

such as pinecones, waves, floral sprigs, and herringbone stripes, in fashionable
colors, mainly subtle half-tones, muted, or pastel shades [Fig. 6.4].20 The very
names of these silks—dried leaves, dried roses, seawater, sky, and razorbill
black—suggest products valued as much for their fashionable qualities as their
intrinsic worth. The plain and patterned fabrics used for the brothers’ clothing
were embellished by a range of specialist artisans, including pinkers, slashers, and
embroiderers.21 With not an inch of their clothing left plain and even the linings of
their garments decorated in some manner, the brothers enthusiastically embraced
the fashion for what Avril Hart termed the “decorative abuse of expensive textiles.”22
The Magalotti often had their clothing altered to keep up with the latest
silhouettes: doublet collars heightened in accordance with the prevailing Spanish
styles and Italian-style voluminous breeches taken in to follow the French lead.23
On the whole, their upper garments, such as cassocks, cloaks, and doublets,
showed Spanish influences, while their breeches were French-style, sometimes
made with “large French pleats.” Their garments testify to the continuing impact
of Spanish dress, even as French fashions entered a dominant phase that would last
for centuries across Europe.24 The sophistication and fashion-conscious nature of
the brothers’ clothing is reflected by the number of payments made to tailors for
disegnatura, a reference either to garment design or types of surface decoration,
such as slashing or embroideries. Tailors were usually paid simply for cutting and
sewing garments, so this new service indicates a fundamental shift in attitudes,
suggesting that clothes making might aspire to have something in common with
those more esteemed art forms based upon the concept of disegno.25 In 1611,
Figure 6.4 Italian silk velvet, late sixteenth century, Fletcher Fund, 1946, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 46.156.88. www.metmuseum.org

the tailor Francesco Mazzanti made two expensive outfits for Marcantonio, which
were meticulously described in the bill:
And on 4 December for making a pair of sky-coloured breeches out of mixed

wool and a matching cassock and short cloak, with two different types of
decoration on the cloak and the breeches, one on the cassock, one on the
sleeves and two along the seams, with pickadils decorated with buttonholes on
the sides, with the same type of ornament on the cloak, namely four narrow
bands of razorbill-coloured satin along the length and four with spangles with
a silver stripe alongside the said bands and the same on the breeches as on the
cloak and cassock, lined with taffeta and the cloak edged with satin and covered
with a silver braid and the same decoration for the cassock lire 140
For the design (disegnatura) of the mixed cloth suit and cloak lire 1426
As Orazio’s pink silk gloves indicate, the brothers’ accessories tended to be as

intricate and varied as their clothing. In 1621, a small beret made of rich tawny
sarcenet with an upturned brim, decorated with a thin gold cord, and lined with
taffeta, was purchased “for evening wear” (per la notte), while other hats were
trimmed with nightjar or heron feathers.27 The association of garments with
particular social activities, or times of day, hints at the impact of court etiquette
on dress. Already, new ideas regarding hygiene and civility had increased the
importance of underwear.28 Alongside their fine linen undershirts, the Magalotti
accounts record underpants (mutande) some of which were finished with silk
ribbons and purchased from tailors rather than the cohorts of domestic and semi-
professional women who usually made items of linen underwear.29
The brothers’ refined appearances would have been entirely in keeping with
their new surroundings and companions. In Rome, they enjoyed the society of a
sizable group of male relatives. Costanza Magalotti’s brothers were their shopping
companions and joint clothing receipts were made out to the four Magalotti
brothers and their cousin, Neri. Another cousin, Antonio Magalotti, lent
Marcantonio money for a joint shopping trip as well as for goods needed to make
a doublet, including gold and black embroidery silks. He also paid the Convent
of Sant’Anna for the doublet’s embroidery.30 Clothing played a significant role in
Rome’s reputation for ostentatious public displays of wealth. Visiting the city in
1581, even Michel de Montaigne, used to the sartorial splendors of the French
court, was impressed, declaring, “there is no comparison between the richness of
their clothing and ours: everything is covered with pearls and precious stones.”31
Rome’s flourishing tailoring trade is indicative of the high level of demand for
lavish clothing. A census carried out in 1526–27 listed 261 tailors working for a
population of 55,000.32 Another census of 1622 showed that almost a third of the
city’s workshops were connected in some way with the production of clothing,
including 382 mercers’ and 361 tailors’ workshops.33 In this respect, at least,

Florence lagged behind the papal city: in the Florentine workshop census of 1561,
only 70 tailors are listed in the service of a population of about 60,000.34
Over the course of the sixteenth century, the wealth of the pope’s relatives began
to eclipse that of the old Roman nobility, but the scale of Urban VIII’s nepotism was
unprecedented.35 Costanza’s brothers and sons all profited as a result and several
of them came to enjoy vast personal wealth together with elevated positions in the
church. A cardinal’s hat did nothing to prevent Costanza’s youngest son, Antonio
Barberini, from becoming renowned for his flamboyant lifestyle.36 Against this
backdrop, the extended Magalotti family would have felt increasing pressure to
look the part.
6.1 The threat of effeminacy

While the role of children’s dress in binding familial ties was uncontroversial, the
sartorial appearance of boys on the verge of adulthood was a source of mounting
concern. Toward the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century, when the
Magalotti brothers had taken responsibility for the family accounts, they were
subject to adult sumptuary laws and their dress would have received greater
scrutiny.37 The brothers’ interest and investment in clothing was typical of a much
broader trend among the wealthy and not surprisingly clothing was increasingly
used to frame discussions of codes of conduct for young men. Some authors
considered it acceptable for young men to take greater interest in their appearances
than their elders. The Roman author Giacinto Gigli, for example, argued that
the clothes of a prince should express majesty, those of an elderly gentleman

gravity, those of a young one elegance, those of a cleric dignified modesty, those
of a matron should be decorous, and those of a maiden should be comely and
stylish.38
Similarly, Leonardo Fioravanti reported that young men wore “clothing with
a thousand braids and colours,” but that when men matured they changed in
themselves and in their clothing, dressing in a more virtuous or upright manner
(honestamente).39
However, the extravagant appearances of young men attracted at least as
much, if not more, opprobrium in contemporary literature than those of their
female counterparts. Medical and moralizing tracts, prescriptive texts and
political treatises, plays and verse, all expressed anxieties about the damage that
inappropriate clothing could wreak on young men’s reputations. Despite the very
diverse scope of writings engaged with this theme, male sartorial transgressions
tended to be categorized as displays of effeminacy. Contemporary views on the
instability of sex and gender increased the threat posed by womanly men and

manly women to the social order and consequently dress played a vital role in
shoring up distinctions.40 Exploring ideas about clothing and effeminacy in a
Florentine context reveals that shifting cultural and social expectations for young
men added further intensity to these underlying debates and fears.
Effeminacy could be manifested through a variety of culturally produced
behaviors, including speech or posture but above all it was bound up with clothing,
given the latter’s deeply rooted associations with female comportment and desires.
Although women were often berated for their pursuit of fashion, it was also
understood to be a legitimate female preoccupation. The use of clothing to achieve
greater visibility and ingratiate oneself among one’s peers was thought to be a
prerogative of the female sex particularly when employed by women of a marrying
age, whose physical appearance might help to secure an advantageous match.
A small but significant number of women spoke out publicly against sumptuary
legislation during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries arguing that clothing was
one of their only means to assert social status and thus they deserved to dress as
they pleased. They presumably voiced the feelings of many others who also had
little opportunity to contribute to public life and for whom appearances were
profoundly significant. When the Sienese Battista Petrucci was offered a reward for
her skill in performing a recital in Latin in front of Emperor Frederick III in 1452,
she requested personal exemption from sumptuary laws.41 The following year the
Bolognese noblewoman Nicolosa Sanuti made a similar plea, explicitly referring to
clothing as a form of self-expression.42 In the late sixteenth century, the women of
Cesena continued to petition against sumptuary legislation, declaring that
as for us, we are driven out of all public offices, excluded from the magistracies,
and deprived of all dignities, large or small . . . in order to alleviate such misery
we should be allowed this devotion to clothing and these ornaments.43
The tone of these appeals add weight to Stanley Chojnacki’s suggestion that the
low-cut gowns, so popular with Venetian women in the sixteenth century, were
part of a calculated strategy to use clothing to obtain greater public visibility and
power.44
In contrast, it was hoped that noblemen would attain distinction through
nobler acts.45 However, young Florentine males had limited access to power and
authority. As the average age of marriage continued to rise into the early seventeenth
century, the so-called “long age of youth” showed no signs of abating. Men were
still regarded as “young,” or giovani, up to the ages of twenty-five or thirty-
five, sometimes even forty, both in legislation and government deliberations.46
Furthermore, noblemen were often excluded from political life until the age of
about thirty.47 The lack of a well-defined role for Florentine giovani was already a
pressing concern in the fifteenth century and fueled the perception that they were
instigators of socially disruptive activities.48 Donato Giannotti, one of the leaders of

the Florentine Republic of 1527, lamented the political marginalization of youths
in Florence, comparing them unfavorably with their Venetian counterparts.49
Longstanding worries about the sartorial and physical appearances of young men
were exacerbated by new fears about the effects of court life on young men, seen to
promote a shift from labor to leisure.50
In 1566, Venetian ambassador Lorenzo Priuli noted: “Led on by pleasure the
youth of the city throw themselves more freely into courtly life, than staying
in their workshops and attending to their business.”51 At the beginning of the
seventeenth century, Venetian ambassador Francesco Badoer again reported a
lack of productivity among male youths: “For some time now, the nobility has
begun to abandon mercantile activities, the young have started to spend more time
than they did before at horse riding, promenading, or at the court, bringing a very
decorative effect to this city.”52 Such accounts implied that young noblemen did not
aspire to any more gainful employment than the perfection of their appearances.
This epitomizes the “classical stereotype of effeminacy,” as defined by David
Halperin, embodied by men “who abandoned the competitive society of men for
the amorous society of women, who pursued a life of pleasure, who made love
instead of war.”53 The extensive range of social ills encompassed by effeminacy in
early modern culture has been summed up by Amanda Bailey, who describes it as
“a concept that indexed an ideological faultline and conjured up a disconcerting
nexus of leisure, idleness, immorality, luxury, insouciance, and decadence.”54
As a sign of promiscuity or unfettered sexual desire, effeminate dress was not
yet exclusively linked with homosexuality as it came to be in later centuries, with
fashionable male groups such as the English “fops” and “mollies.”55 Michael Rocke’s
research into convictions for sodomy in the fifteenth century has underlined
the prevalency of homosexual acts in Florence. In this context we might expect
men to have been further incriminated by their physical appearances, however
Rocke notes that although clothing was described at trials, no explicit connection
was made between these garments and effeminate manners or cross-dressing.
Furthermore, he points out that although female-gendered names and metaphors
were used to refer to “boys’ receptive sexual behaviour,” this “did not imply any
particular mannerisms, dress, or other characteristics that might be considered
‘effeminate’.”56
The majority of Florentine trials involved men below marriageable age and
homosexual experiences were often considered to form part of a life phase that
was eventually abandoned for wedlock.57 Clearly delineated cultural conventions
relating to age and power governed these practices, which were held to be
particularly transgressive when an older man submitted himself passively to a
younger partner. Discussions about the dangers of effeminacy in clothing also
imply that the manner of expressing and yielding to desire was part of the problem.
Effeminate dress in the Courtier is construed as a sign of sexual subjugation,
just as Castiglione lamented the demise of an Italian style of clothing because it

symbolized Italy’s political subjugation to French and Imperial Spanish powers.58
The soft, delicate man criticized by Castiglione reflected one of the prevailing
views of effeminacy, namely that it was the hallmark of men who found excessive
pleasure in the company of women, to the extent that they allowed themselves to be
disempowered by women and even resemble them in their outward appearances.
Giovanni Della Casa’s evocation of “Ganymede’s hose” in his Galateo has
been discussed by several authors in relation to early modern male sexuality.
In David Kuchta’s view, Della Casa intended to link “immoderate dress with
homosexuality.”59 The same source is referred to by Jose Cartagena-Calderon,
who argues that there was a direct association between effeminate clothing and
sodomy in Renaissance Spain.60 However, Della Casa’s advice is rarely read in its
entirety and when considered in full it apparently has wider implications. Della
Casa warns, “Your garments should not be extremely fancy or extremely ornate,
so that no one can say that you are wearing Ganymede’s hose, or that you have
donned Cupid’s doublet.”61 While Ganymede, the beautiful boy abducted by Zeus,
was a homoerotic symbol, Cupid was associated with multiple forms of desire,
both acceptable and transgressive. An increasingly frequent subject of visual
representations, Cupid was often portrayed with female companions, sometimes
entwined with his mother Venus, or as the lover of Psyche, a story familiar in the
Renaissance from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass.62
It would seem that Della Casa was warning men away from fashion not just to
discourage homosexuality, but to encourage self-control among all sexually active
men to make them more virile. The allusion to Ganymede and Cupid implies
young men who are emasculated by giving themselves up to love and luxuriating
in it, while their clothing enhances their attraction, inspiring similar excesses in
others. In different ways these men “play the woman’s role” because they have
relinquished restraint or they have encouraged and submitted themselves passively
to the desires of others, be they male or female. This broader interpretation of
effeminacy is supported by Mario DiGangi who argues that it caused “heteroerotic
or homoerotic disorder” in the sixteenth century.63 It is pertinent that the same
line from the Galateo appears in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost, a play in which
the central characters foreswear the company of women for three years in order
to cultivate the masculine virtue of restraint. One of the protagonists, Lord Biron,
conflates the different forms of dress mentioned by Della Casa, declaring that
“rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid’s hose” (Act IV, Scene III).64
The sartorial signifiers of effeminacy outlined in contemporary sources can
all be interpreted as indicators of lasciviousness, luxury, self-love, or excessive
desire. Several basic markers appear repeatedly in Italian writing over a prolonged
period from at least the late fifteenth through to the seventeenth centuries.
Surface decoration was regularly criticized. In his Vita Civile (1431–38), Matteo
Palmieri stated that “young men should not be allowed clothing which is too fine,
overly neat, or embroidered or multi-coloured. All feminine ornament should be

avoided.”65 Discussing ideal forms of dress in a similar vein, Giovanni Pontano
wrote in 1498: “As regards young men, they need loveliness and that elegance,
which is not, however, in any way womanly.”66 In 1504, Marco Parenti attacked the
feminizing influence of French fashions, referring to the low-necked, decorated
shirts well documented in Italian portraiture of the first two decades of the
sixteenth century: “Young men seemed to have turned into women, displaying
their throats and necks with shirts lasciviously embroidered around the top.”67 As
dress fashions for both sexes became more ornate, these criticisms became more
detailed, for example, in Sabba da Castiglione’s warnings to young men in 1559:
Shun all signs of excess and showy ostentation in your dress and hosiery.
Always be grave, plain and modest. Avoid lace, or edgings, fringing, stripes,
slashing, pinking, borders and embroideries, and other conceits and frivolities
of this corrupt and foolish world, as they are not fitting to your situation or
condition.68
Intricate types of surface ornament, such as embroidery, were thought to be

superficial in contrast with more masculine elements of dress, such as form and
structure. This hierarchy of value reflects an Aristotelian privileging of form over
matter, which was central to Renaissance theories on the visual arts. We can see
its influence in terms of color theory, for example, as in Paul Hills’ note that it
fostered a belief in “the superiority of austere colours over florid ones.”69 In the
context of Elizabethan England, Karen Newman has pointed to the link between
the decorative and the feminine, tracing the devaluation of ornament from
classical antiquity onward. She suggests that the ornamental also had the capacity
to produce “anxiety and restlessness” because of its tendency to proliferate.70 This
in itself flew in the face of continence, a staple virtue of masculinity.
Time-consuming processes of dressing and grooming were considered to be
as feminizing as the appearances they were designed to achieve, as they promoted
concerns about idleness. In the fifteenth century, Leon Battista Alberti had already
drawn a direct connection between fine dress and a lack of industriousness, an
essential male virtù. In his Ecatonfilea of circa 1429, Alberti warned young women
away from men who dedicated too much time to their appearance, because they
would not make suitable husbands:
To me it seems senseless to love those idle and tame creatures who for want
of something to do practice lovemaking almost as a business and an art, and
wander about in their pretty wigs and slashes and little embroideries and
liveries that show their foolishness, and wander around trifling and talking.
Avoid them, my daughters, avoid them: for men like these are not able to love.
When they spend their days in promenading it is not that they are following
you; they are only trying to escape from boredom.71

Although productivity had different implications in the female domestic sphere, an
overly carefully maintained appearance was also seen as damaging for women as
they appeared to be neglecting their role as household managers. This is discussed
in Stefano Guazzo’s La Civil Conversazione (1574):
“Women who devote so much time to the outer ornament of their person, are
careless and dirty in the tasks of the household, while on the other hand I have
met many enemies of this kind of sumptuousness who are extremely diligent
when it comes to the running and the decoration of the household.”72
For a man the fault was magnified in proportion to the ideally more public and
substantial nature of his occupations. Consequently, intricate hair arrangements
and ringlets were regularly the subject of satirical jibes aimed at exposing a range
of typically female defects, such as slothfulness, a lack of rigor, or an inability to
temper one’s passions.73 Matteo Palmieri, for example, disdained long hair and
curls on men, saying that they were “not required for the well-born.”74 Curls were
childish things, underlined by their appearance on the two youngest brothers in
the Magalotti portrait, while on adults they hinted at time misspent, very distinct
from beards that confirmed virility.75 In his will of 1611, Riccardo Riccardi advised
his young nephews, Cosimo and Gabriello, against “fringes and curls as they
are ignoble and base in men and noble people.”76 Criticism of long hair on men
continued in the later seventeenth century and Eugenia Paulicelli has noted its
appearance in the writings of Venetian nun, Arcangela Tarabotti.77
Head hair was vilified because it could be tangibly linked with the quality of
softness associated with the overall appearance of the effeminate courtier as we
can see from Count Canossa’s diatribe:
I would have our Courtier’s face be such, not so soft and feminine as many
attempt to have who not only curl their hair and pluck their eyebrows, but
preen themselves in all those ways that the most wanton and dissolute women
in the world adopt.78
The Neapolitan Giovanni Battista Della Porta used similar language to describe
the problem in La Fisionomia dell’Uomo:
Aristotle adds in his Rhetoric that long hair is the emblem of a free man, but
these days, as things go from bad to worse, the custom of cultivating long hair
has been abused so that it has become a bad habit, one of effeminate softness,
and so luxurious and effeminate men have started to cut into their hair in
different places to create different lengths in order to appear beautiful and
decorative. . . . Only a woman should have long hair.79
Soft and delicate were adjectives traditionally applied to the physical and
sartorial appearance of the ideal woman. The trait of softness, or mollezza,

which suggested a yielding nature, was therefore directly opposed to a series
of masculine virtues, primarily perseverance, in a tradition that extended from
Aristotle through to Aquinas and also strongly influenced many sixteenth-
century authors, including Della Porta.80 This rejection of softness percolated
through to other forms of cultural expression, such as music where the note
B molle (B flat) was perceived to have feminine qualities.81 It is interesting that
Italian texts did not make more of a connection between softness of character
and the tactile qualities of fabrics, as William Tyndale did in The Obedience
of a Christian Man (1528) which describes: “A kinge that is soft as silke and
effeminate/that is to saye turned to the nature of a woman.”82 This perhaps
reflected Italian pride in local manufacturing, whereas English commentators
had more reason to demonize this foreign fabric.83
6.2 Distinguishing fashionable from

effeminate
Despite being sensed everywhere, effeminacy seems to have evaded a conclusive
definition. We have seen that Italian texts associated effeminate appearances with
qualities of softness, excessive ornament, or the processes of dressing; however,
they very rarely referred to specific colors or garment types. We could contrast
this with the case of seventeenth-century Spain, described by Elizabeth Lehfeldt,
where the ruff became the primary target of similar critiques.84 Gerry Milligan
has pointed out that the underlying sartorial code for the male courtier was that
“a man may dress as he pleases, but he can never be assured that he will not
be called effeminate as there is no comprehensive and easy distinction between
appropriate dress and womanly dress.”85 The obvious similarities between
effeminate and masculine typologies of fashionable dress are illustrated in a pair
of engravings from Cesare Vecellio’s Costume Book, which depict two “giovanetti
(little youths) from Venice and other parts of Italy [Figs. 6.5 and 6.6].”86 Both
men are equally elegantly dressed and are shown gazing downward, unlike older,
Venetian male citizens, who are usually depicted in profile or forward facing.
The first young nobleman, however, maintains his virility through his sword and
the swagger implied by his hand on hip and jutting elbow.87 The second youth
wears equally ornate clothing, including a “beret of uncut velvet with a silk veil
tied around it arranged into a rose at the front” and a “doublet slashed with
designs in the shape of crosses or stars to reveal a coloured taffeta lining.” Yet
the meaning of this second outfit is subtly altered in light of the accompanying
text that crucially describes the subject as being “in love.”88 He is shown carrying
a handkerchief, an archetypal love token, instead of a more virile attribute. His
head turns down toward the flower held out in his other hand, with an air of

Figure 6.5 Dress of Young Men of the City of Venice, and Students and throughout all
of Italy, Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice:
Damiano Zenaro, 1590). © The British Library Board, 810.i.2, p. 160.
bashfulness that would be more commonly associated with women. Individually

innocuous, these different signifiers work in combination to communicate the
overall effeminacy of his stance.
Given that the majority of sixteenth-century Italian portraits of young men
followed Baldassare Castiglione’s ideal of restraint, as discussed in the previous
chapter, the fashionably dressed male subject requires careful interpretation.
Interestingly, often the sitter’s identity is unknown in the clusters of sixteenth-
century portraits of men in more vibrant, decorated, ostentatious dress, making
them tantalizingly elusive. In this respect, they are reminiscent of exemplary
depictions of female beauty intended to be gazed upon to conjure up feelings of
love.89 While it has been assumed that some of these women were courtesans, others
seem to be generic portraits, possibly stock images painted for the open market.
In paintings of fashionable young men, the subject often averts his gaze rather

Figure 6.6 Dress of the Young Men of Venice and of other Places in Italy, Cesare
Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (Venice: Damiano
Zenaro, 1590). © The British Library Board, 810.i.2, p. 162.
than assertively confronting the viewer, thereby assuming a pose more typical of
female portraits. The combination of their longing attitude and the “effeminate”
elements of their dress suggest that, like the Vecellio engraving, some might be
images depicting men “in love,” as the objects of love, or as personifications of
celibate love, something that contemporary viewers would have fully understood
and appreciated. Discussing Italian portraits of youthful men, Bette Talvacchia
notes that some sitters are “wilfully constructed as beautiful, ornamental and
sensual; in sum as objects of desire, a classification that would not have been seen
as trivial or pejorative, given the nobility the period bequeathed to such desires
transmitted by beauty.”90 She argues that this mode of depiction sought legitimacy
through its adoption of “a poetic approach” that gave the subject an “ethereal
quality.” As depictions of Neoplatonic love they championed a model of celibacy
that removed men from the dominance of women.91

The impact of effeminate behavior on clothing, rather than the reverse, is
revealed in Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata, first published
in 1581. In the enchanted wood, enslaved by his love for the witch Armida, the
warrior Rinaldo is horrified by a glimpse of his reflection in the shield brought by
his rescuers, knights Carlo and Ubaldo:
Turning his glance to that gleaming shield,

He in that mirror sees himself at once,
Effeminately groomed, his hair, his cloak
Beribboned, fragrant with lascivious smell.
A sword—where is his sword? Oh, there it is:
A useless piece of luxury, a toy,
so dainty, it seems a futile ornament,
and not a soldier’s deadly instrument.92
Rinaldo sees his manhood reduced to a trifling decoration, a metaphor that

appears in more prosaic form in conduct book descriptions of limp and languid
male courtiers. It should be noted that Rinaldo’s clothing is, of course, materially
unaltered as his true metamorphosis takes place in spirit only. His cloak was always
beribboned and his hair groomed, but it is only now that he has been emasculated
by Armida that he sees himself as effeminate. This is reflected in Bernardo Castello’s
engraving to accompany this canto, where Rinaldo wears exactly the same clothing
as his liberators, although his helmet is missing and his curls are longer [Fig. 6.7].
His recumbent pose is another reference to his unmanliness. More than fifty years
after the first edition of Castello’s illustrations, the Vicentine artist Franceso Maffei
reinterpreted the scene [Fig. 6.8]. Here, however, the sartorial contrast between
Rinaldo’s embellished clothing and floral hairpiece, and the spartan attire of the
two warriors arriving to release him is made concrete, creating an evident divide
between effeminate and masculine dress codes.
By investing so heavily in fashionable dress, the Magalotti brothers blatantly
disregarded calls for male sartorial restraint. When Camilla Magalotti still
clothed her young sons she would have been proudly aware of the striking
impression created by the four young boys in their matching Spanish-style
green outfits. As adults, when inviting such attention risked notoriety, the
Magalotti brothers continued to dress in the latest fashions. Heavily decorated
with ribbons, embroideries, and braiding, many features of late sixteenth-
and early seventeenth-century male fashions coincided with contemporary
definitions of effeminacy. Their multiple layers, ties, and fastenings also meant
that putting on an entire outfit could be a lengthy affair in itself, doing little
to dampen concerns about male inactivity. There is insufficient evidence for us
to interpret the brothers’ pursuit of fashion as an act of rebellion, yet it does
conform to Alexandra Shepard’s definition of anti-patriarchal behavior in that

Figure 6.7 Bernardo Castello, Engraving of Rinaldo and the Mirror Shield, from
Torquato Tasso, La Gerusalemme Liberata, unnumbered folios (Genoa: Pavoni, 1617).
© The British Library Board, 80.h.8.
Figure 6.8 Francesco Maffei, Rinaldo and the Mirror Shield, about 1650–55, oil on
copper (85.PC.321.1). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of
the Getty’s Open Content Program.

“it was a deliberate inversion of the norms commonly claimed for patriarchal
manhood.”93
How was it possible for young men like the Magalotti to wear ornate clothing
that could easily be called effeminate without damaging their reputation? The
sources discussed here corroborate David Kuchta’s sense that clothing could be
“innocent.”94 Fashionable dress did not in itself create womanly men. Rather,
it magnified or revealed a preexisting lack of masculine virtue and therefore
clothing excesses provided an opening to publicly criticize transgressive behavior.
Discussing Polonius’ advice in Hamlet to buy clothes that are “rich, not gaudy,”
Kuchta makes the point that behavior transcends clothing as “the difference
[between the two] was determined more by attitude than actual garment.”95 In
other words, in this context it would be less accurate to say that clothes “made”
men than to argue that they could be used to expose their failings. Given the
many nuances of dress decorum, the same outfit could be shameful or honorable,
depending on a series of factors such as social context, status, and an individual’s
comportment. The Magalotti brothers were able to “pull off ” the aspects of their
appearance that might have been deemed insufficiently masculine because their
social power, their illustrious circumstances, and companions, all helped to protect
their honor. Throughout this period, sartorial effeminacy was used as an insult
and as an anti-exemplary, instructive device intended to control a social group
often viewed as subversive and unruly. The visual similarities between appropriate
and inappropriate display increased its effectiveness, fanning anxieties that this
boundary could be crossed at any time.

7 Festive dress
According to Castiglione, if you were to see “a gentleman pass by dressed in a

habit quartered in varied colours, or with an array of strings and ribbons in bows
and cross-lacings” you would be justified in taking him for a fool or buffoon.1
Combining different colors in one outfit, or wearing stripes, could be interpreted
as a sign that the wearer was either lewd or mad.2 However, in certain contexts
male appearances were unleashed from the rules that normally governed male
dress decorum. We have seen in Chapter 1 that noblemen wore brightly colored
clothes when they participated in court festivities and Federico Fregoso identified
two other scenarios that required extraordinary clothing, namely games and
masques. It is significant that Fregoso considered these quite disparate events in
tandem, unified by their associations with festive sport, and indeed the types of
clothing they required offered uncommon freedoms to Florentine noblemen. This
chapter explores the outfits worn at football and Carnival, analyzing their capacity
to project the mental or physical attributes of wearers, and to emphasize virtues
that were less overtly conveyed by other forms of clothing.
Dressing up, masquerading or disguising oneself was most common during
the period around Carnival, in the weeks preceding Lent, but important state
occasions offered further opportunities throughout the year, and the time spent
devising and commissioning festive outfits meant they were far from incidental
to the way Florentine noblemen thought about their physical appearance. Italians
were seen to be leaders in these kinds of revelries. A masque celebrated in 1512
at Henry VIII’s court was described as an Italianate invention: “The king with xi
others was disguised, after the maner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not sene
before in England.”3 The celebrations to mark the 1589 marriage of Ferdinando
de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine scaled new heights of magnificence and
inventiveness, resulting in, as James Saslow puts it, “the theatricalization of the
whole spatial environment” of Florence.4 A great variety of different musical and
dramatic art forms, including intermezzi, ballets, tournaments, and masquerades,
thrived at the Medici court, many of them guided by a shared aesthetic and spirit.5
Their ingenuity and popularity must have surely contributed to the enthusiasm of
Florentine noblemen for donning fantastical costumes. The alacrity with which
they created disguises or alter egos for themselves is reflected in the nicknames,
often of a humorous nature, adopted by members of the Florentine Academy, such
as Matteo Botti and his rather unflattering Insipido, or the poet Anton Francesco
Grazzini, better known by his pseudonym, Il Lasca (the Roach). There is already a
substantial literature on Florentine court masques and the professionals involved
in staging them.6 Instead, this chapter focuses on the role of courtiers who appeared
in allegorical and musical entertainments such as buffalo races, tournaments, or
Saracen jousts, dressed in costumes or liveries. These could mostly be described as
“non-scripted events,” although many of the themes portrayed were intellectually
sophisticated, such as the union of the arts, the cosmos, or the battle between love
and war. These creatively cerebral elements contributed to their attraction.
As discussed in Chapter 1, festivities were central to the exercise of power
under the Medici, playing a fundamental role in aggrandizing and glorifying the
court and the city of Florence. Henk Th. Van Veen argues that from the 1560s
Cosimo used these occasions to “create a climate in which the Florentine elite was
constantly reminded of its own exclusivity and prominence.”7 Taking part in public
ceremonies, sporting events, and celebrations was also a question of personal
honor, and their competitive nature is evident from the way that individual
courtiers jostled one another for prominence. This is relayed by an incident that
took place during the entry of the new Florentine archbishop Antonio Altoviti
in 1567. According to longstanding tradition, a representative of the Strozzi had
the right to take care of the bridle and saddle of the Archbishop’s horse after he
dismounted at the church of San Pietro Maggiore. A dispute erupted between
the different branches of the family as to whom this honor should fall and was
so divisive that the matter was only resolved after the intervention of Francesco
de’ Medici.8 The example of Matteo Botti also shows that organizing a masque
could provide an important opportunity to display or consolidate status at court.
Florentine noblemen were bound up in all stages of these performances: joining
the planning committees, providing financial support, performing, and later being
commemorated for their contribution. Courtiers who paid for their own liveries
or costumes were guaranteed lasting fame in official records of events, named
in festival books or in engravings of festival floats by court artists such as Giulio
Parigi and Remigio Cantagallina.
Participation in the majority of the events discussed in this chapter was restricted
to male members of the court, although there was scope for female involvement in
some kinds of festive performance, mainly semi-private events held among peers.
Male and female courtiers danced together, for example, in a masquerade at the
Pitti Palace in 1611.9 It was more acceptable, though still unusual, for elite women
to take on the role of patron, as in Margherita Gonzaga’s sponsorship of the famous
balletto delle donne at the Ferrarese court, originally danced by courtiers who were
Festive dress 129

later replaced by professional singers and dancers, sometimes with women cross-
dressing as warriors.10 Decorum did not loosen its grip on female lives even when
it came to spectatorship. Anton Francesco Grazzini’s poem Il Canto di Zanni e di
Magnifici, describes a troupe of zanni (an early form of commedia dell’arte) staging
separate performances in private households for women who were not allowed to
attend in public halls.11 Nevertheless, as we have seen in Chapter 1, noblewomen
could play a vital role as onlookers, witnessing and heightening the masculinity of
performing courtiers.
As Louise Fradenburg explains in the context of the medieval joust, which
inspired many of these sixteenth-century activities, “the lady dramatizes the
masculinity of the warrior by being what he is not and by watching his effort from
another place.”12 One of Niccolò Martelli’s letters provides a vivid description
of liveried noblemen carousing about Florence at the end of Carnival in 1546,
reminiscent of soldiers returning home from a great victory: “With an infinite
number of candles, they went about the city, singing to the gentlewomen about
their great exploits that day.”13 An event without spectators lost much of its meaning
and it was to be hoped that a match was watched by “the most beautiful women
and the most important gentlemen of the city.”14 In Federico Fregoso’s account of
the importance of “being seen” in combat the spectators are not gender specific.
He advises that courtiers should look “fine and comely” and “draw the eyes of the
spectators to you like a magnet attracts iron.”15 When courtiers showed off in front
of women, they were simultaneously demonstrating to male spectators their ability
to impress the opposite sex. In this respect, football was the ideal sport, perfectly
configured to enable noblemen to be seen in the public squares of Florence and to
enjoy the admiration of onlookers. A football game was much more visible than
tennis, another popular pastime with the Medici, but one that was restricted to
purpose-built courts in Medici villas, often outside the city.16
The large-scale spectacles and operas in Florence have received most
scholarly attention, but court life was also enlivened by a succession of smaller
entertainments and parties. Costumes could take many different forms, ranging
from the simple and spontaneous, such as a cloak and mask, as when Cosimo
de’ Medici attended a party in a lucco, to clothes that differed only moderately
from ordinary ones, to truly fantastical outfits. When garments were worn out or
simply no longer fit for normal use they could be turned into costumes. The items
auctioned off by the Orsini included “two Carnival outfits that are worth little.”
There is nothing in the description to mark them out as Carnival wear, apart from
perhaps the jujube (giuggiolino) color of a pair of taffeta breeches and cassock.17
A list of old dresses, some described as having old-fashioned embroideries, in the
Medici Wardrobe in the last decade of the sixteenth century contains suggestions
for possible uses for them, including selling them on, turning them into domestic
furnishings or ecclesiastical textiles, or alternatively using them for “masques or
parties.”18 Whatever the Medici costume store lacked could be obtained by hiring

outfits: Jewish second-hand dealers from the Blanis family rented out male and
female Carnival costumes to the Medici, including Turkish costumes with turbans
for Carnival in 1619.19 For grander occasions, such as the 1589 Medici wedding,
bespoke costumes were commissioned, from the same artisans who produced
fashionable dress or from makers who specialized in theatrical productions.20 The
different mechanisms for the production and distribution of costumes reinforce
a sense of their prevalence. Similar patterns can be traced at the court of Henry
VIII: the wardrobe paid for many masquerade costumes and the king sometimes
gave them as gifts to courtiers afterward, but he also had a store of clothing for
masques, with items being recycled and remade when necessary.21 The frequency
with which costumes were required must have boosted the trade in new and
second-hand clothing. If an item were made for a specific event, it might not be
worn again in the same form but could be recycled into something else. Benvenuto
Cellini and his apprentice, Ascanio, fell out when the latter asked if he could have a
doublet made for himself out of Cellini’s blue satin cloak, described as only having
been worn once, “in that procession.”22 Susan Gaylard’s analysis of Pietro Aretino’s
reactions to gifts of clothing from his patrons throws up interesting questions
about the meanings of garments.23 Gaylard shows Aretino employing different
strategies in order to reduce the obligation these gifts placed him under, including
suggesting he would pass clothing on to his friends to be used for Carnival. Such
examples demonstrate that costumes or liveries could become fashionable dress
and vice versa, and that festive wear could be relatively fluid both in terms of
function and meaning.
7.1 Dressed to fight
Rather in the same way that myths had evolved about the lucco, by the sixteenth
century Florentine football was layered with heroic overtones drawn from both the
classical world and the more recent republican past. The Vocabolario della Crusca
states that “football is also the name of an ancient game, particular to Florence,
played in the manner of an ordered battle with an inflatable ball, similar to the
‘battle of the ball’ (sferomachia), passed down from the Greeks to the Romans and
from the Romans to us.” It began to be played more frequently in the second-half of
the fifteenth century and under the ducal regime the Medici appropriated various
aspects of the game’s visual symbolism, starting with the connection of the football
itself with the Medici emblem of six balls. Its spherical shape enabled further
allusions to the names of Grand Dukes Cosimo I and II and the cosmos as a whole.24
Games took place to coincide with Medici family events, players sometimes wore
Medici colors and were captained by members of the Medici family. In Raffaello
Gualterotti’s depiction of a match that took place in 1589 as part of the celebrations
for Ferdinando and Christine of Lorraine’s wedding, the Grand Duke’s team wore
Festive dress 131

Figure 7.1 Raffaello Gualterotti, Gioco del Calcio—Piazza Santa Croce, Florence,
1589, oil on canvas. Collection of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State
Art Museum of Florida, Florida State University.
pink and the Grand Duchess’ dark blue, edged with gold braid [Fig. 7.1]. The
team leaders are distinguished by doublets and breeches entirely covered with
gold braid. By the mid-seventeenth century, Florentine football was on the wane.
Nobleman Orazio Capponi attempted to revive its popularity with his Memorie del
calcio fiorentino (1673), which was strategically dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo
III, requesting him to play an active role in the game’s rehabilitation.
The rules of the game in the Renaissance version had very little to do with modern
football. Teams were usually made up of twenty-seven players and points (caccie)
were scored when a team succeeded in touching the ball down at the opposite end
of the pitch. Players could run with the ball and the game involved a high degree
of physical contact. In The Book of the Governour (1531), diplomat and scholar
Thomas Elyot described English football as more of a “bloody and murthering
practise, then a felowly sporte or pastime.”25 Elyot’s distaste can be attributed partly
to the fact that in England it was a popular sport, without the nobler aspirations
of the Florentine version. Certainly, there seem to have been fewer fatalities on the
pitch in Florence than in England.26 An English visitor to Italy in the seventeenth
century, Richard Lassels, a Catholic priest and well-seasoned traveler, considered
the Italian version of football to be more civilized. He gave a uniquely detailed
account of the buildup to the game, which he characterized as a kind of council

of war. The two opposing captains were in charge of galvanizing their players
and antagonizing the other team with witty speeches and proclamations, as they
prepared for the ultimate match at the end of Carnival. Lassels explained:
In Winter their Giuoco di Calcio (a play something like our Football, but that
thay play with their hands) is played every night from the Epiphany till Lent,
with their Principi di Calcio. This being a thing particular to Florence, deserves
to be described. The two Factions of the Calcio, the Red and the Green, choose
each of them a Prince, some young Cavalier of a good Purse. These Princes
being chosen, choose a world of Officers . . . receive ambassadors from one
another . . . hear their Counsellors one after another, disswading from or
perswading to war.27
Lassels was well aware that this kind of play-combat helped to diffuse genuine
rivalries in a controlled environment. He explained:
The Florentines enjoying, by the goodness and wisdom of their excellent Prince,
the fruits of peace, have many other recreations, where the people pass their
time cheerfully, and think not of rebellion by muttering in corners.
This function of physical sports has been repeatedly underlined by historians, as

summarized by Tim Edwards: “The rise of modern sports is, in particular, seen as a
prime example of a civilising process, or growth of civility and control of violence,
that is seen to start in the sixteenth century with various shifts in the class system
and the rise of court society most prominent.”28 Richard Trexler traces this process
developing in Florence toward the end of the fifteenth century, pointing to the role
of football in the policy of marking out “neighbourhood youth as festive units.”29
Football teams were often drawn up from the rivaling neighborhoods of Santa
Maria Novella and Santa Croce. The game also offered an opportunity for the city
to unite and express dissent against a common, stronger enemy, as in the case of the
landmark match intended to boost morale, marking the city’s defiance of Charles V’s
troops during the siege of Florence. This momentous occasion set a precedent for the
people of Siena, who chose to stage a similar demonstration of bravura and resilience
when besieged by Medici troops in 1555. A contemporary description of this match
compounds the links between football, military might, youth, and virility:
The most joyful ball game that on the day of Fat Thursday in the piazza of Santo
Agostino was played by the flower of the noble Sienese youth bedecked in rich
and ornate livery in the presence of the finest young women.30
The 1530 match reinforced the image of Florence as a David figure standing up to
Goliath in the form of the Imperial troops. Although the matches were, as Lassels
noted, recreational, they also represented a significant opportunity to shake off
Festive dress 133

accusations of a feminized aristocracy and to present an image of active, forceful
manhood. For similar motives, sixteenth-century English writers were keen to
distinguish between supposedly feminine sports, for example dancing and chess,
and masculine ones, such as running and wrestling, which “helped to prepare men
for the hardships of war.”31 Carolyn Springer argues that because sixteenth-century
Italian courtiers were rarely involved in battle the public display of physical strength
and agility took on increasing importance. Although “prowess at arms” could not
be demonstrated, it remained an ideal: “A courtier’s lack of military experience in
the field could be disguised by proficiency in the tournaments and exercises that
substituted for actual combat among members of his class.”32 Furthermore, those
with the finest armor were often the least likely to fight and so appearances became
a substitute for action.
In Florence the most significant matches were also the most ritualized. Liveried
football (calcio a livrea) was a form of pageant, a competitive sport, and a mock
battle all rolled into one, a worthy heir to the medieval tournament. It usually
formed part of an event that lasted two hours, split between an initial procession
and the game itself. Both lengthy and costly to stage, they were sponsored by the
wealthiest noblemen, a point made by Lassels’ reference to the football “masters”
needing to be “cavaliers of a good purse.”33 In 1558, the spendthrift Paolo Giordano
Orsini sponsored a match where one team wore gold and red, the other silver and
red, presumably calculating that the vast expense was justified by the opportunity
to promote himself in Florence.34 The team leaders of the match for the wedding
of Vincenzo Gonzaga and Eleonora de’ Medici in 1584 paid for outfits for no
fewer than 100 noblemen.35 The whole scenography of the game revolved around
the drama of the battlefield, including the trumpeters and the peripheral figures
wearing components of armor, emphasized in contemporary depictions, such as
Jacques Callot’s engraving showing a match in Piazza Santa Croce [Fig. 7.2]. At
either side of the pitch are stationed figures in helmets holding lances and shields.
The drummer dominating the scene in the foreground carries a sword and his
ripped breeches are an allusion to images of Landsknechts and marauding soldiers
in tattered clothing. His raggedness and dynamism convey the sense that he has
at this moment emerged from the fray, creating a contrast with the football match
behind him. In comparison it appears orderly and rational: an idealized battlefield.
As he is shown in the act of drumming, we are encouraged to imagine the noise
and general fracas of the event, with sound acting as another channel to express
bravado. Written descriptions usually mention such festive noise, referring to the
games being accompanied by artillery bombardments that “echoed around the
world,” or harquebuses and other types of guns firing “infinite shots” every time a
point was scored.36
The clothing worn by football players strengthened these military overtones.
As we have seen, there were many overlaps between military apparel and male
civilian dress. As Bette Talvacchia comments, it is hardly surprising that the

Figure 7.2 Jacques Callot, “Game of Football in Piazza Santa Croce,” from Capricci di
varie figure, ca. 1617, Florence, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi. (© 2016.
Photo Scala, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali).
appearance of soldiers was so frequently referenced at a time when clothing’s

function of distinguishing between the sexes was so vital.37 The origins of the
fashionable codpiece lay in the need to cover the gap between separate leg armors
and it is noticeable that its sole appearance in Cesare Vecellio’s Degli habiti antichi
et moderni is in connection with the dress of soldiers.38 The popularity of leather
for cassocks, doublets, and jerkins was also boosted by its soldierly connections.
Often worn under armor to give the wearer extra protection, its resilience and
malleability were also useful in civilian life.39 Similarly, the prevalence of other
kinds of reinforcements, such as padding and quilting, took their inspiration
from clothing for combat.40 The influence was reciprocal, as the bulbous forms
of sixteenth-century male dress, including voluminous trunk hose and peascod
belly doublets, were incorporated into suits of armor.41 We have also seen how
soldiers’ off-duty clothing was often problematic, construed alternately as a sign of
their bravery and physical prowess or their debauchery.42 Peter Paret describes the
subversive nature of the image of the soldier in sixteenth-century art, embodied
by “the soldier’s freedom from constraint and convention, the threat he posed to
the peaceful routine of society, but also his changeable and dangerous existence.”43
The clothing of football players avoided these negative connotations. It is
noticeable, for example, that slashing hardly features in visual representations
or descriptions of matches. The military associations lay in the players’ brightly
colored garments, an important feature of soldiers’ manly bravery as Keith Thomas
Festive dress 135

notes.44 The contrasting colors helped to distinguish more easily between the two
teams on the pitch, just as they enabled commanding officers to stand out on the
battlefield. In Castiglione’s view, when worn by soldiers, parti-colored clothing
became a mark of virtue. His description of these “vivid and cheerful” garments
reflects the boldness of the wearer and by extension his valor.45 Without fail,
team colors are picked out in contemporary descriptions of matches. Giuseppe
Settimanni describes a game in 1569, played by two teams made up of sixty young
Florentine noblemen, one in yellow and turquoise, the other pink and white,
and the referees in cloth of gold of the same colors.46 The 1584 Medici Gonzaga
wedding match was even more magnificent: the yellow team wore satin doublets
with plain cloth of gold breeches decorated with bands of silver lace and yellow
velvet berets embellished with feathers (an accessory often seen on soldiers), gold
studs, medallions, and pearls, while their opponents were similarly dressed in
red.47 In visual depictions, these striking effects are thrown into greater relief as
they contrast with the more soberly clad male spectators [FIG. 7.1].
There are obvious parallels between the garments worn for liveried football
and other sports. Treatises on fencing show men in highly decorative clothing,
often with clear military references, for example, wearing stripes, or pluderhosen.
Tobias Capwell points out the very elaborate appearances of swordsmen in the
Bolognese Angelo Viggiani da Montone’s Lo Schermo (first printed in 1575).48
Each figure is shown in a different outfit, often wearing hats with feathers, and
pinked or slashed doublets, breeches and shoes. Capwell states that “for Viggiani,
the great swordsman clearly must have superb fashion sense.” However, this was a
very specific form of fashion, one that could be considered excessive or effeminate
if not coupled with weaponry or physical exertion. It is clear that the sartorial
appearance of football players was a “civilized” version of the typology of the
brutish and unruly soldiers recurrent in representations from the late fifteenth
through to late sixteenth centuries. Just as the staged violence of the Florentine
game was largely innocuous and cathartic, the subversive overtones of male
flamboyant dress were neutralized on the football pitch.
The perception of players was also governed by what they did not wear. Before
play noblemen removed their cloaks, apparently the single concession that permitted
greater ease of movement in this highly physical and energetic game. Again, this
sense of freedom contrasts with the more decorous ethos of dancing at court.
Fabrizio Caroso in his Nobiltà di Dame (1600) recommended: “Be careful never to
dance without your cape, because this looks most unsightly and is not appropriate
to the nobility.”49 Caroso provides written instructions and engravings to illustrate
different ways of wrapping one’s cloak around the waist or shoulders, freeing the arms
to make it possible to dance with a partner [Fig. 7.3]. For the courtier, appearing in
public without a cloak was effectively a state of undress. Castiglione describes King
Ferdinand of Spain seeking out opportunities to appear in just a doublet because “he
felt he had a good physique,” as well as referring to a Roman cardinal who, priding

Figure 7.3 Engraving from the dance manual by Fabrizio Caroso, Il Ballarino (Venice:
Francesco Ziletti, 1581) Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale (Getty Images).
himself on his athleticism, invited visitors into his garden “urgently pressing them
to strip to their doublet and try a turn with him at leaping.”50 Freed from a cloak’s
draperies, the male torso, physical prowess, and stature were easier to assess and
admire. Francesco Beccaruzzi’s portrait of A Ballplayer and his Page (ca. 1545),
showing the subject being dressed for play, demonstrates how clothing for sport
could model and enhance the physique [Fig. 7.4]. The figure’s military-style quilted
doublet serves to protect him against the knocks of the game and its neat, simple
waistline accentuates his slim body. Our attention is drawn to the cinched waist,
as his page concentrates on lacing together the doublet and breeches, and then
downward to the codpiece, ostentatiously decorated with guards that match the
color of his doublet. Although at the time of this painting the ideal male form was
broader and bulkier, the ballplayer’s waistline, padded torso and codpiece all reprise
elements of the clothing depicted in Pontormo’s 1530 portrait, thought to represent
Francesco Guardi the Halbadier, which belonged to Riccardo Riccardi and was
bequeathed to the same nephews who received his advice regarding short hair [Fig.
7.5]. Although the clothing in Pontormo’s painting is not an exact rendition of the
standard clothing of mercenary soldiers, the silhouette, padding, large codpiece, and
brightly colored breeches are evidently intended to portray a fighting man.51
Festive dress 137

Figure 7.4 Francesco Beccaruzzi, A Ballplayer and his Page, ca. 1550, oil on canvas,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.
Figure 7.5 Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier, 1529–30, oil on panel

transferred to canvas, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (89.PA.49).

This kind of clothing allowed players’ bodies and movements to be appraised.
A compendium of writings on Florentine football, printed in 1688 and dedicated
to Grand Duke Ferdinando II, includes recommendations on adapting dress for
sport: “Every player’s clothing should be as short and streamlined as possible, but
we believe that one should not wear any more than breeches, doublet, beret, and
light shoes, because the less impeded one is, the more one can move and make
use of one’s limbs and be agile in running.”52 It is not until 1650, however, that we
can find an account of players wearing doublets of white muslin, a fabric much
more suited to physical exertions than the usual satins and taffetas.53 Although it is
evident that nobility and wealth were important prerequisites for potential players,
it is not clear to what extent the players were selected for their sporting skills. A
late sixteenth century description of players “stripping down” and practicing in the
evenings before the big match therefore stands out:
Those who are robust and agile of body, and youthful, of noble blood, two hours
before dusk, about a month before the beginning of Lent, get together every day
in this square, and take off their cloaks, which impede physical movement.54
The bodies of Florentine noblemen not surprisingly came to symbolize the body
politic, their health reflecting that of Florence. After watching a football match in
1575, visiting King Arrigo Valesio of Poland is reported to have asked whether “all
the Florentines were as large and handsome as the players?.”55 Equally, the sporting
ruler also gained political stature. We can see this operating in the admiring
account by a Venetian ambassador of Henry VIII playing tennis. The King’s shirt
is particularly noted, perhaps because in Italy it was customary to retain a doublet,
but also because the monarch’s flesh and fine complexion are revealed through
the semi-transparent linen: “It is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play,
his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture.”56 It is significant that
Francesco de’ Medici, often seen as an aloof and solitary ruler, joined his courtiers
in the team sport of football. Florentine author and soldier Giovanni de’ Bardi
describes the forty-year old Grand Duke demonstrating his shared human nature
on the pitch, firstly by casting off a key sartorial marker: “He removed his royal
mantle and went onto the middle of the field and amongst the ranks, and ran and
sweated and shouted and pushed and won.”57
7.2 Masquerade Costumes

Like football, the cultural and social significance of Carnival activities, including
dressing up, has frequently been analyzed from the twin perspectives of subversion
and containment. This has provided a useful framework to understand fifteenth-
century Florentine Carnival, which offered the city’s youth an opportunity to take
Festive dress 139

part in sanctioned forms of chaos and irreverence. Various studies have shown that
Carnival in Florence took on an increasingly elite nature under Lorenzo de’ Medici,
who set his mark on the principal events and is considered to have played a key
role in making masques a fundamental part of the city’s culture. Nicole Carew-Reid
traces the politicization of Carnival rituals, characterizing them as “a celebration of
the established powers. They were greater and greater tributes to the personalities
of the leaders who would manipulate their elements in order to acquire personal
prestige.”58 In a similar vein, Nicholas Scott Baker analyzes the Medici’s involvement
in the 1513 Carnival as a means of smoothing over their return to the city after
eighteen years of exile.59 Under the Grand Dukes, Cosimo I exercised final approval
on the contents of Carnival songs to ensure they were not too critical of the regime.60
The Medici’s grip on Carnival did not eradicate the “world upside-down” element
to costumes. Noblemen continued to masquerade in garments associated with a
different gender, social status, or nationality, as the variety of disguises broadened
in the sixteenth century, partly inspired by the development of the Commedia
dell’Arte. Dressing up as members of different professions became popular and
provided ample opportunity for burlesque humor and sexual innuendo, illustrated
by the Carnival songs performed by noblemen masquerading as shoemakers,
muleteers, perfumers, and so on.61 Although noblemen cross-dressing as women
do feature in descriptions of Carnival festivities, it was not the most prevalent form
of disguise. One instance occurred at a Carnival football match in 1599, when
the teams wore ripped women’s clothes but, on the whole, courtiers were more
likely to dress up as Turks than as the opposite sex.62 These costumes allowed
Florentines to indulge a fascination with Turkish clothing, fabrics, and accessories,
which also seeped into fashionable dress, and items such as bifurcated swords or
intricately embroidered silks are given prominence in Carnival descriptions.63
Beyond this, such costumes were clearly a means of expressing Florentine and
Christian authority, reinforcing the priorities of the Medici as founders of the
Order of Saint Stephen, committed to the fight against the Ottomans. The chivalric
order “positioned the Medici as warriors for the true faith, gaining papal approval
and prestige abroad, specifically with prominent Catholic powers like Spain and
France,” while furthering the Medici’s interests at a domestic level, weakening
opposition to the Medici and rivalries among Florentine noblemen.64
Joseph Roach’s observation that “elite cultures produce themselves by contrast
with the excluded” is applicable here.65 In 1546, a Carnival float involving Turks
dressed as Africans reflects a frequent conflation of the non-Christian other, as
suggested by William Harrison’s grouping together of Turkish, Moorish, and
Barbary styles, cited in Chapter 3. This aspect of Florentine Carnival costumes
can be related to a broader phenomenon in Italian visual arts associating Ottoman
Turks and Africans.66 Three Florentine noblemen were followed by a buffalo
dressed as an elephant, bearing a castle on its back, and four Turks disguised as
Africans from Guinea, with “silk curls on their heads the colour of dragon’s blood,

with small turbans embroidered ‘alla moresca’ with beautiful skill.”67 Although
not specified, the four performers were presumably intended to represent slaves.
The enduring popularity of Turkish disguises corroborates Miriam Eliav-Feldon’s
assertion that “no other costume defined identity for Europeans more clearly than
the Muslim dress.”68 Set against the backdrop of the Habsburg-Ottoman wars of
the 1680s, it became the theme for one of the last great liveried football events,
to mark the wedding of Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici and Violante Beatrice di
Baviera in 1689, with teams representing Asia and Europe. The Asian team wore
turbans and full-length zamberlucchi, a Turkish garment similar to a kaftan or
dolman, decorated with frogging, which presumably impeded movement even
more than satin doublets and breeches.69 Such practices were symptomatic of a
widespread appetite for the staging of warfare at court festivities across Europe.
Torquato Tasso’s dialogue on masques portrays this as one of the duties of a ruler,
describing how Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere “does not miss any opportunity
to demonstrate his greatness and valour, and when there are no real battles, he
shows us the image of them.”70
Although masking can be seen as a kind of “safety valve,” a potentially disruptive
activity that was nevertheless sanctioned by the Grand Dukes, it was also a
manifestation of a culture that increasingly prized invention. Examining the taste for
mechanical devices at the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts, Jessica Wolfe highlights
the value placed on the qualities of ingenuity, dexterity, and grace, coupled with
“a passion for difficulty and by a penchant for artful display.”71 The same ethos
was epitomized in numerous aspects of Florentine court design, as evidenced, for
example, in the banquet menu for the wedding of Cosimo II and Maria Maddalena
of Austria in 1608, which included “sliced ham shaped like a cockerel,” “balls of veal
in the form of swans,” and “bell-shaped jellies with live fish inside them.”72 Many
Florentine masques and parade floats involving courtiers were similarly ambitious,
explicitly designed to make spectators marvel. Anton Francesco Grazzini was one
of a large group of Florentine intellectuals, thinkers, and writers, who invented and
performed masques and took a leading role in shaping Florentine Carnival in the
1540s–50s. A poem written when he was “Master of Ceremonies” emphasizes his
ability to innovate and surprise, suggesting that the purpose of Carnival was to
breathe new life into the Florentine court and its young courtiers. This is reinforced
by an anecdote involving those “leisurely youths” so prominent at the Florentine
court, who resolved to make a masque in February 1549 but could not think of any
“invention” and so turned to Grazzini, who was “only capable of praiseworthy and
pleasing things.”73 Grazzini boasts of his contribution:
And meanwhile to my great delight

Carnival came, cheerful and longed for,
And I was elected as usual to be the principal supervisor
Of the celebrations within the palace and without,
Festive dress 141

And of the football too,
With the trumpeters and footballs and players,
And I had found costumes
Of lovely colours, cheerful and strange,
I had provided for towers and quintains and buffaloes
Masks and inventions never seen before,
So that for joy at both this and the other
I almost could not stay in my skin.74
Inspiration for these festivities came from a multitude of sources.75 Many were
classical, such as the Medusa emblem at Carnival in 1546 involving the Grand
Master of Altopascio, Ugolino Grifoni, leading on horseback with a retinue of
followers dressed in cloth of gold and silver bouclé, their faces transformed to
look like marble with snakes entwined around their hair.76 Others were more
humorous, including a “merry” canto in 1549 with twenty-four young men
disguised as German swimmers wearing light pink to appear naked, with “cloth
of gold underpants” (mutande di tocca d’oro) and swimming floats made of gourds
tied around their shoulders.77 Coming soon after the marriage of Joanna of Austria
and Francesco de’ Medici, Carnival festivities in 1566 were particularly lavish. One
of the masques was sponsored by Niccolò di Luigi Capponi and Vincenzo Giraldi.78
Described as “beautiful, graceful, ingenious and rich,” it represented Osiris riding
on a buffalo, dressed in a knee-length tunic of red satin embroidered with tools
thought to have been invented by the Egyptians to work the soil, inspired by a
statue belonging to Bernardetto d’Ottaviano de’ Medici. Events such as these have
been critiqued for the “promiscuity” of their imagery or their “naivety,” in that they
raided emblem books and mythologies to assemble a jumble of allusions.79 Yet
this exuberant pillaging of very disparate material constituted one of the essential
pleasures of masquerading, the search for new guises that would challenge the
skills of makers and surprise onlookers.
As with football, it was necessary to be wealthy to play a lead role in such
elaborate masques and therefore it is not surprising that Matteo Botti was an
avid participant. In Chapter 4, we noted Settimanni’s admiring description of
the joust he organized with Don Pietro de’ Medici and Lorenzo Salviati, followed
by masques representing Dawn, Day, and various Gods.80 Even allowing for
the hyperbole typical of such accounts, it is significant that such an ephemeral
occasion, reportedly “ruined by rain,” was considered worthy of such huge
financial investment. The 1621 inventory of Botti’s possessions includes several
masquerade items. One costume was made of a yellow figured silk woven with
gold threads and a turquoise and brown silk, all of it lined with green taffeta.
It had half-length and full-length sleeves of gold, pink and green silk, striped
with gold and silver. It was decorated all over with large, flat, gold buttons with
false pearls, narrow gold braid embellished with little silver lamé leaves, and

gold and turquoise silk bows.81 Another outfit was made of smooth black silk
woven with three sorts of gold thread, with silk sleeves in three different colors,
woven with gold threads and covered with little glass beads.82 It was accompanied
by a green stamped velvet saddle cover for a masque, with a pink and gold silk
fringe, complete with a serpent’s tail of green silk with a small figured pile also
decorated with glass beads. The glass beads would have shone as they caught the
light, helping to transform the horse into some form of mythical beast. Carolyn
Springer provides examples of similar “animal hybrids” in parade armor, such
as the Milanese shaffron in the shape of a dragon’s head, made for Henri II of
France.83 A sketch of a magnificently caparisoned horse from about 1620,
sometimes associated with Giulio Parigi, Bernardo Buontalenti’s heir as court
designer, conveys the striking nature of such costumes [Fig. 7.6].
These imaginative disguises satisfied the Florentine appetite for the bizarre,
representative of a particular type of court taste, epitomized by the unexpected
and intricate engravings of court artist Jacques Callot. John Florio’s translation of
bizzarro as “phantasticall, humorous, toyish, fangled, selfe conceited” highlights
an important distinction between bizarre things and people. The latter could be
considered irascible and inconstant, as in Lodovico Dolce’s view that a male outfit
made up of more than two different colors, “signifies a very bizarre mind, full
of different appetites.”84 Conversely, bizarre objects were esoteric and unusual,
Figure 7.6 Anonymous, Parade Horse, 1619?, pen and brown ink and brown wash
over graphite, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Delia E. Holden Fund 1963.241. © The
Cleveland Museum of Art.
Festive dress 143

hard to make and acquire, and therefore particularly desirable. Rather like the
closely related concept of the grotesque, the bizarre did not yet hold the negative
connotations it accrued in later centuries.85 The term bizarre was used to refer
to costumes for Carnival or masques, conveying a sense of refinement and
sophistication rather than chaos or subversion. This is hinted at in Giorgio Vasari’s
description of an album of Carnival costumes by Francesco Salviati as a “very
beautiful book of bizarre clothes and different styles of headwear for men and
horses, for masquerades.”86 We can also find a growing number of examples of the
bizarre in fashionable dress. Varchi’s Storia Fiorentina describes Charles V wearing
a “saio (tunic) of gold tabby and a velvet cloak of a very extravagant and bizarre
colour, all spotted with purple and red, lined with gold tabby” for his arrival in
Genoa in 1529.87 In 1612, Prince Francesco di Ferdinando I’s secretary ordered
a sword and dagger for the Grand Duke instructing it be made “with fantasy, in
some bizarre fashion, of silver, gold or iron, or any other material by some valiant
craftsman, without sparing any costs.”88 The pursuit of the bizarre was to influence
fashionable taste for centuries. Susan Miller has traced the trajectory from its first
stirrings in the sixteenth century through to the later development of what are now
known as bizarre silks.89 It was still a sought-after quality in Florentine dress in the
eighteenth century, when the 1723 Board of Trade reported that consumers “look
for bizarre and lively colours and for novelty.”90 This trait of masquerade costume
is a reminder that fashionable dress and disguises should be viewed in conjunction
and that if the bizarre exerted an attraction in fashionable clothing it could be
pursued without limits in masquerade.
For male courtiers, accustomed to their appearances being constantly
analyzed and interpreted according to the often confining framework of court
etiquette, masquerade costumes offered new forms of expression. This is hinted
at in Castiglione’s advice, which also suggests that Carnival was a time to test
preconceptions: “Masquerading carries with it a certain freedom and license,
which among other things enables one to choose the role in which he feels most
able.”91 The same impulses guided other forms of court culture, characterizing
for example the spirit of the precursor to the Florentine Academy, the Accademia
degli Umidi, many of whose members were prominent in Carnival activities.92 The
transformative nature of the masque lay also in the fact that it was, essentially,
another layer of performance within the everyday performance of the courtier.
Guido Guerzoni has proposed that the “act” customarily performed by the
courtier was cancelled out by masking, leading to a “reweaving and redefinition”
of the usual hierarchies through games.93 This is a mechanism alluded to in
Girolamo Bargagli’s Il Dialogo de’ giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare
(1572), which explains that “as in a masquerade, even if you recognise the Prince
behind his mask, you still pretend not to recognise him, just as when a noblemen
is exposed, almost covered by the mask of the game, in that instant you do not
recognise him as a nobleman.”94

Carnival disguises gave courtiers leeway to act and move in ways usually
denied to them. Castiglione recommends that courtiers should only perform the
moresca dance in public when wearing a Carnival mask because of its exaggerated
movements.95 The dance lacked the kind of grace and continence that was an
essential component of courtly dance.96 More akin to the kinds of uncontrolled
merry-making and self-expression that typified the depiction of peasant figures
in works by artists such as the Breughels, in normal circumstances it was thought
to be inappropriate for members of the nobility.97 Furthermore, as it was often
performed alone rather than in pairs the individual male dancer placed himself
in the uncustomary position of being the sole focus of the gaze of onlookers.98
Concealed by a disguise, therefore, courtiers could engage in experiences that
contravened accepted decorum. In turn this offered new sensations, as underlined
in the poem “On Masks” (Sopra le Maschere) by Florentine Matteo Franzesi. Various
kinds of disguise are mentioned, such as Turks, Moors, barbers, ironmongers, or
one with a “peasant’s withered moustache,” so ugly it would “scare a mirror.” To
explain the attraction of such costumes, Franzesi cites a Florentine expression,
“Magnolino’s pleasure” (il piacere di Magnolino), which refers to a kind of contrary
enjoyment derived from something that would normally cause displeasure.99
Franzesi elaborates on the idea that disguises can bring new emotions in the way
they overturn everyday values and experiences:
In other words a new pleasure

A pastime that is even more than divine
This is a release for the mind
This is the real transformation
And the true model for every fantasy.100
Festive dress, whether for football or masquerade, provided a form of release, a

chance to wear clothing that exceeded the usual parameters defining court dress,
allowing noblemen to play at being soldiers or heroes from classical mythology.
Their success was predicated on an awareness and complicity between the
participating courtiers and a mastery of the ways social behavior and expectations
could be controlled by appearances. Rather than being an inversion of fashionable
dress, however, such costumes and liveries only reveal their full meaning when
situated within a broader culture of appearances. One of their primary functions
was to express a magnified version of attributes central to the courtier’s identity,
including military aggression, strength, and competition. Their playfulness can be
linked with many other forms of social interaction at court, which prized similar
forms of wit and ingenuity, while their emphasis on artifice and technical skill
mirrored values that were strongly embedded in the fashions of the time.
Festive dress 145

Conclusion
This study has examined clothing’s potential to reflect manhood within a male-
dominated, early modern court. It is therefore hardly surprising that the majority
of sources cited privilege the experiences of men looking at other men, and at
themselves. We are offered a rare insight into how women might “see through” the
performance of male dress by poet Lucrezia Marinella, who lamented:
The impossibility of finding a man who does not swagger and play the daredevil.
If there is such a one people call him effeminate, which is why we always see
men dressed up like soldiers with weapons at their belts, bearded and menacing,
and walking in a way that they think will frighten everyone. Often they wear
gloves of mail and contrive for their weapons to clink under their clothing so
people realize they are armed and ready for combat and feel intimidated by
them. What are all these things but artifice and tinsel?1
Marinella pinpoints one of the fundamental tensions in contemporary male dress,

what could be called the distinction between “hard” and “soft looks,” borrowing a
term used to describe the male fashion consumer of a much later era.2 Frequently
recurring stereotypes in the construction and enactment of masculinity, these
were embodied with particular clarity in fashionable dress of this time. The
growing potential of fashion to destabilize was balanced by attempts to create a
hypermasculinity in clothing, wherein the male form was padded with buttress-
like apparel, and virility was emphasized with devices such as codpieces and
breeches that revealed muscular legs. Male appearances during the reigns of the
first Grand Dukes marked a parenthesis between the lithe, resplendent garments,
and elongated silhouettes of the fifteenth century and the more flowing, looser
fashions of the later seventeenth. The artificial aggression described by Marinella
can be seen as a means of counteracting the fear of clothing opening up a potential
descent into an effete, redundant aristocracy. Yet male dress was simultaneously,
emphatically, a projection of civility and grace. Michelangelo Buonarroti the
Younger’s account of the palio, held after Maria de’ Medici’s proxy wedding in
1600, clearly conveys the nobility and power of the sartorial ostentation of the
collective elite, describing male participants congregating: “Just like very many and
highly noble jewels, sprinkled and sown widely among the people, they seemed to
blossom with beautiful colours.”3
Dress visually expressed aspects of the gendered codes guiding men’s lives
at the Florentine court.4 Noblemen’s clothing followed a sophisticated logic
dependent upon numerous factors, such as age, status, situation, activity, and
geographical location. However, as befitted the multifaceted nature of the
courtier described by Castiglione, male sartorial ideals were often fugitive and
contradictory. Consequently a courtier had to swap guises, reminiscent of Wayne
A. Rebhorn’s representation of the courtier shifting “from role to role with the
lightning speed of a quick-change artist.”5 Courtiers experienced in Carnival
disguises were no strangers to the transformative aspects of clothing, while the
overlap between performers and spectators in many of the public arenas at court,
even for everyday dress, required constant recalibration to avoid slipping into
deviance or excess. Dress became a mechanism for “balancing out” behavior and
smoothing over peculiarities. While it was usually cited as a mark of dishonesty
or trickery in female clothing, the crafting of appearances was often condoned
among male courtiers.
Reinstating the consumer at the heart of this picture enables us to assess
the cultural significance of long-lost garments and analyze the extent to which
individual experiences adhered to or deviated from official sartorial codes.
Reconstructing the minutiae of clothing purchases over time and reassembling
the varied components of courtiers’ wardrobes reveals a degree of autonomy even
within the “behavioural and cultural disciplining” associated with the European
aristocratic elites of this period.6 Sources such as account books, which relay the
active processes and social interactions involved in commissioning garments, can
temper the emphasis on anxiety and dissimulation conveyed by literary texts on
courtly appearances. Florentine men’s enthusiasm for fashionable clothing emerges
alongside the more considered calculations that underpinned their ways of wearing
it. It is clear how far personal necessities shaped clothing choices, with noblemen
seeking to control their public image in markedly different ways. Although it has
been argued that the heightened focus on dress at this time reflected an underlying
lack of real masculine power, fashion nevertheless constituted one of the most
effective tools available to carve out a role within court society.
Conclusion 147
148
Notes
Introduction
1 Benedetto Varchi, Storia Fiorentina (Florence: Pietro Martello, 1721), Book 15, 589.
2 See Amedeo Quondam, Tutti i colori del nero: Moda e cultura nell’Italia del
Cinquecento (Vicenza: Angelo Colla, 2007), 73–78, 122–32.
3 Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self and Society in the Italian Renaissance
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 21.
4 On the use of the term “masculinity” for the early modern period see, for example,
Alexandra Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in
England, circa 1500-1700,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 288–89,
and Milligan and Tylus, “Introduction,” 28–29.
5 Franco Angiolini and Paolo Malanima, “Problemi della mobiltà sociale a Firenze tra la
metà del Cinquecento e i primi decenni del Seicento,” Società e Storia, no. 4 (1979), 19.
6 Quoted in Marcello Fantoni, La Corte del Granduca: forma e simboli del potere mediceo
fra Cinque e Seicento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1994), 37–39.
7 For an overview of the Florentine textile industries, see Richard Goldthwaite,
The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2009), 265–340.
8 Patricia Allerston, “Consuming Problems: Worldly Goods in Renaissance Venice,”
in The Material Renaissance, eds Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007), 11–46.
9 Niccolò Martelli, Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere (Lanciano: R. Carrabba
Editore, 1916), 91.
10 Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo: Or, the Rules of Polite Behaviour, ed. and trans.
M. F. Rusnak (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 34.
11 Translation from Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret Rosenthal, The Clothing of the
Renaissance World: Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti Antichi et Moderni (London and New York:
Thames & Hudson, 2008), 255.
12 Relevant recent literature on this subject includes Valeria Finucci, The Manly
Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 3–16, and Kirsten Gibson, “Music, Melancholy and
Masculinity,” in Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, eds Ian Biddle and Kirsten
Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 43–50. For an analysis of the malleability of gender
and its creation through “prosthetic” devices, such as beards, dress, and accessories in
England, see Will Fisher, Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–35.
13 Cathy McClive, “Masculinity on Trial: Penises, Hermaphrodites and the Uncertain
Male Body in Early Modern France,” History Workshop Journal 68, no. 1 (2009): 45–68.
14 Finucci, The Manly Masquerade, 5.
15 Quoted in Eugenia Paulicelli, “From the Sacred to the Secular: The Gendered Geography
of Veils in Italian Cinquecento Fashion,” in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance
Accessories, ed. Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 51.
16 Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier: The Singleton Translation, ed. Daniel
Javitch (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), Book 1, Ch. 19, 27.
17 Carolyn Springer, Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2010), 15.
18 Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. Plinio Carli, 2 vols. (Florence: Sansoni,
1927), 2:126.
19 Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of
Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–2.
20 Fredrika Jacobs, “Sexual Variations: Playing with (Dis)similitude,” in A Cultural
History of Sexuality in the Renaissance, ed. Bette Talvacchia (London: Bloomsbury,
2012), 81.
21 Quoted in Finucci, The Manly Masquerade, 173–74.
22 Corazzini, Giuseppe Odoardo, ed., Diario fiorentino di Agostino Lapini dal 252 al 1596
(Florence: Sansoni, 1900), 96.
23 Ilaria Taddei, “Perizia, adolescenza and giovinezza: Images and Conceptions of Youth
in Florentine Society During the Renaissance,” in The Premodern Teenager: Youth in
Society 1150-1650, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and
Reformation Studies, 2002), 15.
24 Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption Masculinities and Social Space in Late-Twentieth
Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1996), 10.
25 Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, c. 1560-1640
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 2.
26 The extensive literature on early modern England includes Tim Hitchcock and
Michèle Cohen, eds, English Masculinities, 1660–1800 (Harlow: Longman, 1999);
Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage
(London: Longman, 1999); Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern
England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Will Fisher, Materializing Gender
in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006). On other European countries, see Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to
Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus, eds, The Poetics of
Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and
Renaissance Studies, 2010).
27 Caroline P. Murphy, “Masculinity, Manliness and Mediocrity: The case of Paolo
Giordano Orsini (1541-1585),” in Masculinities, Childhood, Violence: Attending to
150 Notes
Early Modern Women and Men, eds Amy Leonard and Karen L. Nelson (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2011), 347.
28 Tim Edwards, Cultures of Masculinity (London: Routledge, 2006), 111.
29 Edwards, Cultures of Masculinity, 2. See Eugenia Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early
Modern Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014); Valeria Finucci, The Prince’s Body: Vincenzo
Gonzaga and Renaissance Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015);
Douglas Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men,
their Professions, and their Beards (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2015). Relevant studies focusing on male clothing of the Italian Renaissance include
Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes and Fine
Clothing (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Timothy
McCall, “Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North
Italy’s Quattrocento Courts,” I Tatti Studies 16, nos. 1–2 (2013): 445–90; Roberta
Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580: lo stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici (Florence:
M. Pagliai, 2011) and Quondam, Tutti i colori del nero.
30 Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth-Century
Spain,” Renaissance Quarterly 61, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 463–94.
31 Joan Kelly, Women, History, and Theory: the Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press), 42–47.
32 David Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity, 1550-1850 (Berkeley: CA:
University of California Press, 1993b), 233.
33 See, for example, Milligan and Tylus, The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy
and Spain, 2010.
34 Lehfeldt, “Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth-Century Spain,”
463–94.
35 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Book IV, Ch. 10, 213.
36 See Gerry Milligan, “Masculinity and Machiavelli: How a Prince should avoid
Effeminacy, Perform Manliness, and be Wary of the Author,” in Seeking Real Truths:
Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, eds Patricia Vilches and Gerald Seaman
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 160 fn. 30.
37 Quoted in Kate Van Orden, Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 104.
38 Lorenzo Giacomini, Della nobiltà delle lettere e delle armi ragionamenti, ed. Tebalducci
Malespini (Florence: Magheri, 1821), 14.
39 For an introduction to Renaissance virtù, see Jerrod E. Seigel, “Virtue in and since
the Renaissance,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener, vol. IV
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), 476–86.
40 Thomas V. Cohen and Elizabeth S. Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome:
Trials before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 27.
41 There was a comparable range of male vices and virtues in England, see Alexandra
Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in England,
circa 1500-1700,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 292.
42 Van Veen, “Princes and Patriotism,” 69.
43 John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200-1575 (Malden, MA and Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 458.
Notes 151
44 Caroline P. Murphy, Murder of a Medici Princess (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008), 220.
45 John K. Brackett, “The Florentine Criminal Underworld,” in Society and the Individual
in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002), 303–04.
46 The connection between heterosexual promiscuity and effeminacy versus continence
and masculinity has been explored through the sexual reputations of Alessandro
and Cosimo I de’ Medici, see Nicholas Scott Baker, “Power and Passion in Sixteenth-
Century Florence: The Sexual and Political Reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo
I de’ Medici,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 3 (September 2010): 432–57.
This draws on the equation of tyranny, representing disorder and a lack of self-control,
with effeminacy as outlined in Rebecca Bushnell, “Tyranny and Effeminacy in Early
Modern England,” in Reconsidering the Renaissance, ed. Mario di Cesare (Binghamton,
NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992), 339–54. There was a greater
tolerance of excess if it had been achieved with ease, increasing the need for the
successful courtier to perfect the art of sprezzatura.
47 McCall, “Brilliant Bodies,” 468–73.
48 See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 116 and Elizabeth Sutton, Early Modern Dutch
Prints of Africa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 99–101.
49 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: the History of Manners (New York: Urizen Books,
1978), 53–163. Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy, 12–13.
50 On the elbow, see Joaneath Spicer, “The Renaissance Elbow,” in A Cultural History of
Gesture, eds Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991),
84–128.
51 Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome, 27.
52 María M. Carrión, “Men with Style. Sprezzatura, Costume, and Movement for Men in
the Spanish Comedia,” in The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain,
eds Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance
Studies, 2010): 364–65. Paulicelli underlines that sprezzatura “is a men’s, and
apparently, a men’s-only term,” Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy, 53.
53 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988), 520.
54 Susan Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing and Identity during the Hundred
Years War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 4.
55 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 162–63.
56 Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen?,” 293.
57 Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Renaissance Impostors and Proofs of Identity (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 163.
58 Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men, 151.
59 Herbert Sussman, Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early
Victorian Literature and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 8–9.
60 See the introduction to Milligan and Tylus, The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern
Italy and Spain, 18.
152 Notes
Chapter 1
1 Stefania Ricci, “Tra storia e leggenda: cronaca di vita medicea,” in Moda alla Corte dei
Medici: gli abiti restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia, ed. Roberta Orsi Landini
(Florence: Ente Cassa di Risparmio, 1993), 18.
2 Domenico di Guido Mellini, Ricordo intorno ai costumi, azioni, e governo del
Serenissimo Gran Duca Cosimo I (Florence: Magheri, 1820), 13.
3 Roberta Orsi Landini, “L’amore del lusso e la necessità della modestia: Eleonora fra
sete e oro,” in Moda alla corte dei Medici: Gli abiti restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don
Garzia, ed. Roberta Orsi Landini (Firenze: Ente Cassa di Risparmio, 1993), 35–45.
4 Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law
(London: Macmillan Press, 1996), 29, 33, 36 and Catherine Kovesi, Sumptuary Law in
Italy, 1200-1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1–8.
5 Kovesi, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 33–34.
6 Della Casa, Galateo, trans. Rusnak, 26–27.
7 Lorenzo Cantini, Legislazione toscana raccolta ed illustrata dal Dottor Lorenzo Cantini,
vol. IV (Florence: Stampa Albizziniana da Santa Maria in Campo, 1800-1806), 402–03.
8 The letter is transcribed in Carlo Carnesecchi, Cosimo I e la legge suntuaria del 1562
(Florence: Stabilimento Pellas, 1902), 37–39. The archival reference is now ASF, MDP
615, Ins. 19.
9 Ibid. Over fifteen years later, Cosimo di Donato Tornabuoni purchased a string of
fifty-five pearls for his wife, Maria di Pandolfo della Stufa, for 471 scudi, ASF, Carte
Galletti 36, 6v.
10 See Julius Kirshner, “Li emergenti bisogni matrimoniali in Renaissance Florence,” in
Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell (Oakland, CA:
University of California Press, 2002), 79–109 on the negative financial and social
consequences of the imperative for large dowries, trousseaux, and marital gifts.
11 See also Giulia Calvi, “Abito, genere, cittadinanza nella Toscana moderna,” Quaderni
Storici 110 (2002): 480.
12 In 1567 the dowry of Giovanbattista Capponi’s first wife, Camilla Salviati, was
2000 scudi, see Archivio Capponi, File III, n. 4, Libro A, 57v. The wealthier Giovanni
Riccardi left his two daughters, Nannina and Contessina, dowries of 5000 scudi
each when he died in 1568, see Paolo Malanima, I Riccardi di Firenze (Florence:
Olschki, 1977), 48. The 1562 sumptuary legislation put a cap of 300 scudi on the
trousseau, stating that it could represent up to a tenth of the whole dowry, see Cantini,
Legislazione toscana, vol. IV, 405.
13 Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, 577.
14 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vol. VII, 35.
15 Marcello Fantoni, “Le corti e i ‘modi’ del vestire,” in Storia d’Italia: La Moda, eds Carlo
Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 752.
16 Kovesi, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 86–91 mainly offers examples from the fifteenth
century, and a few from the fourteenth.
17 Anna Bellavitis, “Family and Society,” in A Companion to Venetian History 1400-1797,
ed. Eric R. Dursteler (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 321 and 325–27.
Notes 153
18 See Diane Owen Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,”
in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 97–99, Kovesi, Sumptuary Law in
Italy, 1200-1500, 85 and Ludovica Sebregondi, “The Sumptuary Laws,” in Money and
Beauty, eds Ludovica Sebregondi and Tim Parks (Florence: Giunti, 2011), 191.
19 Enrico Coppi, ed., Cronaca Fiorentina, 1537-1555 (Florence: Olschki, 2000), 64.
20 Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, 105.
21 Alessandra Contini, “La nobiltà toscana e il poter mediceo tra Cinque e Seicento,”
Archivio Storico Italiano IV (1997): 750.
22 Claudio Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia, Secoli XIV-XVIII (Rome: Laterza, 1995), 129–30.
23 Fantoni, “Le corti e i ‘modi’ del vestire,” 753.
24 Alberto Liva, “Note sulla legislazione suntuaria nell’Italia centro-settentrionale,” in
Le Trame della Moda, eds Anna Giulia Cavagna and Grazietta Butazzi (Rome: Bulzoni,
1995), 45.
25 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. I, 318–21.
26 Ibid., vol. IV, 409.
27 Carnesecchi, Cosimo I e la legge suntuaria del 1562, 28. See also Calvi, “Abito, genere,
cittadinanza,” 489.
28 See, for example, Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and
Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006),
91 and 99.
29 ASF, MDP 615, Ins. 19. See also Calvi, “Abito, genere, cittadinanza,” 484.
30 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. VII, 40.
31 ASF, Pratica Segreta 11, n. 31.
32 ASF, MDP 497, III, 715. Quoted in Carnesecchi, Cosimo I e la legge suntuaria del
1562, 24.
33 Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi et moderni (Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1590), 131v.
Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” 90.
34 Fantoni, La Corte del Granduca, 44 and Samuel Berner, “Florentine Society in the
Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Studies in the Renaissance XVIII
(1971): 224.
35 Anna Maria Testaverde, “La decorazione festiva e l’itinerario di ‘rifondazione’
della città negli ingressi trionfali a Firenze tra XV e XVI secolo”, Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 32 (1988a): 323–52 proposes that the imperial
entrance of Charles V in 1536 provided a new model for these occasions.
36 Matteo Casini, I gesti del Principe: La festa politica a Firenze e Venezia in età
rinascimentale (Venice: Marsilio, 1996), 215–16.
37 See James Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
38 Michel de Montaigne, Journal de voyage, ed. Fausta Garavini (Paris: Gallimard,
1983), 310.
39 Henri Zerner, “Looking for the Unknowable: The Visual Experience of Renaissance
Festivals,” in Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe,
154 Notes
eds J. R. Mulryne, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, and Margaret Shewring, vol. I (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2004), 84.
40 For a discussion on the contradictory nature of such accounts, see Giorgia Clarke,
“The Emperor’s Hat: City, Space, and Identity in Contemporary Accounts of Charles
V’s Entry into Bologna in 1529,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16 (2013):
197–220. On the limitations of festival books, see also Katherine Poole, “Christian
Crusade as Spectacle: The Cavalieri di Santo Stefano and the Audiences for the Medici
Weddings of 1589 and 1608,” in Push Me Pull You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical,
and Spatial Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, eds Sarah Blick and
Laura D. Gelfand, vol. II (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 387–92.
41 Liveries were linked to sixteenth-century notions of harmony, which governed
many areas of court life, including theories of dance, Margriet Hoogvliet, “Princely
Culture and Catherine de Médicis,” in Princes and Princely Culture, eds M. Gosman,
A. MacDonald, and A. Vanderjagt, vol. I (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 124.
42 Sally J. Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 277–82.
43 Descrizione delle Feste Fatte (Florence: Giunti,1608), 59.
44 Bruna Niccoli, “Official Dress and Courtly Fashion in Genoese Entries,” in Europa
Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, eds J. R. Mulryne,
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, and Margaret Shewring, vol. I. (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004), 264.
45 La descrizione dell’apparato fatto in Firenze, nel Battesimo del Serenissimo Principe di
Toscana (Florence: Giunti 1577), 26.
46 Jones and Rosenthal, The Clothing of the Renaissance World, 129.
47 Quoted in Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589, 70.
48 ASF, MDP 5962, 216.
49 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Book II, Ch. 27, 89.
50 ASF, Libri di Commercio 747, 27r.
51 Descrizione dell feste fatte nelle reali nozze, 76.
52 Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 138.
53 Stallybrass and Jones, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, 5.
54 Peter Stallybrass, “Worn Worlds: Clothes and Identity on the Renaissance Stage,” in
Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, eds Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan,
and Peter Stallybrass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 290–92.
55 Sicillo Araldo, Trattato dei colori nelle arme, nelle livree, e nelle divise (Venice:
Domenico Nicolino, 1565), 31–32.
56 ASF, MDP 5962, 521r & v. Perhaps intended as a variation on the French royal livery
of blue, red, and white, the colors are written in French to avoid mistakes.
57 Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589, 71–72, lists some of the livery provisions for the
1589 wedding, including clothing for visiting aristocrats such as the Duke of Mantua,
as well as pages and musicians.
58 Giulio Cesare Croce, Livrea Nobilissima del Croce nell’occasione delle nozze del Gran
Principe di Toscana (Bologna: Bartolomeo Cocchi, 1608), unnumbered folios.
Notes 155
59 Fantoni, “Le corti e i ‘modi’ del vestire,” 739.
60 Li sontuosissimi apparecchi trionfi e feste fatti nelle nozze della Gran Duchessa di
Fiorenza (Florence and Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1589), unnumbered folios.
61 Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Woodbridge: Boydell,
1984), 146.
62 The event appears in various accounts; see Angelo Solerti, ed., Musica, ballo e
drammatica alla Corte Medicea dal 1600 al 1637. Notizie tratte da un diario tenuto da
Cesare Tinghi (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1905), 26.
63 ASF, Riccardi 80, 37v & 38v. According to one report there were pitture di valenti
huomini on display during the event, see Michelangelo Buonarroti, Descrizione delle
feste fatte (Florence: Marescotti, 1600), 10r.
64 ASF, Riccardi 80, 17r.
65 Quoted in Piero Marchi, “Le feste per le nozze di Maria de’ Medici,” in Rubens e
Firenze, ed. Mina Gregori (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1983), 96.
66 Strong, Art and Power, 147.
67 Paola Bassani Pacht, “Marie de Médicis et ses artistes,” in Le ‘Siècle’ de Marie de
Médicis, eds F. Graziani and F. Solinas (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), 90.
Various details suggest particular attention was paid to aspects of the clothing in this
painting, such as the Medici jeweled headpiece and the Florentine straw hat.
68 Caterina Caneva, “Vita di Corte a Firenze nell’Anno 1600,” in Rubens e Firenze, ed.
Mina Gregori (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1983), 80.
69 Quoted in Marchi, “Le feste per le nozze di Maria de’ Medici,” 98 fn. 12, from ASF,
Miscellanea Medicea 18, Ins. 4: “..tutti ugualmente, et in medesimo modo in tutto e per
tutto, e li piace che l’habito sia bianco . . . giubbone, e calzoni alla simiglianza di raso
bianco, et con guarnitioni di trine d’oro, calzetti di seta bianca, scarpe bianche di corame,
spade, e pugnale indorato, con fodero, e cintura bianca, berretta di velluto nero tagliato
con penna bianca, e tornata di cordoni a sattisfatione, ferraiolo nero d’ermisino vellutato
a opera con fodera, o, mostra paonazza purché l’effetto sia, che non vi sia distintione
alcuna dall’uno all’altro, ma tutti apparischino della medesima qualità.” Buonarroti’s
account describes the forty noblemen dressed in this livery, see Buonarroti,
Descrizione delle felicissime nozze, 2v.
70 ASF, Riccardi 76, 88v & 116r.
71 Malanima, I Riccardi di Firenze, 82. Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a
Halberdier (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997), 15.
72 Buonarroti, Descrizione delle feste fatte, 10v.
Chapter 2
1 Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200-1575, 487. Giorgio Vasari’s Ragionamenti
describes Cosimo’s government growing out of the republic, just one example of how
“even as he [Cosimo] buried the republic, he allowed its memory to be preserved.”
2 See Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the
two Cosimos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) and Henk Th. van Veen,
“Republicanism in the Visual Propaganda of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institute 55 (1992): 200–09.
156 Notes
3 Van Veen, “Princes and Patriotism: The Self-Representation of Florentine Patricians in the
Late Renaissance,” in Princes and Princely Culture 1450-1650 (vol. II) eds Martin Gosman,
Alasdair MacDonald, and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 65.
4 Roger J. Crum, “Lessons from the Past: The Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in
Sixteenth-Century Florence,” in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, ed.
Konrad Eisenbichler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 49.
5 Alison Brown, “De-masking Renaissance Republicanism,” in Renaissance Civic
Humanism, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 197.
6 James Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis’,” in The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. John
Jeffries Martin (Routledge: London, 2003), 80.
7 Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200-1575, 490.
8 This chapter develops themes discussed in Elizabeth Currie, “Clothing and a
Florentine Style, 1550-1620,” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 1 (February 2009): 40–46.
9 Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia: l’Inferno, ed. Giuseppe Vandelli (Milan: Hoepli,
1961), 124, Canto XVI, 7–9.
10 For the significance of the lucco in fifteenth-century Florentine culture, see Juliana Hill
Cotton, “Il lucco del Poliziano ed altre allusioni al lucco fiorentino,” Italica, XLIII, no.
4 (1966): 353–68.
11 Ibid., “Il lucco del Poliziano,” 359.
12 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori scritte da Giorgio
Vasari pittore aretino, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1878), vol. III, 374.
13 Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Venetians, 1495-1525 (The Pasold Research Fund,
Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988), 9–11. See also Bronwen Wilson, “Foggie diverse di
vestire de’ Turchi: Turkish Costume Illustration and Cultural Translation,” The Journal
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 1 (2007): 104.
14 Translation from Jones and Rosenthal, The Clothing of the Renaissance World, 158.
15 Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 103–4 and 214–17.
16 Jane Bridgeman, Aspects of Dress and Ceremony in Quattrocento Florence
(Ph.D. Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1986), 101, 108, and 130.
17 Varchi, Storia Fiorentina, Book 9, 265.
18 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years
1340-1365 (Woodbridge Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980), 6.
19 Ibid.
20 Melissa Rothfus, “The Gens Togata: Changing Styles and Changing Identities,”
American Journal of Philology 131, no. 3 (Fall, 2010): 425.
21 Caroline Vout, “The Myth of the Toga: Understanding the History of Roman Dress,”
Greece and Rome (Second Series), 43, no. 02 (October 1996): 219.
22 Robert Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians,
1530-1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 46. Bridgeman, Aspects
of Dress and Ceremony, 48.
23 Alexandra Croom, Roman Clothing and Fashion (Stroud: Tempus, 2000), 40.
24 See Berner, “Florentine Society in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,”
203–46, Claudio Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia, and Contini, “La nobiltà toscana e il
poter mediceo tra Cinque e Seicento,” 735–54.
Notes 157
25 Arnaldo Segarizzi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, iii, pt. I, 17–18 (Bari:
Scrittori d’Italia, 1912–), 347.
26 Jean-H Mariéjol, Catherine de Médicis (Paris: Librairie Jules Tallandier, 1979), 96.
27 Paolo Mini, Difesa della città di Firenze, et de’ fiorentini contro le calunnie et
maldicentie de’ maligni (Lyon: Filippo Tinghi, 1577), 19.
28 Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy, 32–33.
29 See Van Veen, “Princes and Patriotism,” 68 and 76.
30 Vincenzo Borghini, Storia della nobiltà fiorentina (Pisa: Marlin, 1974), 31 [336] no. 21.
31 Borghini, Storia della nobiltà fiorentina, 97.
32 Mini, Difesa della città di Firenze, 62.
33 Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy, 25, 46, 48, 73–77, 86.
34 Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Jan Van der Straet detto Giovanni Stradano Flandrus
Pictor et Inventor (Milan: Jandi Sapi, 1997), 86–92.
35 Mellini, Ricordo intorno ai costumi, 2–3 and 73.
36 Ibid., 74.
37 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. I, 320.
38 Ibid., vol. IV, 406.
39 Quoted in Suzanne Butters, “‘Magnificenza, non senza eccesso’: riflessioni sul
mecenatismo del Cardinale Ferdinando de’ Medici,” in Villa Medici: il sogno di un
cardinale, ed. Michel Hochmann (Rome: De Luca, 1999), 39, fn. 187–88. According
to the Ferrarese ambassador, Hercole Cortile, he was particularly ill-suited to
such garb.
40 Giuliano De’ Ricci, Cronaca 1532-1606, ed. Giuliana Sapori (Milan and Naples:
Riccardo Ricciardi, 1972), 522 (vol. II, 50v, 1588).
41 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. XII, 117–18.
42 Ibid., 118–19.
43 ASF, Manoscritti 130, 64v, 72r & 183r.
44 Bastiano Arditi, Diario delle cose successe nella città di Firenze et in altre parti della
cristianità, 1574-1579, ed. Roberto Cantagalli (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi
sul Rinascimento, 1970), 83–84. See also the account in Corazzini, Diario fiorentino di
Agostino Lapini, 272–74.
45 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. XII, 395.
46 Giovanni Villani frowned on the growing popularity of shorter tunics, which he attributed
to French influences. See Odile Blanc, “From Battlefield to Court; The Invention of
Fashion in the Fourteenth Century,” in Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress, eds
Désirée Koslin and Jane Snyder (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 159, 161.
47 Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580, 32.
48 See Paul William Richelson, Studies in the Personal Imagery of Cosimo I De’ Medici,
Duke of Florence (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978), 20. See also
Mellini, Ricordo intorno ai costumi, 10.
49 Scipione Ammirato, Gli opuscoli di Scipione Ammirato, vol. III (Florence: G. Marescotti,
1583), 217.
158 Notes
50 Quoted in Ann Rosalind Jones, “Dress and Gender,” in A Cultural History of Dress
and Fashion 1450-1650, ed. Elizabeth Currie (London: Bloomsbury Academic,
2017), 102.
51 This episode is discussed in Jonathan Davies, Culture and Power: Tuscany and its
Universities, 1537-1609 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 133–34.
52 The poem is discussed further in J. L. Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 60–62.
53 Anne Reynolds, “Galileo Galilei and the Satirical Poem ‘Contro il Portar la Toga’: The
Literary Foundations of Science,” Nuncius 17, no. 1 (2002): 60–61.
54 Margaret F. Rosenthal, “Clothing, Fashion, Dress, and Costume in Venice (c. 1450-
1650),” in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797, ed. Eric R. Dursteler (Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2013), 922.
55 Eugenia Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From sprezzatura to satire
56 Aldo Manuzio, Vita di Cosimo de’ Medici primo Granduca di Toscana (Bologna,
1586), 165. Quoted in Henk Th. van Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-
Representation in Florentine Art and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 235, fn. 10.
57 Francesco Berni, ed. Opere Burlesche, vol. II (Usecht: J. Broedelet, 1726), 318–21.
58 Rublack, Dressing Up, 140–44 on ambivalent attitudes toward the fashionable
Landsknechts in Germany. See also Angus Patterson, Fashion and Armour in
Renaissance Europe: Proud Looks and Brave Attire (London: V&A Publications, 2009),
36–38. There are long antecedents for this and Odile Blanc provides examples from
the fourteenth century, From Battlefield to Court, 163.
59 See, for example, scenes illustrated in the financial registers, the Tavolette di Biccherna,
held in the Archivio di Stato, Siena.
60 John R. Hale, “The soldier in Germanic graphic art of the Renaissance,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History xvii (1986): 85–114. Peter Paret, Imagined Battles: Reflections
of War in European Art (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 35–37.
61 Giuseppe Molini, ed. Vita di Cellini (Florence: Tipografia all’insegna di Dante, 1832), 37.
62 A comparable situation occurred in Rome, where inventories from around 1650 show
that the toga “fell out of fashion” with professionals, including lawyers and magistrates,
Renata Ago, Gusto for Things: A History of Objects in Seventeenth-Century Rome
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 108.
63 Illustrated in Currie “Clothing and a Florentine Style,” 45.
64 ASF, Riccardi 55, 44v, Riccardi 56, 65v & 84v.
65 Recorded in the 1612 inventory, these included three of wool and velvet and two of
purple and red sarcenet and damask, see ASF, Riccardi 258, 71r.
66 See Malanima, I Riccardi di Firenze, on the social and economic rise of the Riccardi.
67 See ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 398 and 391, Ins. 5, 21r. The lucchi were sold on by a
Jewish second-hand dealer named Adam.
68 The Venetian ambassador, Marino Cavalli, commented on the demand for these cheaper
silks in 1546, quoted in Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 96. See also Jordan Goodman,
Notes 159
“Tuscan Commercial Relations with Europe, 1550-1620,” in Firenze e la Toscana dei
Medici nell’Europa del cinquecento. Strumenti e veicoli della cultura: relazioni politiche ed
economiche, vol. I, ed. Giancarlo Carfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1983), 327–41.
69 Angiolini and Malanima, “Problemi della mobiltà sociale a Firenze,” 26.
70 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. XIII, 23.
71 Ibid., 114.
72 Archivio Capponi, file III, no. 4, account with an unspecified mercer from 1585 to 1588.
73 Compendio di Tutte le Gride et Ordini Pubblicati nella Città & Stato di Milano (Milan:
Pandolfo & Marco Tullio Malatesti Stampatori, 1609), 35–36.
74 On the practice of withholding livery to punish the misdemeanors of members of the
Medici household, see Fantoni, La Corte del Granduca, 82–83 and 89 and “Le corti e i
‘modi’ del vestire,” 740.
Chapter 3
1 See, for example, Victoria de Grazia, “Introduction,” in The Sex of Things: Gender and
Consumption in Historical Perspective, eds Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 1–10.
2 See Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 252–58.
3 Pietro Belmonte, Institutione della sposa del cavalier Pietro Belmonte ariminese (Rome:
Gigliotti, 1587), 21.
4 Elizabeth Currie, “Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the Clothing Trade in
Florence from the mid-Sixteenth to Early Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies 39, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 483–509.
5 For female involvement in the “government” of household goods, their administration
and accumulation, see Daniela Frigo, Il padre di famiglia (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985), in
particular 160–68.
6 Murphy, “Masculinity, Manliness and Mediocrity,” 350.
7 Quoted in Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2005), 222.
8 Ibid., 218. Apprentices and household servants could pick up goods and payment
and pedlars and artisans would sometimes come to the home, so it was not always
necessary to leave the home to commission clothing.
9 Quoted in Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal from the
Court of Duke Cosimo I, 112.
10 Leonardo Fioravanti, Dello specchio di scientia universale (Venice: Sessa, 1572),
Ch. XLIIII, 109.
11 Filippo de Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern
Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 95.
12 See ASF, Decima Granducale 3784.
13 Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 122–23.
160 Notes
14 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1985), 219–41.
15 Samuel Cohn, Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 13.
16 Caroline P. Murphy, “Lavinia Fontana and Female Life Cycle Experience,” in Picturing
Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, eds Geraldine Johnson and Sara Matthews
Grieco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 115.
17 ASF, Carte Galletti 36, 8r & 8v.
18 Thomas Roscoe, ed. and trans., The Spanish Novelists (London: Frederick Warne,
1832), 341–42.
19 ASM, Notarile 14356.
20 Ago, Gusto for Things, 103.
22 See, for example, Thomas Dekker’s, The Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606), quoted in
Roze Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions
of a National Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 113–14.
23 Gerry Milligan, “The Politics of Effeminacy in Il Cortegiano,” Italica 83, nos. 3–4
(2006): 353–57.
24 Liane Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Cambridge, MA:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997), 188.
25 William Harrison, The Description of England (Washington: Folger Shakespeare
Library, 1994), 145–46.
26 Silk trimmings and haberdashery had been produced in England from the fourteenth
century and during the second-half of the sixteenth century immigrant silk workers
helped to establish the production of mixed-silk fabrics but high-quality silks were still
only woven on the continent, see Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, 25–26.
See also Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England, especially Ch. 4,
103–28.
27 Maria Hayward, “Luxury or Magnificence? Dress at the Court of Henry VIII,”
Costume 30 (1996): 40.
28 T. S. Willan, The Inland Trade: Studies in English Internal Trade in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 65.
29 Quoted in Norah Waugh, The Cut of Men’s Clothes, 1600-1900 (New York: Theatre Arts
Books), 43.
30 Ronald M. Berger, The Most Necessary Luxuries: The Mercer’s Company of Coventry
1550-1680 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 51.
31 Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2008), 4–7.
32 ASF, MDP 1171, ins. 1, fol. 7.
33 Sperone Speroni, Lettere Familiari, eds Maria Rosa Loi and Mario Pozzi, vol. I
(Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1993), 258–59 and n. 17.
34 Quoted in Jane Bridgeman, “Dates, Dress and Dosso: Some Problems of Chronology,”
in Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Europe, eds Luisa Ciammitti,
Steven F. Ostrow, and Salvatore Settis (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998), 198 (fn).
Notes 161
35 ASF, MDP 4624, ins. 57, Paris, June 3, 1610.
36 Gasparo Bragaccia, L’Ambasciatore (Padua: Francesco Bolzetta 1627), 626.
37 Goodman, “Tuscan commercial relations with Europe,” 331.
38 Ibid.
39 Niccoli, “Official Dress and Courtly Fashion in Genoese Entries,” 267.
40 Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589, 72, discusses the financial involvement of
patrician families in Medici celebrations.
41 Rosalia Bonito Fanelli, “I drappi d’oro: economia e moda a Firenze nel Cinquecento,”
in Le Arti del Principato Mediceo, ed. Candace Adelson (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1980), 412
lists some of the main Florentine silk merchants of this period, including the Berardi,
Capponi, da Verrazzano, da Filicaia, Machiavelli, Niccolini, Rucellai, Salviati, Strozzi
and Torrigiani families.
42 Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589, 66.
43 For a more detailed summary of these investments, see Malanima, I Riccardi di
Firenze, 73–76 and Rita Mazzei, Pisa Medicea: L’economia cittadina da Ferdinando a
Cosimo III (Firenze: Olschki, 1991), 74, 76, and 77.
44 ASF, Riccardi 81, 43r.
45 Orsi Landini, “L’amore del lusso e la necessità della modestia,” 40. See also Elizabeth
Currie, “Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the Clothing Trade in
Florence,” 487.
47 See Currie, “Clothing and a Florentine Style,” 50.
48 Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 100–1, 315.
49 ASF, Riccardi 27, 55, 56, 76, 77, and 224.
50 Claire Walsh, “The Social Relations of Shopping in Early Modern England,” in Buyers
and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds
Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, Jon Stobart, and Ilja Van Damme (Turnhout: Brepols,
2006), 338.
51 ASF, Carte Galletti 36, fol. 20r.
52 ASF, Magalotti 11, loose letters.
53 ASF, MDP 5925, 194. Transcription on the “Medici Archive Project” documentary
sources website, http://bia.medici.org/DocSources/Home, Doc ID 3784 (accessed
June 7, 2015).
54 ASF, Pratica Segreta 13, number 20.
55 Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, 171–76.
56 See, for example, the case against a Florentine, Zuane Fabrini, accused in 1562 of
selling foreign silks in Venice, ASV, Arte della Seta, b. 578, Processi, unnumbered
pages. I am grateful to Luca Molà for sharing this document with me.
57 Patrick Chorley, “The Volume of Cloth Production in Florence 1500-1650,” in Wool:
Products and Markets (13th to 20th century), eds Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Gérard
Gayot (Padua: CLEUP, 2004), 563.
58 Currie, “Clothing and a Florentine Style,” 50–51.
59 Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, 280.
162 Notes
60 Quoted in John H. Munro, “The anti-red shift—to the ‘Dark Side’: Colour Changes
in Luxury Flemish Woollens, 1300-1550,” in Medieval Clothing and Textiles, eds
Robin Netherton and Gale Owen-Crocker, vol. 3 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
2007), 93.
61 Carlo Cipolla, “The Decline of Italy: The Case of a Fully Matured Economy,”
The Economic History Review, new series 5, no. 2 (1952): 183, fn. 4.
62 Roberta Orsi Landini and Stefania Ricci, “Il guardaroba di un sovrano: Cosimo II de’
Medici, metodologia di studio,” in Le Trame della Moda, eds Anna Giulia Cavagna and
Grazietta Butazzi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1995), 195.
63 Ibid., 197, Table 7.
64 Ibid., 185.
65 Valeria Pinchera, Lusso e Decoro: vita quotidiana e spese dei Salviati di Firenze nel Sei
e Settecento (Quaderni dell’archivio Salviati, III, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa,
1999), 72.
66 For further details, see Currie, “Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the
Clothing Trade in Florence,” 485–86.
67 Rublack, Dressing Up, 108.
68 Quoted in Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth, 103–04.
69 Waugh, The Cut of Men’s Clothes, 38.
70 Fioravanti, Dello specchio di scientia universale, Ch. IX, 28.
71 See Bonito Fanellli, “I drappi d’oro, 411. The silk guild regulations are listed in detail in
Cantini,” Legislazione toscana IV–XII.
72 ASCM, Materie 869/39.
73 ASF, Università dei Linaioli 3, 96r.
74 ASF, Università dei Linaioli 3, 97r.
75 ASF, Libri di Commercio 747, 23r.
76 ASF, Venturi Ginori Lisci 342, 91r/v.
77 Arditi, Diario delle cose successe nella città di Firenze, 73.
78 Waugh, The Cut of Men’s Clothes, 35.
79 See Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze, 1540-1580, 84 and 90. ASF 1170, ins. 7, fol. 364, and
ins. 7, fol. 374. Transcriptions on the “Medici Archive Project” documentary sources
website, http://bia.medici.org/DocSources/Home, Doc IDs 6068 and 6073 (accessed
June 7, 2015).
80 Janet Arnold, “Cut and Construction,” in Moda alla corte dei Medici: gli abiti restaurati
di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia, eds Roberta Orsi Landini et al. (Florence: Centro di,
1993), 58.
81 Ibid., Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women,
Circa 1560—1620 (London: Macmillan, 1985), 86.
82 Francesco Berni, ed., Opere Burlesche, vol. I (Usecht: J. Broedelet, 1726), 296–305.
83 Ibid., vol. II, 262–64, quoted in Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580, 84–85.
84 François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, ed. and trans M. A. Screech (London:
Penguin, 2006), 43.
Notes 163
85 ASF 1170 ins. 7, fols. 364 and 376. See the “Medici Archive Project” documentary
sources website, Doc IDs 6068 and 6075 (accessed June 7, 2015).
86 Currie, “Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the Clothing Trade in Florence,”
490. Renata Ago refers to the same practice in Rome, Economia barocca: mercato e
istituzioni nella Roma del Seicento (Rome: Donzelli, 1998), 59.
87 Paolo Getrevi, ed., Il Libro del sarto della Fondazione Querini Stampalia di Venezia
(Modena: Edizioni Panini, 1987).
88 ASV, Provveditori di Comun, b. 14, reg. 21, numerazione II, c. 1r-v. My thanks to Luca
Molà for drawing this to my attention.
89 Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580, 176.
91 ASF, Capponi 176, Orsini XVII, Amministrazione, loose receipts. Saslow, The Medici
Wedding of 1589, 71 names Marinaro as one of Ferdinando’s tailors.
92 Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 69–70.
93 Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, and Ilja Van Damme, “Retail Circuits and Practices in
Medieval and Early Modern Europe: An Introduction,” in Buyers and Sellers: Retail
Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds Bruno Blondé, Peter
Stabel, Jon Stobart, and Ilja Van Damme (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 19.
94 ASF, Riccardi 99, 167v.
95 ASF, Magalotti 12, loose documents, April 4, 1617.
96 ASF, Capponi 176, folder marked debito containing a four-page list of Bertoldo
Orsini’s debts.
Chapter 4
1 Isidore Del Lungo and Guglielmo Volpi, eds, La cronaca domestica di messer Donato
Velluti (Florence: Sansoni, 1914), 331.
2 Amedeo Pellegrini, Relazioni inedite di ambasciatori lucchesi alle corti di Firenze,
Genova, Milano, Modena, Parma, Torino (Lucca: Alberto Marchi, 1901), 123.
3 De’ Ricci, Cronaca 1532-1606, 46.
4 Quoted in Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism
(New York: Colombia University Press, 1983), 178.
5 Corazzini, Diario fiorentino, 180.
6 Leon Battista Alberti, I libri della famiglia, eds R. Romano and A. Tenenti (Turin:
G. Einaudi, 1969), Book III, 247.
7 Della Casa, Galateo, trans. Rusnak, 3–4.
8 Lucio Paolo Rosello, Il ritratto del vero governo del prencipe dall’esempio vivo del gran
Cosimo de’ Medici (Venice, 1552), 25–26.
9 Sharon Strocchia, “Gender and the Rites of Honour in Italian Renaissance Cities,”
in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, eds Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis
(London: Routledge, 1998), 59.
10 Hayward, “Luxury or Magnificence?,” 137–46.
164 Notes
11 Faramerz Dabhoiwala, “The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in
late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England,” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 6 (December, 1996): 201.
12 Ben Jackson, “Having Fun,” London Review of Books 37, no. 7 (April 9, 2015): 12.
14 Ian Frederick Moulton, “Castiglione: Love, Power and Masculinity,” in The Poetics of
Early Modern Masculinity, eds Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus (Toronto: Centre for
Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2010), 119–20.
15 David Gentilcore, “The Ethnography of Everyday Life,” in Early Modern Italy
1550-1796, ed. John A. Marino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 201.
16 Renata Ago, “Il linguaggio del corpo,” in Storia d’Italia: La Moda, eds Carlo Marco
Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 124.
17 Clare Haru Crowston, Credit, Fashion Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).
18 Strocchia, “Gender and the Rites of Honour,” 45.
19 ASF, Capponi 173, ins. 141.
20 Ibid.
21 ASF, Capponi 176, Orsini XVII, Amministrazione Patrimoniale, folder marked debito e
confessione di debito.
22 Ibid.
23 On convent trousseaux, see Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 141–44, 237–39.
24 See Giuseppe Clusina Fabriziani, I conti Aldobrandeschi e Orsini: sunti storici
(Pitigliano, 1897), 44–54, Giuseppe Bruscalupi, Monografia storica della contea di
Pitigliano (Florence, 1906), 39 and ASF, Capponi 173, ins. 169.
25 ASF, Miscellanea Medicea 14, ins. 13, c. 1r, Copia di Patente del Conte Alessandro
Orsino. Fantoni cites this appointment and the title of Marquis bestowed upon
Giovanantonio in 1608 as part of the Medici’s strategy to win over powerful figures in
outlying fiefs, see Fantoni, La corte del granduca, 108 and 127.
26 ASF, MDP 6020, fol. 166.
27 ASF, Capponi 176, Orsini XVII Amministrazione Patrimoniale, unnumbered.
28 For attitudes toward used and second-hand clothing and other goods, see Patricia
Allerston, “L’abito usato,” in Storia d’Italia: La Moda, eds Carlo Marco Belfanti and
Fabio Giusberti (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 561–81.
29 ASF, Capponi 176, Orsini XVII, folder marked debito e confessione di debito.
30 See ASF, Diari di Etichetta della Guardaroba 4, 153v and also Riguccio Galluzzi,
Istoriato del Granducato di Toscana sotto il governo della Casa Medici, vol. III
(Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi, 1781), 255.
31 De’ Ricci, Cronaca 1532-1606, 152–53, fn. 1.
32 Giovanna Lazzi, “Il ‘bruno’ a corte,” in La Morte e la Gloria: apparati funebri medicei
per Filippo II di Spagna e Margherita d’Austria, ed. Monica Bietti (Florence: Sillabe,
1999), 80–83.
33 ASF, Capponi 176, Orsini XVII, document titled “i debiti dell’Illustrissimo Bertoldo
Orsino in Roma” in the folder marked debito e confessione di debito, also a bill
Notes 165
headed vestiti diversi per la morte della buona memoria di sua eccellenza in the folder
Amministrazione, conti, note di opere.
34 Valeria Pinchera, “Vestire la vita, vestire la morte: abiti per matrimoni e funerali,
XIV-XVII secolo,” in Storia d’Italia: La Moda, eds Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio
Giusberti (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 257.
35 ASF, Riccardi 21, 87v.
36 J. G. Peristiany, “Introduction,” in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean
Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), 11.
37 Françoise Point-Waquet, “Les Botti: fortunes et culture d’une famille florentine
(1550-1621),” Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome 90, no. 2 (1978): 690.
38 Ibid., 692–96.
39 Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, vol. IV, 355–56.
40 See Point-Waquet, “Les Botti: fortunes et culture d’une famille florentine,” 689–712.
41 Roberto Cantagallli, “Matteo Botti,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 13 (1971).
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/matteo-botti_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ (accessed
June 7, 2015).
42 ASF, Libri di Commercio 747, 16r, 20r, 27r.
43 Ibid., 15v, January 27, 1590.
44 Although in this instance it served Botti well, it was a dubious connection given
Don Pietro’s character, see Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus,
280–81.
45 De’ Ricci, Cronaca 1532-1606, 460–61. The event ended in disaster: a violent dispute
over the allocation of prizes caused a stand full of spectators to collapse, killing several
people underneath them.
46 ASF, Manoscritti 130, 155r.
47 Roberto Cantagalli, “Matteo Botti,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. XIII
(Rome: Treccani, 1971), 447.
48 ASF, MDP 4622, fol. 318v, Paris, April 14, 1611.
49 Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (Leeds: Maney Publishing,
2007), 228–29.
50 Catherine Fletcher, Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador
(London: Bodley Head, 2012), 28.
51 ASF MDP 5079, ins. 2, fol. 87. Transcription on the “Medici Archive Project”
documentary sources website, Doc ID 13344 (accessed June 7, 2015).
52 ASF, MDP 4624a, fol. 157.
53 Eugenio Alberi ed., Le relazioni degli ambasciadori veneti al Senato, series II vol. 5
(Florence, 1858), 446.
54 Fletcher, Our Man in Rome, 29. See also Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry
VIII, 229.
55 Bragaccia, L’Ambasciatore, 420.
56 ASF, MDP 4624a, fol. 164.
57 Ibid., fol. 314.
58 Orsi Landini and Ricci, Il guardaroba di un sovrano, 176–90.
166 Notes
59 The portrait was painted in 1631 by a fifteen-year-old Carlo Dolci, commissioned by
Don Lorenzo de’ Medici, see Il Seicento Fiorentino: arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a
Cosimo III. Pittura (Florence: Cantini, 1986), 434–35.
60 Point-Waquet, “Les Botti: fortunes et culture d’une famille florentine,” 703–12
discusses Botti’s library in some detail.
61 Ibid., 697.
62 Ottavio Rinuccini, Lodi de’ giocatori di pallone (Florence: Zanobi Pignoni, 1619)
unnumbered.
63 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 398, 175r/v: un paio di scarpe di corame nero tutte straforate
sotto teletta bianca piana e ricamate tutte piene di canutiglio d’oro e d’argento e lama
d’oro battuto con un riguardo attorno di catanelle di canutiglio d’oro e orlate di nastrino
d’oro filato con rosoni grandi di nastro di seta bianca guarnita con gigliettone alto di oro
et argento filato.
64 Ibid., 61r, 25r, 170v.
65 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 398, 42v.
66 Ibid., 42v, unnumbered second page.
67 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 391, ins. 5, names some of the individuals who purchased
items from Botti’s estate when it was auctioned off by the Magistrato dei Pupilli, a
rigattiere, a valigiaio, two materassai and two Jews, one of whom, Abramo Tedesco,
bought a very large quantity of clothing worth 1135 ducats.
Chapter 5
1 A notable exception to this is the red doublet in portraits of Francesco de’ Medici as
a young man. See, for example, Francesco di Cosimo de’ Medici, attributed to Agnolo
Bronzino, c. 1565, Florence, Stibbert Museum, illustrated in Orsi Landini, Moda a
Firenze 1540-1580, 60.
2 John Harvey, Men in Black (London: Reaktion Books, 1995); Michel Pastoureau,
Black: The History of a Color (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 2008).
3 Cecily Booth, Cosimo I, Duke of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1921), 179. ASF, 1176b, ins. 3, fol. 464 records an order of yellow velvet ducal liveries
in 1543 (transcription on the “Medici Archive Project” documentary sources website,
Doc ID 3275 (accessed June 7, 2015). On the association between prostitutes and Jews
and the color yellow, see Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Guardaroba Medievale: vesti e
società dal XIII al XVI Secolo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1999), 295.
4 White could denote purity, worn at weddings and funerals and young children were
often dressed and buried in white. Its religious connotations are evident in its use for
the robes of the Order of Saint Stephen and, in 1619, the Medici Wardrobe recorded
the gift of an entirely white outfit, including hat, belt and garters, presented to “a Jew
who is to be baptized,” see ASF Guardaroba Medicea 391, ins. 4.
5 Andrea Feeser, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Beth Fowkes Tobin, eds., The Materiality of
Color: The Production, Circulation, and Application of Dyes and Pigments, 1400-1800
Notes 167
6 Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France, 1750-1820 (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 7.
7 See Bruce Edelstein, “Bronzino in the Service of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo I de’
Medici: Conjugal Patronage and the Painter-Courtier,” in Beyond Isabella: Secular
Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, eds Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins
(Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), 226–27.
8 Carol Plazzotta, “Pontormo: Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap,” in Renaissance
Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, eds Lorne Campbell, Miguel Falomir, Jennifer Fletcher,
and Luke Syson (London: National Gallery, distributed by Yale University Press,
2008), 224–27.
9 Philippe Costamagna, “Deux portraits de Luigi Capponi et de son fils Niccolò peints
par Giovanni Stradano,” Paragone 479–81 (1990): 101–04 attributes the portrait to
Stradano, but Alessandra Baroni suggests that it is stylistically dissimilar to other
works by the Flemish artist, see Alessandra Baroni, “Portrait of Luigi Capponi,” in
Stradanus, 1523-1605. Court Artist of the Medici, eds Alessandra Baroni and Manfred
Sellink (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 193.
10 The 1561 workshop census records him renting two workshops, see ASF, Decima
Granducale 3784, 157r, 163r. Further documentation about his involvement in the
textile trade can be found in the Archive of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence.
11 ASF, Capponi 68, no. 97.
12 ASF, Capponi 146, 81r.
13 Niccolò purchased a trumpet and paid for lute lessons. His reading matter included
volumes on cookery, agriculture, medicine, and works by Plutarch, Guicciardini,
Malaspina and Baccio Baldini as well as books on duels by Muzio, Fausto, Pigna,
and Possovino. Pietro Bembo’s Rime and a book of satire were accompanied by a
concordance between the Old and New Testament and penitential psalms translated
into Tuscan, see ASF, Capponi 146, 1r, 48v, 57v, 58r, 58v, 81r.
14 ASF, Capponi 146, 41r, 43v and 147, 46r.
15 NICH.VS CAPP.US/. ALOISSI F/.OBIIT.AN.S.D./M.D.L. XXVIIII./AETATIS.SUE./
AN.XXXIII.
16 ASF, Capponi 147, 61v, 95v.
17 The head and shoulders version in the Uffizi (Inv. 1890 n. 763) has been catalogued in
the past as depicting the poet Torquato Tasso.
18 ASF, Capponi 147, 1r/v.
19 Paolo Malanima, Il lusso dei contadini: consumi e industrie nelle campagne toscane del
Sei e Settecento (Bologna: il Mulino, 1990), 29 notes buricchi in inventories belonging
to Tuscan peasants. See also Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580, 99–102.
20 Mellini, Ricordo intorno ai costumi, 1820, 10. Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze
1540-1580, 99.
21 Calvi, “Abito, genere, cittadinanza,” 491. On the military origins of leather garments
see also the Museo Stibbert exhibition catalogue L’abito per il corpo, il corpo per l’abito:
Islam e Occidente a confronto (Florence: Artificio Edizioni, 1998), 72–78.
22 John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 296.
See the forthcoming work on “doublets of defence” from the Tudor Tailor team
(www.tudortailor.com).
168 Notes
23 The authorship of the portrait is debated. Costamagna, “Deux portraits de Luigi
Capponi et de son fils Niccolò,” 103–04, Baroni, Jan Van der Straet detto Giovanni
Stradano, 148 (cat. 40) and ibid., “Portrait of Luigi Capponi,” 192–93, consider it
to be the work of Giovanni Stradano. It has also been attributed to Jacopino del
Conte, see Antonio Vannugli, “Conte, Jacopino (Jacopo) del,” in Saur Allgemeines
Künstlerlexikon, 20, München-Leipzig 1998, 602.
24 Murphy, “Lavinia Fontana and Female Life Cycle Experience,” 131.
25 Giovanni Giorgio Trissino, Epistola del Trissino de la vita, che deve tenere una donna
vedova (Venice, 1524), unnumbered folios.
26 See the complaint from Pietro Aretino, himself a cobbler’s son and frequently
portrayed, “It is the disgrace of our age that it tolerates the painted portraits even
of tailors and butchers,” quoted in Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early
Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 165.
27 Quoted in Gen Doy, Drapery: Classicism and Barbarism in Visual Culture (London:
I. B. Tauris, 2002), 30.
28 See Joshua Reynolds on the subject, quoted in Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth
Century Europe 1715-1789 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 163.
29 Jonas Gavel, Color: A study of its Position in the Art Theory of the Quattro- & Cinquecento
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell international, 1979), 138. See also Raffaello Borghini,
Il Riposo, vol. I (Milan: Dalla Societa Tipografica de Classici Italiani, 1807), 275–76.
30 Alessandro Piccolomini, La Raffaella (Milan: Longanesi, 1969), 38–39.
31 Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo dei colori (Venice: Sessa, 1565), 25.
32 Ibid., 36.
33 Monica Cerri, “Sarti toscani nel seicento: attività e clientela,” in Le Trame della Moda,
eds Anna Giulia Cavagna and Grazietta Butazzi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1995), 421–35.
34 Munro, “The anti-red shift—to the ‘Dark Side’,” 91.
35 Girolamo Gargiolli, ed., L’Arte della seta in Firenze. Trattato del secolo XV (Florence:
Barbèra: 1868), 78–79. See also Franco Brunello, The Art of Dyeing in the History of
Mankind (Vicenza: N: Pozza, 1973), 163–64.
36 Quoted in Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 250.
37 A mix of ingredients, including roots and tree bark, or the rarer and more costly oak
gall, usually imported from eastern Europe, were used in conjunction with a mordant
rich in iron oxide, see Paolo Bensi, “La tintura delle stoffe in nero nei centri di
produzione italiani nel XVI secolo,” in Giovanni Battista Moroni. Il Cavaliere in Nero,
eds Annalisa Zanni and Andrea Di Lorenzo (Milan: Skira, 2005), 57–60. There were
already concerns in the fifteenth century that ferro-tannic compounds would damage
textiles, see Brunello, The Art of Dyeing, 190.
38 Giovanni Ventura Rosetti, Plico dell’arte del tingere tutte le sorte di colori (Venice:
Alessandro Vecchi, 1611), 54–56.
39 J. L. Colomer, “Black and the Royal Image,” in Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early
Modern Europe, eds J. L. Colomer and A. Descalzo, vol. I (London: Paul Holberton,
2012), 91–93. See also Munro, “The anti-red shift—to the ‘Dark Side’,” 92–93.
40 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. XIV, 291. Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color,
90–92.
Notes 169
41 Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980), in particular 42–43 and 50.
42 Patricia Phillippy, Painting Women. Cosmetics, Canvases and Early Modern Culture
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 1–22.
43 Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi et moderni (1590), 140.
44 Alison McNeil Kettering, “Gentlemen in Satin: Masculine Ideals in Later Seventeenth-
Century Dutch Portraiture,” Art Journal 56, no. 2; “How Men Look: On the Masculine
Ideal and the Body Beautiful” (Summer, 1997): 41–47. See also Ribeiro, Fashion and
Fiction, 94–119.
45 See Rosalia Bonito Fanelli, “The Textiles of Italian Renaissance Dress as seen in
Portraiture: A Semiological Interpretation (I),” Bulletin de Liaison du Cieta 74 (1997):
83–95; Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation,
Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 98 and Patricia Simons,
“Alert and Erect: Masculinity in some Italian Renaissance Portraits of Fathers and
Sons,” in Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, ed.
Richard Trexler (Binghamton and New York: Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts
and Studies, 1994), 173–75.
46 Charles McCorquodale, Agnolo Bronzino (London: Chaucer Press, 2005), 60.
47 I. B. Supino, ed., I ricordi di Alessandro Allori (Florence: Alfani & Venturi Editori,
1908), 24–26.
48 Christopher Breward, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life
1860-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 24–53.
49 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. IV, 405–06.
50 Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, vol. V, 575.
51 Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo dei colori, 24.
52 Robert Dallington, A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany, 1596 (London:
Edward Blount, 1605), 63.
53 Harrison, The Description of England, 148.
54 Pastoureau, Black: the History of a Color, 96.
55 Jean Courtois, Le Blason de Couleurs (Paris: Pierre Sergent, 1535), 35.
56 Jones and Rosenthal, The Clothing of the Renaissance World, 168.
57 This has been discussed by many scholars, including Michel Pastoureau, who notes
however that John the Fearless had himself already demonstrated a preference for
black, Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color, 102.
58 Quondam, Tutti i colori del nero, 119–37, McCall, Brilliant Bodies, 481–88. Rosita Levi
Pizetsky, Storia del Costume in Italia, vol. III (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1966),
220 notes that Matthäus Schwarz referred to “Venetian black.”
59 Scipione Ammirato, Orazione fatta nella morte di Don Franceso de’ Medici (Florence:
Giunti, 1587), 9 and 13.
60 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Book I, Ch. 26, 32–33.
61 Daniel Javitch, “Il Cortegiano and the Constraints of Despotism,” in Castiglione: The
Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, eds Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 25–26.
170 Notes
62 Jennifer Richards, “ ‘A Wanton Trade of Living’? Rhetoric, Effeminacy, and the Early
Modern Courtier,” Criticism 42, no. 2 (Spring, 2000): 185–206.
63 Stefano Guazzo, La civil conversazione, ed. Amedeo Quondam, vol. I (Ferrara: Franco
Cosimo Panini, 1993), 140.
64 Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book
of the Courtier (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), 14.
65 Franco Angiolini, “Luigi Capponi,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. XIX
(Rome: Treccani, 1976), 65–67.
66 De’ Ricci, Cronaca 1532-1606, 152.
67 Caterina Caneva, I Volti del Potere: La ritrattistica di corte nella Firenze Grand ducale
(Florence: Giunti, 2002), 13.
Chapter 6
1 The Magalotti’s presence in Florence can be traced back to 1020. Guelph supporters,
they contributed actively to the government of the republic and three of their
members were elected gonfalonieri, see Giulia Camerani Marri, “L’archivio Magalotti,”
Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato XXX (1970): 257–59.
2 The family records contain a payment to Santi di Tito, manager of the workshop where
his son Tiberio worked, although it is thought on stylistic grounds to be the work of
the latter, see Simona Lecchini Giovannoni, “Tiberio Titi,” in Il Seicento Fiorentino:
arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III. Biografie (Florence: Cantini, 1986), 176.
3 Now in a private collection, the portrait appears in the exhibition catalogue, Il Seicento
Fiorentino: arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III. Pittura, 139–40. It is also
illustrated in Daniela Degl’Innocenti, “Le produzioni seriche fiorentine: tipologie e
iconografia,” in La Grande Storia dell’Artigianato: il Seicento e Settecento, ed. Riccardo
Spinelli, vol. V (Florence: Giunti, 2002), 192.
4 See Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti, ed. I Principi Bambini (Florence: Centro di, 1985),
26–27.
5 Turkish influences on Italian dress during this period are explored in the exhibition
catalogue L’abito per il corpo, il corpo per l’abito, 1998.
6 Grazietta Butazzi, “Indicazioni sull’abbigliamento infantile dalle liste della Guardaroba
Grand ducale tra la fine del secolo XVI e il secolo XVII.” in I Principi Bambini, ed.
Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti (Florence: Centro di, 1985), 26–27.
7 Quoted in Aschengreen Piacenti, I Principi Bambini, 40.
8 Anne Buck, Clothes and the Child: A Handbook of Children’s Dress from 1500-1900
(Carlton: Ruth Bean, 1996), 149–53.
9 See Degl’Innocenti, “Le produzioni seriche fiorentine: tipologie e iconografia,” 192–93.
10 ASF, Venturi Ginori Lisci 341, 179r.
11 ASF, Magalotti 11, purchases recorded in a group of unnumbered receipts dating July
to September 1605.
12 Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations,” 87–88 and Frick, Dressing Renaissance
Florence, 175–76.
Notes 171
13 For details of the predella, see Simona Lecchini Giovannoni, Alessandro Allori (Turin:
U. Allemandi, 1991), cat. no. 55, 240.
14 Costanza’s brother, Antonio, was among the forty “noble and generous Florentine
adolescents” in the papal procession, see Irene Fosi, All’ombra dei Barberini: fedeltà e
servizio nella Roma barocca (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), 37.
15 For details of the Magalotti family, see Luigi Passerini, Famiglie celebri italiane del Conte
Pompeo Litta, vol. XIII, issue 165 (Milan: Luciano Basadonna, 1870), 2, table XII and
ASF, Carte Sebregondi 3181 (Magalotti). See also Fosi, All’ombra dei Barberini, 104.
16 ASF, Venturi Ginori Lisci 341, 238v, 249v.
17 ASF, Magalotti 11, loose receipts. The Roman scudo was approximately equivalent to
the Florentine florin.
18 ASF, Magalotti 165, unnumbered receipt from 1614: un paio di guanti d’ambretta
con le cuciture di fuori di seta iscarnatina con monopole alla francese a scacchi di raso
iscarnatino ricamate d’oro passato con fiori di seta del naturale con pizzillo d’oro intorno
a detti merletti con nastro di seta iscarnatino a due larghezze e pizzillo d’oro intorno a
detto nastro per fare la lattugha intorno a detti guanti levò detto lire 24.
19 ASF, Venturi Ginori Lisci 341, 286r 1607.
20 For the increasingly fashionable nature of silks like velvets and the development of a new
design repertoire, see Roberta Orsi Landini, “Il velluto da abbigliamento. Il rinnovamento
del disegno,” in Velluti e Moda tra XV e XVII secolo, ed. Roberta Orsi Landini (Milan:
Skira, 1999), 57–72. On Venice, see Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, 132.
21 ASF, Magalotti 151, unnumbered receipts.
22 Avril Hart, “Men’s Dress,” in Four Hundred Years of Fashion, ed. Natalie Rothstein
(London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984), 52.
23 French fashions are often described as shorter and more figure-hugging. William
Harrison, for example, mentions “short French breeches,” see Harrison, The
Description of England, 145. Pisetzky, Storia del Costume in Italia, 138 links tighter
hose with the court of Henri III.
24 Flavio Orlando, Storia del costume maschile al tempo di Cosimo III de’ Medici
1670-1723 (Milan: Idea, 1991) discusses the influence of French fashions at the Medici
court in the later seventeenth century.
25 The significance of the use of the word disegno in these tailors’ receipts is discussed in
greater detail in Elizabeth Currie, “Diversity and Design in the Florentine Tailoring
Trade,” in The Material Renaissance (Studies in Design and Material Culture), eds
Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2007), 154–73.
26 ASF, Magalotti 151, unnumbered loose receipts: e a di 4 di dicembre per fattura d’un
paio di calzoni di panno misto di colore dell’aria e una casacha e un ferraiolo di detto
con 2 finiture al ferraiolo e 2 in su calzoni e una alla casacha e una alle maniche e 2 in
su le costure con pistagne guarnite con ucchielliere da fianchi cioe la guarnizione che
venne fatta cioe al ferraiolo che vi è 4 bastoncini di raso gazzera marina per lungo e 4
a occhiolini con vergola d’argento accanto a detti bastoncini e a calzoni detti come al
ferraiolo e alla casacha detti come di sopra soppanato di taffeta e il ferraiolo orlato di
raso e passato di vergola d’argento e a detta casacha con sue appartenenze lire 140 per
disegnatura del vestito misto e ferraiolo lire 14.
27 ASF, Magalotti 11, loose receipts.
172 Notes
28 Georges Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since the
Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), in particular 7–16 and
58–69.
29 ASF, Magalotti 151, loose receipts from 1610 to 1613. For various exceptionally fine
surviving examples of linen underwear, see Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 4: The
Cut and Construction of Linen Shirts, Smocks, Neckwear, Headwear and Accessories
for Men and Women, c.1540–1660, completed by Jenny Tiramani and Santina Levey
(London: Macmillan, 2008), 50–51, 106.
30 ASF, Venturi Ginori Lisci, 341, 316v.
31 Montaigne, Journal de Voyage, 173.
32 Jean Delumeau, Vita economica e sociale di Roma nel Cinquecento (Florence: Sansoni,
1979), 94.
33 Ibid., 95–96.
34 See ASF, Decima Grand ducale 3784. On the Florentine population, see Goldthwaite,
The Economy of Renaissance Florence, 337.
35 Delumeau, Vita economica e sociale, 119.
36 Laurie Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992), 34–36 on the careers of Costanza Magalotti’s three sons.
37 In Florence, for example, Grand ducal sumptuary legislation included separate
categories for boys under twelve and unmarried girls. The former were prohibited
from wearing the most expensive kinds of silk, such as velvet. See, for example,
Cantini, Legislazione toscana, vol. IV, 408.
38 Translated in Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy, 158.
39 Fioravanti, Dello specchio di scientia universale, Ch. IX, 27.
40 See the essays on hermaphrodites and cross-dressing in early modern England,
Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Ambiguity
(New York and London: Routledge, 1991).
41 Kovesi, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 122. I am grateful to Gerry Milligan for further
clarification regarding the details of this episode.
42 See discussions of the Bolognese Nicolosa Sanuti in Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and
Social Relations,” 86–87 and Kovesi, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 124–32.
43 Quoted in Elisa Tosi Brandi, “Cesena,” in La legislazione suntuaria. Secoli XIII-XVI.
Emilia-Romagna, ed. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Rome: Publicazioni degli archivi
di Stato. Fonti, 2002), 345, n. 11.
44 Stanley Chojnacki, “La Posizione della Donna a Venezia nel Cinquecento,” in Tiziano e
Venezia, eds Massimo Gemin and Giannantonio Paladini (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1980),
67–68.
45 For a counterpoint to this, see McCall’s, “Brilliant Bodies,” 445–90, which discusses
how men at the Northern Italian courts derived prestige from clothing in the fifteenth
century.
46 Taddei, “Perizia, adolescenza and giovinezza,” 16–17.
47 Paul Griffiths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England, 1560-1640
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 5–7 outlines similar circumstances for male youths
in England in this period.
Notes 173
48 Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York and London: Academic
Press, 1980), 387–89.
49 Anthony Ellis, Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2009), 77.
50 See, for example, Ludovica Sebregondi, “Clothes and Teenagers: What Young
Men Wore in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” in The Premodern Teenager: Youth in
Society 1150-1650, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and
Reformation Studies, 2002), 27–50 on moral condemnation of tight-fitting and
revealing clothing worn by Florentine adolescents in the fifteenth century.
51 Quoted in Malanima, I Riccardi di Firenze, 47.
52 Ibid., 119.
53 David Halperin, How to do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2000), 93–94.
54 Amanda Bailey, “Monstrous Manner: Style and the Early Modern Theater,” Criticism
43, no. 3 (Summer 2001), 261.
55 This has received less attention in an Italian context, for an example of an analysis of
the phenomenon in early modern English society, see Garrett P. J. Epp, “The Vicious
Guise: Effeminacy, Sodomy and Mankind,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages,
eds Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland Publishing,
1997), 303–20.
56 Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance
Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 106–09.
57 Ibid., Forbidden Friendships, 3–16.
58 On the political ramifications of foreign fashions, see Milligan, “The Politics of
Effeminacy in Il Cortegiano,” Italica, 353–57.
59 David Kuchta, “Semiotics of Masculinity in Renaissance England,” in Sexuality and
Gender in Early Modern Europe: Texts, Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James Turner
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993a), 239.
60 José Cartagena-Calderon, “Of Pretty Fops and Spectacular Sodomites: El lindo don
Diego and the Performance of Effeminacy in Early Modern Spain,” in The Poetics
of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain, eds Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus
(Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010), 326–27.
61 Giovanni Della Casa, Il Galatheo (Florence: Giunti, 1574), 100–01: Niuna tua veste
vuole essere molto molto leggiadra, ne molto molto freggiata, accioche non si dica, che tu
porti le calze di Ganimede, o che tu ti sii messo il farsetto di Cupido.
62 On the influence and meaning of visual representations of Cupid, see Jane Kingsley-
Smith, Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 1–23, 133–42.
63 Mario DiGangi, The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 5.
64 Della Casa, Il Galateo, trans. Rusnak, xxi–ii discusses the possibility of Shakespeare
reading the Galateo. The playwright was twelve when the first English translation was
published.
65 Translated in Bridgeman, “Dates, Dress, and Dosso,” 26–27.
174 Notes
66 Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni, 1999),
237: per quanto riguarda I giovani, serbino la leggiadria e tale eleganza, che non sembri
tuttavia avere nulla di muliebre.
67 Quoted in Bonito Fanelli, “I drappi d’oro,” 415: i giovani parevano diventati femine
mostrando la gola, e il collo con camice lavorate da capo lascivamente.
68 Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi overo ammaestramenti (Milan: Giovanantonio degli
Antoni, 1559), ricordo XIII, fol. 10.
69 Paul Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, and Glass, 1250-1550 (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1999), 91–92.
70 Karen Newman, Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991), 122–23.
71 Translated in Stefano Cracolici, “Flirting with the Chameleon: Alberti on Love,”
Modern Language Notes 121, no. 1 (2006): 102–29, 126.
72 Guazzo, La civil conversazione, 204.
73 See Evelyn Welch, “Art on the Edge: Hair and Hands in Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance
Studies 23, no. 3 (June 2009): 241–42 on the cultural meanings of long hair on men.
74 Translated in Bridgeman, “Dates, Dress and Dosso,” 26–27.
75 See Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy, 181–206.
76 Malanima, I Riccardi di Firenze, 113.
77 Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy, 190–92.
78 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Book I, Ch. 19, 27.
79 Giambattista Della Porta, Della Fisonomia dell’Huomo (Naples: Carlino & Vitale,
1610), 241–42.
80 For Thomas Aquinas’ definition of mollities in opposition to the masculine virtue of
perseverance, see Anthony Ross and P. G. Walsh, eds, St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa
Theologiæ: Courage, vol. 42 (London: Blackfriars, 1966), 220–23.
81 See Bonnie J. Blackburn, “The Lascivious Career of B-Flat,” in Eroticism in Early Modern
Music, eds Bonnie J. Blackburn and Laurie Stras (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015), 19–42.
82 Cited in Bushnell, “Tyranny and Effeminacy in Early Modern England,” 341.
83 Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England, 103–18.
84 Lehfeldt, “Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth-Century Spain,”
463–94.
85 Milligan, “The Politics of Effeminacy in Il Cortegiano,” 356.
86 Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi et moderni (1590), 160–62 This expression was used to
described men aged about twenty, see Taddei, “Perizia, adolescenza and giovinezza,” 18.
87 See Spicer, “The Renaissance Elbow,” 84–128.
88 Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi et moderni (Venice: Sessa, 1598), 125.
89 For a discussion of this typology used on maiolica plates, see Marta Ajmar-Wollheim
and Dora Thornton, “When is a Portrait not a Portrait? Belle Donne on Maiolica and
the Renaissance Praise of Local Beauties,” in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in
the Renaissance, eds Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Museum Press,
1998), 138–53.
Notes 175
90 Bette Talvacchia, “Erotica: The Sexualised Body in Renaissance Art,” in A Cultural
History of Sexuality in the Renaissance, ed. Bette Talvacchia (London: Bloomsbury,
2012a), 180–81.
91 On courtiers and Neoplatonic love, see Moulton, “Castiglione: Love, Power and
Masculinity,” 134–40. They could also be viewed as representing melancholy, see
Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 130.
92 Translated by Laura Croci, “Rinaldo and his Arms in the Gerusalemme Liberata,”
Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18, no. (1987): 30. For
further discussion of the emasculation of Rinaldo, see Marc David Schachter,
“‘Quanto concede la Guerra’: Epic Masculinity and the Education of Desire in Tasso’s
Gerusalemme Liberata,” in The Poetics of Masculinity, eds Gerry Milligan and Jane
Tylus (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010) 213–40.
93 Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen?,” 293.
94 Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity, 27.
95 Kuchta, “Semiotics of Masculinity in Renaissance England,” 237.
Chapter 7
2 Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 7–26.
3 Charles Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2001), 191. See, too, the 1519 masque at Henry VIII’s court
described as “after the manner of Italy,” Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry
VIII, 235.
5 Ian Fenlon, “Maria Magdalena of Austria and the Uses of Danced Spectacle,”
in Seventeenth-century Ballet: A Multi-Art Spectacle, ed. Barbara Grammeniati
(Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2011), 33–34.
6 See, for example, Strong, Art and Power, 126–52 and Saslow, The Medici Wedding
of 1589.
7 Van Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-Representation, 151.
8 Ibid., 149–50.
9 Jennifer Nevile, “Dance in Europe, 1250-1750,” in Dance, Spectacle and the Body
Politick 1250-1750, ed. Jennifer Nevile (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2008), 43–44.
10 Referenced in Finucci, The Prince’s Body: Vincenzo Gonzaga and Renaissance
Medicine, 61.
11 Giulio Ferroni, ed., Poesia Italiana. Il Cinquecento (Milan: Garzanti, 1978), 313.
12 Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval
Scotland (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 212.
176 Notes
13 Martelli, Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere, 61.
14 Giovanni de’ Bardi, Discorso sopra ‘l giuoco del calcio fiorentino (Florence: Giunti,
1580), 11.
15 Quoted in Springer, Armour and Masculinity, 162.
16 Cees de Bondt, Royal Tennis in Renaissance Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 115–29.
17 ASF, Capponi 176.
18 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 143, 1328r.
19 Edward Goldberg, Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto
Blanis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 97–98.
20 Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589, 64–65 and Anna Maria Testaverde, “Gli abiti
per le feste fiorentine del 1589,” Il Costume nell’età del Rinascimento, ed. Dora Liscia
Bemporad (Florence: Edifir, 1988b), 175–87.
21 Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII, 235.
22 Molini, Vita di Cellini, 294.
23 Susan Gaylard, Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Image in Renaissance Italy
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 128–39.
24 Van Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-Representation, 43.
25 Quoted in Semenza, Sports, Politics and Literature in the English Renaissance (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2003), 56.
26 Ibid., 13–14.
27 Richard Lassels, The Voyage of Italy (Paris: V. du Moutier, 1670), 212.
28 Edwards, Cultures of Masculinity, 53.
29 Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 398–99.
30 Quoted in George McClure, Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in
Renaissance Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 70.
31 Semenza, Sport, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance, 11–13.
32 Springer, Armour and Masculinity, 18–19.
33 Quoted in Bredekamp, Calcio Fiorentino, 28.
34 Murphy, Murder of a Medici Princess, 64–65.
35 Pietro Bini, Memorie del calcio fiorentino (Florence, 1688), 91.
36 Martelli, Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere, 56. Descrizione delle Pompe e delle
Feste Fatte nella venuta alla Città di Firenze del Sereniss. Don Vincenzio Gonzaga
(Florence: Sermartelli, 1584), 5r.
37 Bette Talvacchia, “Introduction: The Look and Sound of Sexuality in the Renaissance,”
in A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Renaissance, ed. Bette Talvacchia (London:
Bloomsbury, 2012b), 25.
38 Patterson, Fashion and Armour in Renaissance Europe, 32.
39 L’abito per il corpo e il corpo per l’abito, 72, 74–77.
40 Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy, 104–05. See also Orsi Landini,
Moda a Firenze 1540-1580, 82–83.
41 Patterson, Fashion and Armour in Renaissance Europe, 41–49.
Notes 177
42 Hale, “The soldier in Germanic graphic art of the Renaissance,” 84–114.
43 Paret, Imagined Battles, 27.
44 Keith Thomas, The Ends of Life. Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), 60. Thomas also notes bravery’s dual meaning of
courage and fine clothing.
45 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Book II, Ch. 27, 89: cosi’ divisati (i soldati)
portan seco una certa vivezza ed alacrita’ che invero ben s’accompagna con l’arme.
46 ASF, Manoscritti 128, 1555–74, Vol. III, 450v.
47 Descrizione delle Pompe e delle Feste Fatte nella venuta alla Città di Firenze del Sereniss.
Don Vincenzio Gonzaga, 4v–5r.
48 Tobias Capwell, ed., The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance
Europe 1520-1630 (London: The Wallace Collection, 2013), 72.
49 Fabrizio Caroso, Courtly Dance of the Renaissance, ed. and trans. Julia Sutton
(New York: Dover Publications, 1995), 135.
50 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Book II, Ch. 11, 75 and Ch. 40, 101. Referenced
in Orsi Landini, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580, 66.
51 Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier, 64–75.
52 Bardi, Discorso sopra ‘l giuoco del calcio fiorentino, 11.
53 Giulio Dati, Disfida di Caccia tra i piacevoli e piattelli, ed. Domenico Moreni (Florence,
1824), 30.
54 Francesco Bocchi, Le Bellezze della città di Firenze (Florence, 1591), 308.
55 Bini, Memorie del calcio fiorentino, 89.
56 Quoted in J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, King of England (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1971), 30.
57 Bardi, Discorso sopra ‘l giuoco del calcio fiorentino, 36.
58 Nicole Carew-Reid, Le fêtes Florentines au temps du Lorenzo il Magnifico (Florence:
Olschki, 1995), 6. Translation from Davide Panagia, The Political Life of Sensation
(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009), 82–83.
59 Nicholas Scott Baker, “Medicean Metamorphoses, Carnival in Florence, 1513,”
Renaissance Studies 25, no. 4 (2011): 491–510.
60 Michel Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and
Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. and trans. Nicole Carew-Reid
(Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press: 2008), 111.
61 George W. McClure, The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004), 40–51.
62 Bredekamp, Calcio Fiorentino, 48. European interest in Turkish dress is discussed in
Wilson, “Foggie diverse di vestire de’ Turchi,” 97–139.
63 Martelli, Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere, 59. See also Testaverde, “Gli abiti
per le feste fiorentine del 1589,” 184–85.
64 Poole, “Christian Crusade as Spectacle,” 400–01.
65 Joseph Roach, “Kinship, Intelligence and Memory as Improvisation: Culture and
Performance in New Orleans,” in Performance and Cultural Politics, ed. Elin Diamond
(London: Routledge, 1996), 223.
178 Notes
66 Paul H. D. Kaplan, “Black Turks: Venetian Artists and Perceptions of Ottoman
Ethnicity,” in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450-1750, ed. James G. Harper
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 41–67.
68 Eliav-Feldon, Renaissance Impostors and Proofs of Identity, 180.
69 Bini, Memorie del Calcio Fiorentino, 116. Bredekamp, Calcio Fiorentino, 89.
70 Torquato Tasso, Opere di Torquato Tasso colle controversie sulla Gerusalemme, vol. 9
(Pisa: Capurro, 1824), 104.
71 Jessica Wolfe, Humanism, Machinery and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 6.
72 Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Il Potere e lo spazio: La
scena del principe (Milan: Electa, 1980), 334, catalogue no. 2.36.
73 Coppi, Cronaca Fiorentina, 97.
74 Translated in Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 112.
75 Pisetzky, Storia del costume in Italia, 254–55.
77 Coppi, Cronaca Fiorentina, 97.
78 Domenico di Guido Mellini, Descrizione dell’entrata della Serenissima Regina Giovanna
d’Austria (Florence: Giunti, 1566), 17.
79 Bonner Mitchell, Italian Civic Pageantry in the High Renaissance (Florence: Olschki,
1979), 114–15. Sydney Anglo, “Humanism and the Court Arts,” in The Impact of
Humanism on Western Europe, eds Anthony Goodman and Angus MacKay (London:
Longman, 1990), 84.
80 ASF, Manoscritti 130, 155r.
81 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 398, 142r.
82 Ibid.
83 Armor for a horse’s head, the shaffron was usually designed to provide extra
protection at vulnerable points such as the eyes and ears. Springer, Armour and
Masculinity, 65 (Metropolitan Museum Accession Number 04.03.253). See also
Tobias Capwell, Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour in the Wallace Collection
(London: Wallace Collection, 2011), 104–05.
84 Dolce, Dialogo dei colori, 36.
85 See Lionello Sozzi, “Il crotesque: bruttezza e bizzarria,” in Disarmonia, bruttezza e
bizzarria nel Rinascimento, ed. Luisa Secchi Tarugi (Florence: Franco Cesati Editore,
1998), 9–17.
86 Tiziana Giuliani, “Francesco Salviat e gli Spettacoli di Corte,” in Francesco Salviati e
la Bella Maniera, eds Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Philippe Costamagna, and Michel
Hochmann (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001), 173.
87 Benedetto Varchi, Storia Fiorentina, Book 9, 228.
88 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 3137, fol. 522. Available on the “Medici Archive Project”
documentary sources website (accessed June 7, 2015).
89 Susan Miller, “Disegni bizarres per tessuti di seta, 1680-1710,” in Seta. Potere e
glamour, ed. Roberta Orsi Landini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2006), 83–109.
Notes 179
90 Cipolla, “The Decline of Italy: The Case of a Fully Matured Economy,” 183, fn. 4.
92 Inge Werner, “The Heritage of the Umidi: Performative Poetry in the Early
Accademia Fiorentina,” in The Reach of the Republic of Letters: Literary and Learned
Societies in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds Arjan van Dixhoorn and
Susie Speakman Sutch, vol. II (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 270.
93 Guido Guerzoni, “Playing Great Games: The Giuoco in Sixteenth-Century Italian
Courts,” Italian History and Culture (Florence: Ville Le Balze, 1995), 58–61.
94 Girolamo Bargagli, Il Dialogo de’ giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare
(Siena, 1572), 241. Quoted in Guerzoni, “Playing Great Games,” 58.
96 See, for example, the steps called continenze, Fabrizio Caroso, Courtly Dance of the
Renaissance, 101–02.
97 Sutton, Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa, 100.
98 John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1999), 91.
99 Benedetto Magnoli, known as il Magnolino, was supposed to have gone out in
winter in the rain in a cloak, hood, and clogs, to walk the very muddy road from
Florence to Pisa. When asked why he did it, he replied “per piacere.” The origins of
the anecdote are unclear but it was referred to by Florentine poets in the sixteenth
century, see the related entry in the Vocabolario della Crusca.
100 Francesco Berni, Opere Burlesche, vol. II (Usecht: J. Broedelet, 1726), 127–31.
Volsi dire un piacer non conosciuto,
Un passatempo assai piu’ che divino.
Quest’e’ uno sfogamento di cervello,
Questa e’ la vera trasfigurazione,
E d’ogni fantasia vero modello
Conclusion
1 From The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, quoted
in Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy, 143.
2 Sean Nixon, Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary
Consumption (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996).
3 Buonarroti, Descrizione delle felicissime nozze, 10r.
4 On the importance of uncovering “gendered logics” to explain male behavior in the
past see John Tosh, “The History of Masculinity: an Outdated Concept?,” in What Is
Masculinity? eds J. H. Arnold and S. Brady (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 22.
5 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, 14.
6 Van Orden, Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France, 7.
180 Notes
Bibliography
Archival documents
ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI FIRENZE (ASF):
Capponi: 68, 146, 147, 173, 176.
Carte Galletti: 36.
Carte Sebregondi: 3181.
Decima Granducale: 3784.
Diari di Etichetta della Guardaroba: 4.
Guardaroba Medicea: 143, 391, 398.
Libri di Commercio e di Famiglia: 747.
Manoscritti: 128, 130.
Magalotti: 11, 151, 165.
Mediceo del Principato (MDP): 3137, 4622, 4624a, 5079, 5925.
Miscellanea Medicea: 14 Insert 3, 18 Insert 4.
Pratica Segreta: 11, 13.
Riccardi: 21, 27, 55, 56, 76, 80, 81, 99, 224, 258.
Venturi Ginori Lisci: 341, 342.
Università dei Linaioli: 3.
ARCHIVIO CAPPONI:
File III, Sen. Gio.Battista Capponi, n. 4, Fasci di Ricevute attenenti alla casa del Senatore
Auditore Ferrante Capponi dal 1561 al 1603 and Libro A, 1567–71.
ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI MILANO (ASM):

Notarile: 14356.
ARCHIVIO STORICO CIVICO DI MILANO (ASCM):

Materie: 869/39.
ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI VENEZIA (ASV):

Arte della Seta, busta 578, Processi.
Provveditori di Comun, busta 14, reg. 21.
Printed texts
Ago, Renata. Economia barocca: mercato e istituzioni nella Roma del Seicento. Rome:
Donzelli, 1998.
Ago, Renata. “Il linguaggio del corpo.” In Storia d’Italia: La Moda, edited by Carlo Marco
Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, 117–47. Turin: Einaudi, 2003.
Ago, Renata. Gusto for Things: A History of Objects in Seventeenth-Century Rome.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta and Dora Thornton. “When is a Portrait not a Portrait? Belle
Donne on Maiolica and the Renaissance Praise of Local Beauties.” In The Image of the
Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, edited by Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson,
138–49. London: British Museum Press, 1998.
Alberi, Eugenio, ed. Le relazioni degli ambasciadori veneti al Senato: Relazioni d’Italia,
series II, vol. 5. Florence, 1858.
Alberti, Leonbattista. I libri della famiglia. Edited by R. Romano and A. Tenenti. Turin:
G. Einaudi, 1969.
Alighieri, Dante. La Divina Commedia: l’Inferno. Edited by Giuseppe Vandelli. Milan:
Hoepli, 1961.
Allerston, Patricia. “L’abito usato.” In Storia d’Italia: La Moda, edited by Carlo Marco
Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, 561–81. Turin: Einaudi, 2003.
Allerston, Patricia. “Consuming Problems: Worldly Goods in Renaissance Venice.” In
The Material Renaissance, edited by Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch, 11–46.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Ammirato, Scipione, the Elder. Gli opuscoli di Scipione Ammirato. Florence:
G. Marescotti, 1583.
Ammirato. Scipione, Orazione fatta nella morte di Don Franceso de’ Medici. Florence:
Giunti, 1587.
Angiolini, Franco. “ ‘Alessandro Capponi’ and ‘Luigi Capponi’.” In Dizionario Biografico
Degli Italiani, vol. XIX. Rome: Treccani, 1976.
Angiolini, Franco and Paolo Malanima. “Problemi della mobiltà sociale a Firenze tra la metà
del Cinquecento e i primi decenni del Seicento.” Società e Storia, no. 4 (1979): 17–48.
Anglo, Sydney. “Humanism and the Court Arts.” In The Impact of Humanism on Western
Europe, edited by Anthony Goodman and Angus MacKay, 66–98. London: Longman,
1990.
Araldo, Sicillo. Trattato dei colori nelle arme, nelle livree, e nelle divise. Venice: Domenico
Nicolino, 1565.
Arditi, Bastiano. Diario delle cose successe nella città di Firenze et in altre parti della
cristianità, 1574-1579. Edited by Roberto Cantagalli. Florence: Istituto Nazionale di
Studi sul Rinascimento, 1970.
Arnold, Janet. Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and
Women, Circa 1560—1620. London: Macmillan, 1985.
Arnold, Janet. “Cut and Construction.” In Moda alla corte dei Medici: gli abiti restaurati di
Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia, edited by Roberta Orsi Landini et al., 49–73. Florence:
Centro di, 1993.
Arnold, Janet. Patterns of Fashion 4: The Cut and Construction of Linen Shirts, Smocks,
Neckwear, Headwear and Accessories for Men and Women, c.1540–1660, completed by
Jenny Tiramani and Santina Levey. London: Macmillan, 2008.
Bailey, Amanda. “Monstrous Manner: Style and the Early Modern Theater,” Criticism 43,
no. 3 (Summer 2001): 249–84.
182 Bibliography
Baker, Nicholas Scott. “Power and Passion in Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Sexual and
Political Reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’ Medici.” Journal of the History of
Sexuality 19, no. 3 (September 2010): 432–57.
Baker, Nicholas Scott. “Medicean Metamorphoses, Carnival in Florence, 1513”.
Renaissance Studies 25, no. 4 (2011): 491–510.
Bardi, Giovanni de’. Discorso sopra ’l giuoco del calcio fiorentino. Florence: Giunti, 1580.
Bargagli, Girolamo. Il Dialogo de’ giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare. Siena, 1572.
Baroni, Alessandra. Jan Van der Straet detto Giovanni Stradano Flandrus Pictor et Inventor.
Milan and Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1997.
Baroni, Alessandra. “Portrait of Luigi Capponi.” In Stradanus, 1523-1605. Court Artist of the
Medici, edited by Alessandra Baroni and Manfred Sellink, 192–3. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012.
Bellavitis, Anna. “Family and Society.” In A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797,
edited by Eric R. Dursteler, 319–52. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.
Belmonte, Pietro. Institutione della sposa del cavalier Pietro Belmonte ariminese. Rome:
Gigliotti, 1587.
Bensi, Paolo. “La tintura delle stoffe in nero nei centri di produzione italiani nel XVI
secolo.” In Giovanni Battista Moroni. Il Cavaliere in Nero, edited byAnnalisa Zanni and
Andrea Di Lorenzo, 57–9. Milan: Skira, 2005.
Berger, Ronald M. The Most Necessary Luxuries: The Mercer’s Company of Coventry
1550-1680. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
Berner, Samuel. “Florentine Society in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth
Centuries.” Studies in the Renaissance XVIII (1971): 203–46.
Berni, Francesco, ed. Opere Burlesche, 3 vols. Usecht: J. Broedelet, 1726.
Bini, Pietro. Memorie del calcio fiorentino. Florence, 1688.
Biow, Douglas. On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, their
Professions, and their Beards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
Blackburn, Bonnie J. “The Lascivious Career of B-Flat.” In Eroticism in Early Modern Music,
edited by Bonnie J. Blackburn and Laurie Stras, 19–42. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015.
Blanc, Odile. “From Battlefield to Court; The Invention of Fashion in the Fourteenth
Century.” In Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress, edited by Désirée Koslin and
Jane Snyder, 157–72. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Blondé, Bruno, Peter Stabel, Ilja Van Damme. “Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe: An Introduction.” In Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and
Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel,
Jon Stobart, and Ilja Van Damme, 7–29. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.
Bocchi, Francesco. Le Bellezze della città di Firenze. Florence, 1591.
Bonito Fanelli, Rosalia. “I drappi d’oro: economia e moda a Firenze nel Cinquecento.” In
Le Arti del Principato Mediceo, edited by Candace Adelson, 407–26. Florence: S.P.E.S.,
1980.
Bonito Fanelli, Rosalia. “The Textiles of Italian Renaissance Dress as seen in Portraiture:
A Semiological Interpretation (I).” Bulletin de Liaison du Cieta 74 (1997): 83–95.
Booth, Cecily. Cosimo I, Duke of Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921.
Borghini, Raffaello. Il Riposo . . . in cui della pittura, e della scultura si favella, vol. I. Milan:
Dalla Societa Tipografica de Classici Italiani, 1807.
Borghini, Vincenzo, Storia della nobiltà fiorentina. Edited by J. R. Woodhouse, Pisa:
Marlin, 1974.
Brackett, John K. “The Florentine Criminal Underworld.” In Society and the Individual in
Renaissance Florence, edited by William J. Connell, 293–314. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002.
Bibliography 183
Bragaccia, Gasparo. L’Ambasciatore del Dottore Gasparo Bragaccia Piacentino. Padua:
Francesco Bolzetta, 1627.
Bredekamp, Horst. Calcio Fiorentino. Il Rinascimento dei giochi. Milan: Elemond, 1995.
Breward, Christopher. The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life
1860-1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.
Bridgeman, Jane. Aspects of Dress and Ceremony in Quattrocento Florence. Ph.D. Thesis,
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1986.
Bridgeman, Jane. “Date, Dress and Dosso: Some Problems of Chronology.” In Dosso’s
Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Europe, edited by Luisa Ciammitti,
Steven F. Ostrow, and Salvatore Settis, 176–200. Los Angeles: Getty Research
Institute, 1998.
Brown, Alison. “De-masking Renaissance Republicanism.” In Renaissance Civic Humanism,
edited by James Hankins, 179–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Brunello, Franco. The Art of Dyeing in the History of Mankind. Translated by Bernard
Hickey. Vicenza: N: Pozza, 1973.
Bruscalupi, Giuseppe. Monografia storica della contea di Pitigliano: Opera postuma del
Dott. Bruscalupi. Florence, 1906.
Buck, Anne. Clothes and the Child: A Handbook of Children’s Dress from 1500-1900.
Carlton: Ruth Bean, 1996.
Buonarroti, Michelagnolo. Descrizione delle felicissime nozze della cristianissima maestà di
Madama Maria Medici regina di Francia e di Navarra. Florence: Giorgio Marescotti,
1600.
Burke, Peter. The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
Bushnell, Rebecca. “Tyranny and Effeminacy in Early Modern England.” In Reconsidering
the Renaissance, edited by Mario di Cesare, 339–54. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and
Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 519–31.
Butters, Suzanne B. “ ‘Magnificenza, non senza eccesso’: Riflessioni sul mecenatismo del
Cardinale Ferdinando de’ Medici’.” In Villa Medici: il sogno di un cardinale, edited by
Michel Hochmann, 22–45. Rome: De Luca, 1999.
Calvi, Giulia. “Abito, genere, cittadinanza nella Toscana moderna.” Quaderni Storici
110 (2002): 477–504.
Camerani Marri, Giulia. “L’archivio Magalotti.” Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato,
XXX (1970): 257–59.
Caneva, Caterina. “Vita di Corte a Firenze nell’Anno 1600.” In Rubens e Firenze, edited by
Mina Gregori, 73–84. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1983.
Caneva, Caterina, ed. I Volti del Potere: La ritrattistica di corte nella Firenze Grand ducale.
Florence: Giunti, 2002.
Cantagalli, Roberto. “Matteo Botti,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. XIII. Rome:
Treccani, 1971.
Cantini, Lorenzo. Legislazione toscana raccolta ed illustrata dal Dottor Lorenzo Cantini,
Vols. IV–XII. Florence: Stampa Albizziniana da Santa Maria in Campo, 1800–1806.
Capwell, Tobias. Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour in the Wallace Collection.
London: Wallace Collection, 2011.
Capwell, Tobias, ed. The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance
Europe, 1520-1630. London: The Wallace Collection, 2013.
Carew-Reid, Nicole. Le fêtes Florentines au temps du Lorenzo il Magnifico. Florence:
Olschki, 1995.
184 Bibliography
Carnesecchi, Carlo. Cosimo I e la legge suntuaria del 1562. Florence: Stabilimento Pellas,
1902.
Caroso, Fabrizio. Courtly Dance of the Renaissance. Edited and translated by Julia Sutton.
New York: Dover Publications, 1995.
Carrión, María M. “Men with Style. Sprezzatura, Costume, and Movement for Men in
the Spanish Comedia.” In The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain,
edited by Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus, 351–79. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and
Renaissance Studies, 2010.
Cartagena-Calderon, José. “Of Pretty Fops and Spectacular Sodomites: El lindo don
Diego and the Performance of Effeminacy in Early Modern Spain.” In The Poetics of
Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain, edited by Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus,
317–49. Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010.
Casini, Matteo. I gesti del Principe: La festa politica a Firenze e Venezia in età
rinascimentale. Venice: Marsilio, 1996.
Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier: The Singleton Translation. Edited by Daniel
Javitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
Castiglione, Sabba da. Ricordi overo ammaestramenti. Milan: Giovanantonio degli
Antoni, 1559.
Cerri, Monica. “Sarti toscani nel seicento: Attività e clientela.” In Le Trame della Moda,
edited by Anna Giulia Cavagna and Grazietta Butazzi, 421–35. Rome: Bulzoni, 1995.
Chojnacki, Stanley. “La Posizione della Donna a Venezia nel Cinquecento.” In Tiziano e
Venezia, edited by Massimo Gemin and Giannantonio Paladini, 65–70. Vicenza: Neri
Pozza, 1980.
Chorley, Patrick. “The Volume of Cloth Production in Florence 1500-1650.” In Wool:
Products and Markets (13th to 20th century), edited by Giovanni Luigi Fontana and
Gérard Gayot, 551–71. Padua: CLEUP, 2004.
Cipolla, Carlo M. “The Decline of Italy: The Case of a Fully Matured Economy.”
The Economic History Review, new series 5, no. 2 (1952): 178–87.
Clarke, Giorgia. “The Emperor’s Hat: City, Space, and Identity in Contemporary Accounts
of Charles V’s Entry into Bologna in 1529.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance
16 (2013): 197–220.
Cohn, Samuel. Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy.
Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Colomer, J. L. “Black and the Royal Image.” In Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early
Modern Europe, edited by J. L. Colomer and A. Descalzo, vol. I, 77–112. London: Paul
Holberton, 2012.
Compendio di Tutte le Gride et Ordini Pubblicati nella Città, & Stato di Milano. Milan:
Pandolfo & Marco Tullio Malatesti Stampatori, 1609.
Contini, Alessandra. “La nobiltà toscana e il poter mediceo tra Cinque e Seicento.”
Archivio Storico Italiano IV (1997): 735–54.
Coppi, Enrico, ed. Cronaca Fiorentina, 1537-1555. Florence: Olschki, 2000.
Corazzini, Giuseppe Odoardo, ed. Diario fiorentino di Agostino Lapini dal 252 al 1596.
Florence: Sansoni, 1900.
Cornelison, Sally J. Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.
Costamagna, Philippe. “Deux portraits de Luigi Capponi et son fils Niccolò peints par
Giovanni Stradano.” Paragone, 479–481 (1990): 101–06.
Cotton, Juliana Hill, “Il lucco del Poliziano ed altre allusioni al lucco fiorentino.” Italica,
XLIII, no. 4 (1966): 353–68.
Courtois, Jean. Le Blason de Couleurs. Paris: Pierre Sergent, 1535.
Bibliography 185
Cox-Rearick, Janet. Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the Two
Cosimos. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Cracolici, Stefano. “Flirting with the Chameleon: Alberti on Love.” Modern Language
Notes 121, no. 1 (2006): 102–29.
Crane, Susan. The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing and Identity During the Hundred
Years War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
Croce, Giulio Cesare. Livrea nobilissima del Croce nell’occasione delle nozze del Gran
Principe di Toscana. Bologna: Bartolomeo Cocchi, 1608.
Croci, Laura. “Rinaldo and his Arms in the Gerusalemme Liberata.” Comitatus: A Journal
of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18, no. 1 (1987): 21–33.
Croom, Alexandra. Roman Clothing and Fashion. Stroud: Tempus, 2000.
Cropper, Elizabeth. Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty
Museum, 1997.
Crowston, Clare Haru. Credit, Fashion Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.
Crum, Roger J. “Lessons from the Past: The Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in
Sixteenth-Century Florence.” In The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici,
edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, 47–62. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001.
Currie, Elizabeth. “Diversity and Design in the Florentine Tailoring Trade.” In The
Material Renaissance (Studies in Design and Material Culture), edited by Michelle
O’Malley and Evelyn Welch, 154–73. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Currie, Elizabeth. “Clothing and a Florentine Style, 1550-1620,” Renaissance Studies
23, no. 1 (February 2009): 33–52.
Currie, Elizabeth. “Fashion Networks: Consumer Demand and the Clothing Trade in
Florence from the mid-Sixteenth to Early Seventeenth Century.” Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies 39, no. 3 (2009): 483–509.
Dabhoiwala, Faramerz. “The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late
Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-century England,” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 6 (December 1996): 201–13.
Dallington, Robert. A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany, 1596. London: Edward
Blount, 1605.
Dati, Giulio. Disfida di Caccia tra i piacevoli e piattelli. Edited by Domenico Moreni.
Florence, 1824.
Davies, Jonathan. Culture and Power: Tuscany and its Universities, 1537-1609. Leiden and
Boston: Brill, 2009.
De Bondt, Cees. Royal Tennis in Renaissance Italy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.
Degl’Innocenti, Daniela. “Le produzioni seriche fiorentine: Tipologie e iconografia.” In La
Grande Storia dell’Artigianato: il Seicento e Settecento, edited by Riccardo Spinelli, vol.
V, 189–205. Florence: Giunti, 2002.
de Grazia, Victoria. “Introduction.” In The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption
in Historical Perspective, edited by Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough, 11–24.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Della Casa, Giovanni. Il Galatheo. Florence: Giunti, 1574.
Della Casa, Giovanni. Galateo: Or, the Rules of Polite Behaviour. Edited and Translated by
M. F. Rusnak. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Della Porta, Giambattista. Della Fisonomia dell’Huomo. Naples: Carlino & Vitale, 1610.
Del Lungo, Isidore and Guglielmo Volpi, eds La cronaca domestica di messer Donato
Velluti, scritta fra il 1367 e il 1370, con le addizioni di Paolo Velluti, scritte fra il 1555 e il
1560. Florence: Sansoni, 1914.
186 Bibliography
Delumeau, Jean. Vita economica e sociale di Roma nel Cinquecento. Florence: Sansoni, 1979.
Dempsey, Charles. Inventing the Renaissance Putto. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001.
De’ Ricci, Giuliano. Cronaca 1532—1606. Edited by Giuliana Sapori. Milan and Naples:
Riccardo Ricciardi, 1972.
Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de’ Serenissimi Principi di Toscana D. Cosimo
de’ Medici e Maria Maddalena Arciduchessa d’Austria. Florence: Giunti, 1608.
Descrizione delle Pompe e delle Feste Fatte nella venuta alla Città di Firenze del Sereniss.
Don Vincenzio Gonzaga Principe di Mantova, e del Monferrato, per la Serenissima D.
Leonora de’ Medici Principessa di Toscana sua Consorte. Florence: Sermartelli, 1584.
De Winkel, Marieke. Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
DiGangi, Mario. The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge
Dolce, Lodovico. Dialogo . . . .nel quale si ragiona della qualità, diversita, proprietà dei
colori. Venice: Sessa, 1565.
Donati, Claudio. L’idea di nobiltà in Italia, Secoli XIV-XVIII. Rome: Laterza, 1995.
Doy, Gen. Drapery: Classicism and Barbarism in Visual Culture. London: I. B. Tauris, 2002.
Edelstein, Bruce. “Bronzino in the Service of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo I de’ Medici:
Conjugal Patronage and the Painter-Courtier.” In Beyond Isabella: Secular Women
Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, edited by Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins,
225–61. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001.
Edwards, Tim. Cultures of Masculinity. London: Routledge, 2006.
Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners. New York: Urizen Books, 1978.
Eliav-Feldon, Miriam. Renaissance Impostors and Proofs of Identity. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Ellis, Anthony. Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
Epp, Garrett P. J. “The Vicious Guise: Effeminacy, Sodomy and Mankind.” In Becoming
Male in the Middle Ages, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, 303–19.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.
Epstein, Julia and Kristina Straub, Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Ambiguity.
Routledge: New York and London, 1991.
Fabriziani, Giuseppe Clusina. I conti Aldobrandeschi e Orsini: sunti storici. Pitigliano, 1897.
Fantoni, Marcello. La Corte del Granduca: forma e simboli del potere mediceo fra Cinque e
Seicento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1994.
Fantoni, Marcello. “Le corti e i ‘modi’ del vestire.” In Storia d’Italia: La Moda, edited by
Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, 737–66. Turin: Einaudi, 2003.
Feeser, Andrea, Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, eds. The Materiality of
Color: The Production, Circulation, and Application of Dyes and Pigments, 1400-1800.
Fenlon, Ian. “Maria Magdalena of Austria and the Uses of Danced Spectacle.” In
Seventeenth-century Ballet: A Multi-Art Spectacle, edited by Barbara Grammeniati,
28–38. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2011.
Ferroni, Giulio ed. Poesia Italiana. Il Cinquecento. Milan: Garzanti, 1978.
Finucci, Valeria. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity and Castration in the
Italian Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Fioravanti, Leonardo. Dello specchio di scientia universale. Venice: Sessa, 1572.
Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del Cinquecento. Il Potere e lo spazio: La scena
del principe. Milan: Electa, 1980 (exhibition catalogue).
Bibliography 187
Fisher, Will. Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Fletcher, Catherine. Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador. London:
Bodley Head, 2012.
Florio, John. Queen Anna’s New World of Words, 1611. Menston: Scolar Press, 1968.
Forrest, John. The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1999.
Fosi, Irene. All’ombra dei Barberini: fedeltà e servizio nella Roma barocca. Rome:
Bulzoni, 1997.
Foyster, Elizabeth. Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage.
London: Longman, 1999.
Fradenburg, Louise Olga. City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval
Scotland. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Frick, Carole Collier. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes and Fine Clothing.
Frigo, Daniela. Il padre di famiglia. Rome: Bulzoni, 1985.
Galluzzi, Riguccio. Istoriato del Granducato di Toscana sotto il governo della Casa Medici,
Vols. I–IX. Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi, 1781.
Gargiolli, Girolamo ed. L’Arte della seta in Firenze. Trattato del secolo XV. Florence:
Barbèra: 1868.
Gavel, Jonas. Colour: A Study of its Position in the Art Theory of the Quattro- &
Cinquecento. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell international, 1979.
Gaylard, Susan. Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Image in Renaissance Italy.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.
Gentilcore, David. “The Ethnography of Everyday Life.” In Early Modern Italy 1550-1796,
edited by John A. Marino, 188–205. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Getrevi, Paolo, ed. Il Libro del sarto della Fondazione Querini Stampalia di Venezia,
Modena: Edizioni Panini, 1987.
Giacomini, Lorenzo. Della nobiltà delle lettere e delle armi ragionamenti. Edited by
Tebalducci Malespini. Florence: Magheri, 1821.
Gibson, Kirsten. “Music, Melancholy and Masculinity.” In Masculinity and Western Musical
Practice, edited by Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson, 41–66. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
Giovannoni, Simona Lecchini. “Tiberio Titi.” In Il Seicento Fiorentino: Biografie, 176–7.
Florence: Cantini, 1986.
Giovannoni, Simona Lecchini. Alessandro Allori. Turin: U. Allemandi, 1991.
Giuliani, Tiziana. “Francesco Salviat e gli Spettacoli di Corte.” In Francesco Salviati e la
Bella Maniera, edited by Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Philippe Costamagna and Michel
Hochmann, 171–93. Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001.
Goldberg, Edward. Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto
Blanis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
Goldthwaite, Richard. The Economy of Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Goodman, Jordan. “Tuscan Commercial Relations with Europe, 1550-1620.” In Firenze e la
Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del cinquecento. Strumenti e veicoli della cultura: relazioni
politiche ed economiche, vol. I, edited by Giancarlo Carfagnini, 327–41. Florence:
Olschki, 1983.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Griffiths, Paul. Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England, 1560-1640. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996.
188 Bibliography
Guazzo, Stefano. La Civil Conversazione. Edited by Amedeo Quondam. Ferrara: Franco
Cosimo Panini, 1993.
Guerzoni, Guido. “Playing Great Games: The Giuoco in Sixteenth-Century Italian Courts.”
In Italian History and Culture, 43–63. Florence: Ville Le Balze, 1995.
Hale, John R. “The Soldier in Germanic Graphic art of the Renaissance.” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History xvii (1986): 85–114.
Halperin, David. How to do the History of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000.
Hankins, James. “The ‘Baron Thesis’.” In The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, edited by John
Jeffries Martin, 66–87. London: Routledge, 2003.
Harrison, William. The Description of England: The Classic Contemporary Account of
Tudor Social Life by William Harrison. Edited by Georges Edelen. Washington: Folger
Shakespeare Library, 1994.
Hart, Avril. “Men’s Dress.” In Four Hundred Years of Fashion, edited by Natalie Rothstein,
48–75. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984.
Harvey, John. Men in Black. London: Reaktion Books, 1995.
Hayward, Maria. “Luxury or Magnificence? Dress at the Court of Henry VIII.” Costume
30 (1996): 37–46.
Hayward, Maria. Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII. Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2007.
Hayward, Maria. Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2009.
Heilbron, J. L. Galileo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Hentschell, Roze. The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a
National Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
Hills, Paul. Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, and Glass, 1250-1550. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1999.
Hitchcock, Tim and Michèle Cohen, eds English Masculinities, 1660–1800. Harlow:
Longman, 1999.
Hoogvliet, Margriet. “Princely Culture and Catherine de Médicis.” in Princes and Princely
Culture, edited by Martin Gosman, Alasdair MacDonald, Arjo Vanderjagt, vol. I,
103–30. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003.
Hughes, Diane Owen. “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy.” In
Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, edited by John Bossy,
69–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Hunt, Alan. Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law. London:
Macmillan Press, 1996.
Il Seicento Fiorentino: Arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III. Pittura. Florence:
Cantini, 1986.
Jackson, Ben, “Having Fun.” London Review of Books 37, no. 7 (April 9, 2015): 12–14.
Jacobs, Fredrika. “Sexual Variations: Playing with (Dis)similitude.” In A Cultural History of
Sexuality in the Renaissance, edited by Bette Talvacchia, 73–93. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.
Javitch, Daniel. “Il Cortegiano and the Constraints of Despotism.” In Castiglione: The Ideal
and the Real in Renaissance Culture, edited by Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand,
17–28. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983.
Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Dress and Gender.” In A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion
1450-1650, edited by Elizabeth Currie. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Jones, Ann Rosalind and Peter Stallybrass. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of
Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Jones, Ann Rosalind and Margaret Rosenthal. The Clothing of the Renaissance World:
Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti Antichi et Moderni. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008.
Bibliography 189
Kaplan, Paul H. D. “Black Turks: Venetian Artists and Perceptions of Ottoman Ethnicity.”
In The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450-1750, edited by James G. Harper,
41–66. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011.
Karras, Ruth Mazo. From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kelly, Joan. Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986.
Kingsley-Smith, Jane. Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Kirshner, Julius. “Li emergent bisogni matrimoniali in Renaissance Florence.” In Society
and Individual in Renaissance Florence, edited by William J. Connell, 79–109. Oakland,
CA, University of California Press, 2002.
Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1985.
Kovesi, Catherine. Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200-1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kuchta, David. “Semiotics of Masculinity in Renaissance England.” In Sexuality and
Gender in Early Modern Europe: Texts, Institutions, Texts, Images, edited by James
Turner, 233–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993a.
Kuchta, David. The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity, 1550-1850. Berkeley: CA:
University of California Press, 1993b.
L’abito per il corpo e il corpo per l’abito. Islam e Occidente a confronto. Museo Stibbert
exhibition catalogue. Florence: Artificio, 1988.
La descrizione dell’apparato fatto in Firenze, nel Battesimo del Serenissimo Principe di
Toscana. Florence: Giunti 1577.
Langdon, Gabrielle. Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal from the Court of
Duke Cosimo I. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Lassels, Richard. The Voyage of Italy. Paris: V. du Moutier, 1670.
Lazzi, Giovanna. “Il ‘bruno’ a corte.” In La Morte e la Gloria: apparati funebri medicei per
Filippo II di Spagna e Margherita d’Austria, edited by Monica Bietti, 80–83. Florence:
Sillabe, 1999.
Lefaivre, Liane. Leon Battista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Cambridge, MA:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997.
Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. “Ideal Men: Masculinity and Decline in Seventeenth-Century
Spain.” Renaissance Quarterly 61, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 463–94.
Li sontuosissimi apparecchi trionfi e feste fatti nelle nozze della Gran Duchessa di Fiorenza
con il nome e numero de Duchi, Principi, Marchesi, Baroni, e altri gran personaggi:
postovi il modo del vestire, maniere e livree, Florence and Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1589.
Litchfield, Robert Burr. Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Liva, Alberto. “Note sulla legislazione suntuaria nell’Italia centro-settentrionale.” In
Le Trame della Moda, edited by Anna Giulia Cavagna and Grazietta Butazzi, 31–52.
Rome: Bulzoni, 1995.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Istorie fiorentine. Edited by Plinio Carli, 2 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1927.
Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980.
Malanima, Paolo. I Riccardi di Firenze. Florence: Olschki, 1977.
Malanima, Paolo. Il lusso dei contadini: Consumi e industrie nelle campagne toscane del Sei
e Settecento. Bologna: il Mulino, 1990.
Manuzio, Aldo. Vita di Cosimo de’ Medici primo Granduca di Toscana. Bologna, 1586.
190 Bibliography
Marchi, Piero. “Le feste per le nozze di Maria de’ Medici.” In Rubens e Firenze, edited by
Mina Gregori, 85–101. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1983.
Mariéjol, Jean-H. Catherine de Médicis. Paris: Librairie Jules Tallandier, 1979.
Martelli, Niccolo. Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere. Lanciano: R. Carrabba
Editore, 1916.
Mazzei, Rita. Pisa Medicea: l’economia cittadina da Ferdinando a Cosimo III. Florence:
Olschki, 1991.
McCall, Timothy, “Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North
Italy’s Quattrocento Courts,” I Tatti Studies 16, no. 1–2 (2013): 445–90.
McClure, George. The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2004.
McClure, George. Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
McCorquodale, Charles. Agnolo Bronzino. London: Chaucer Press, 2005.
Mellini, Domenico di Guido. Descrizione della entrata della Serenissima Regina Giovanna
d’Austria. Florence: Giunti, 1566.
Mellini, Domenico di Guido. Ricordo intorno ai costumi, azioni, e governo del Serenissimo
Gran Duca Cosimo I, scritti da Domenico Mellini di commissione della Serenissima
Maria Cristina di Lorena e ora per la prima volta pubblicati. Florence: Magheri, 1820.
Miller, Susan. “Disegni bizarres per tessuti di seta, 1680-1710.” In Seta. Potere e glamour,
edited by Roberta Orsi Landini, 83–109. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2006.
Milligan, Gerry. “The Politics of Effeminacy in Il Cortegiano,” Italica 83, no. 3–4 (2006): 347–69.
Milligan, Gerry. “Masculinity and Machiavelli: How a Prince should avoid Effeminacy,
Perform Manliness, and be Wary of the Author.” In Seeking Real Truths:
Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, edited by Patricia Vilches and Gerald
Seaman, 149–72. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007.
Milligan, Gerry and Jane Tylus. “Introduction.” In The Poetics of Masculinity in Early
Modern Italy and Spain, edited by Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus. Toronto: Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010.
Mini, Paolo. Difesa della città di Firenze, et de’ fiorentini contro le calunnie et maldicentie
de’ maligni. Lyon: Filippo Tinghi, 1577.
Mitchell, Bonner. Italian Civic Pageantry in the High Renaissance. Florence: Olschki, 1979.
Molà, Luca. The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice. Baltimore and London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Molini, Giuseppe, ed. Vita di Cellini. Florence: Tipografia all’insegna di Dante, 1832.
Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern
Paintings 1300-1550. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008.
Mort, Frank. Cultures of Consumption Masculinities and Social Space in Late-Twentieth
Century Britain. London: Routledge, 1996.
Moulton, Ian Frederick. “Castiglione: Love, Power and Masculinity.” In The Poetics of Early
Modern Masculinity, edited by Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus, 119–42. Toronto: Centre
for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2010.
Moulton, Ian Frederick. Love in Print in the Sixteenth Century: The Popularization of
Romance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2014.
Mukerji, Chandra, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism. New York:
Colombia University Press, 1983.
Munro, John H. “The anti-red shift—to the ‘Dark Side’: Colour Changes in Luxury
Flemish Woollens, 1300-1550.” In Medieval Clothing and Textiles, edited by Robin
Netherton and Gale Owen-Crocker, vol. 3, 55–95. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007.
Bibliography 191
Murphy, Caroline P. “Lavinia Fontana and Female Life Cycle Experience.” In Picturing
Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by Geraldine Johnson and Sara
Matthews Grieco, 111–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Murphy, Caroline P. Murder of a Medici Princess. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Murphy, Caroline P. “Masculinity, Manliness and Mediocrity: The case of Paolo Giordano
Orsini (1541-1585).” In Masculinities, Childhood, Violence: Attending to Early Modern
Women and Men, edited by Amy Leonard, Karen L. Nelson, 347–62. Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2011.
Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina, Guardaroba Medievale: vesti e società dal XIII al XVI Secolo,
Bologna: il Mulino, 1999.
Najemy, John. A History of Florence, 1200-1575. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2006.
Nevile, Jennifer. “Dance in Europe, 1250-1750.” In Dance, Spectacle and the Body
Politick 1250-1750, edited by Jennifer Nevile, 7–64. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
Newman, Karen. Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Newton, Stella Mary. Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years
1340-1365. Woodbridge Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980.
Newton, Stella Mary. The Dress of the Venetians, 1495—1525. The Pasold Research Fund,
Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988.
Niccoli, Bruna. “Official Dress and Courtly Fashion in Genoese Entries.” In Europa
Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, edited by J. R. Mulryne,
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Margaret Shewring, vol. I, 261–73. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
Nixon, Sean. Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
Nussdorfer, Laurie. Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII. Princeton: Princeton
Orlando, Flavio. Storia del costume maschile al tempo di Cosimo III de’ Medici 1670-1723.
Milano: Idea 20 Progetti, 1991.
Orsi Landini, Roberta. “L’amore del lusso e la necessità della modestia: Eleonora fra sete e
oro.” In Moda alla corte dei Medici: gli abiti restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia,
edited by Roberta Orsi Landini, 35–45. Florence: Ente Cassa di Risparmio, 1993.
Orsi Landini, Roberta. “Il velluto da abbigliamento. Il rinnovamento del disegno.” In Velluti
e Moda tra XV e XVII secolo, edited by Roberta Orsi Landini, 57–72. Milan: Skira, 1999.
Orsi Landini, Roberta. Moda a Firenze 1540-1580: lo stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici. Florence:
M. Pagliai, 2011.
Orsi Landini, Roberta and Stefania Ricci. “Il guardaroba di un sovrano: Cosimo II de’
Medici, metodologia di studio.” In Le Trame della Moda, edited by Anna Giulia
Cavagna and Grazietta Butazzi, 175–210. Grazietta. Rome: Bulzoni, 1995.
Pacht, Paola Bassani. “Marie de Médicis et ses artistes.” In Le ’Siècle’ de Marie de Médicis,
edited by F. Graziani and F. Solinas, 81–94. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002.
Paret, Peter. Imagined Battles: Reflections of War in European Art. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Passerini, Luigi. Famiglie celebri italiane del Conte Pompeo Litta, vol. XIII. Milan: Luciano
Basadonna, 1870.
Pastoureau, Michel. The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1991.
Pastoureau, Michel. Black: The History of a Color. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton
192 Bibliography
Patterson, Angus. Fashion and Armour in Renaissance Europe: Proud Looks and Brave
Attire. London: V&A Publications, 2009.
Paulicelli, Eugenia. “From the Sacred to the Secular: The Gendered Geography of Veils in
Italian Cinquecento Fashion.” In Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories,
edited by Bella Mirabella, 40–58. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Paulicelli, Eugenia. Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire.
Pellegrini, Amedeo. Relazioni inedite di ambasciatori lucchesi alle corti di Firenze, Genova,
Milano, Modena, Parma, Torino. Lucca: Alberto Marchi, 1901.
Peristiany, J. G. “Introduction.” In Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean
Society, edited by J. G. Peristiany, 9–18. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965.
Phillippy, Patricia. Painting Women. Cosmetics, Canvases and Early Modern Culture.
Piacenti, Aschengreen Kirsten, ed. I Principi Bambini: Abbigliamento e Infanzia nel
Seicento. Florence: Centro di, 1985.
Piccolomini, Alessandro. La Raffaella, ovvero dialogo della bella creanza delle donne.
Milan: Longanesi, 1969.
Pinchera, Valeria. Lusso e Decoro: vita quotidiana e spese dei Salviati di Firenze nel Sei e
Settecento. Quaderni dell’archivio Salviati, III, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 1999.
Pinchera, Valeria. “Vestire la vita, vestire la morte: abiti per matrimoni e funerali, XIV-XVII
secolo.” In Storia d’Italia: La Moda, edited by Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti,
221–60. Turin: Einaudi, 2003.
Pizetsky, Rosita Levi. Storia del Costume in Italia, vol. III. Milan: Istituto Editoriale
Italiano, 1966.
Plaisance, Michel. Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and
Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Edited and Translated by Nicole
Carew-Reid, Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press: 2008.
Plazzotta, Carol. “Pontormo: Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap.” In Renaissance Faces:
Van Eyck to Titian, edited by Lorne Campbell, Miguel Falomir, Jennifer Fletcher, Luke
Syson, 224–7. London: National Gallery, distributed by Yale University Press, 2008.
Point-Waquet, Françoise. “Les Botti: fortunes et culture d’une famille florentine
(1550-1621).” Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome 90, no. 2 (1978): 689–712.
Pontano, Giovanni, I libri delle virtù sociali. Edited by Francesco Tateo. Rome: Bulzoni, 1999.
Poole, Katherine. “Christian Crusade as Spectacle: The Cavalieri di Santo Stefano
and the Audiences for the Medici Weddings of 1589 and 1608.” In Push Me Pull
You: Imaginative, Emotional, Physical, and Spatial Interaction in Late Medieval and
Renaissance Art, edited by Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand, vol. II, 387–92. Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2011.
Quondam, Amedeo. Tutti i colori del nero: Moda e cultura nell’Italia del Cinquecento.
Vicenza: Angelo Colla, 2007.
Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Edited and Translated by M. A. Screech.
London: Penguin, 2006.
Rebhorn, Wayne A. Courtly Performances, Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of
the Courtier. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.
Reynolds, Anne. “Galileo Galilei and the Satirical Poem ‘Contro il Portar la Toga’: The
Literary Foundations of Science.” Nuncius 17, no. 1 (2002): 45–62.
Ribeiro, Aileen. The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France, 1750-1820. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1995.
Ribeiro, Aileen. Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715-1789. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2002.
Bibliography 193
Ribeiro, Aileen. Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005.
Ricci, Stefania. “Tra storia e leggenda: cronaca di vita medicea.” In Moda alla Corte dei
Medici: gli abiti restaurati di Cosimo, Eleonora e don Garzia, edited by Roberta Orsi
Landini, 11–25. Florence: Ente Cassa di Risparmio, 1993.
Richards, Jennifer. “ ‘A Wanton Trade of Living’? Rhetoric, Effeminacy, and the Early
Modern Courtier”. Criticism 42, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 185–206.
Richelson, Paul William. Studies in the Personal Imagery of Cosimo I De’ Medici, Duke of
Florence. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1978.
Rinuccini, Ottavio. Lodi de’ giocatori di pallone . . . Ode all’illustrissimo Matteo Botti
Marchese di Campiglia e maiordomo maggiore di S.A.S. Florence: Zanobi Pignoni, 1619.
Roach, Joseph. “Kinship, Intelligence and Memory as Improvisation: Culture and
Performance in New Orleans.” In Performance and Cultural Politics, edited by Elin
Diamond, 219–36. London: Routledge, 1996.
Rocke, Michael. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance
Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Roscoe, Thomas, ed. and trans. The Spanish Novelists. London: Frederick Warne, 1832.
Rosello, Lucio Paolo. Il ritratto del vero governo del prencipe dall’esempio vivo del gran
Cosimo de’ Medici. Venice, 1552.
Rosenthal, Margaret F. “Clothing, Fashion, Dress, and Costume in Venice (c. 1450-1650).”
In A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797, edited by Eric R. Dursteler, 889–928.
Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.
Ross, Anthony and P. G. Walsh, eds St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiæ: Courage,
vol. 42. London: Blackfriars, 1966.
Rothfus, Melissa. “The Gens Togata: Changing Styles and Changing Identities.” American
Journal of Philology 131, no. 3 (Fall, 2010): 425–52.
Rublack, Ulinka. Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe. Oxford: Oxford
Ruggiero, Guido. Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self and Society in the Italian Renaissance.
Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, descritta in XIIII libri. Venice:
Giacomo Sansovino, 1581.
Saslow, James M. The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII, King of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
Schachter, Marc David. “‘Quanto concede la Guerra’: Epic Masculinity and the Education
of Desire in Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata.” In The Poetics of Masculinity in Early
Modern Italy and Spain, edited by Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus, 213–39. Toronto:
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010.
Sebregondi, Ludovica. “Clothes and Teenagers: What Young Men Wore in Fifteenth-Century
Florence.” In The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society 1150-1650, edited by Konrad
Eisenbichler, 27–50. Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2002.
Sebregondi, Ludovica. “The Sumptuary Laws.” In Money and Beauty, edited by Ludovica
Sebregondi and Tim Parks. Florence: Giunti, 2011.
Segarizzi, Arnaldo, ed. Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, iii, pt. I, 17–18. Bari:
Scrittori d’Italia, 1912.
Seigel, Jerrod E. “Virtue in and since the Renaissance.” In Dictionary of the History of Ideas,
edited by Philip P. Wiener, vol. IV, 476–86. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968.
Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. Sports, Politics and Literature in the English Renaissance.
Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003.
194 Bibliography
Shepard, Alexandra. Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, c. 1560-1640.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Shepard, Alexandra. “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in
England, circa 1500-1700.” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 281–95.
Simons, Patricia. “Alert and Erect: Masculinity in some Italian Renaissance Portraits of
Fathers and Sons.” In Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in
History, edited by Richard Trexler, 163–86. Binghamton, New York: Medieval and
Early Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994.
Solerti, Angelo, ed. Musica, ballo e drammatica alla Corte Medicea dal 1600 al 1637. Notizie
tratte da un diario tenuto da Cesare Tinghi. Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1905.
Sozzi, Lionello. “Il crotesque: bruttezza e bizzarria.” In Disarmonia bruttezza e bizzarria nel
Rinascimento, edited by Luisa Secchi Tarugi, 9–17. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 1998.
Speroni, Sperone, Lettere familiari. Edited by Maria Rosa Loi and Mario Pozzi.
Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1993.
Spicer, Joaneath. “The Renaissance Elbow.” In A Cultural History of Gesture, edited by Jan
Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 84–128. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
Springer, Carolyn. Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2010.
Stallybrass, Peter. “Worn Worlds: Clothes and Identity on the Renaissance Stage.” In Subject
and Object in Renaissance Culture, edited by Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan
and Peter Stallybrass, 289–320. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Strocchia, Sharon. “Gender and the Rites of Honour in Italian Renaissance Cities.” In
Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, edited by Judith C. Brown and Robert C.
Davis, 39–60. London: Routledge, 1998.
Strong, Roy. Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984.
Strype, John. Annals of the Reformation . . . in the Church of England. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1824.
Supino, I. B. ed. I ricordi di Alessandro Allori. Florence: Alfani & Venturi Editori, 1908.
Sussman, Herbert. Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early
Victorian Literature and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Sutton, Elizabeth. Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.
Taddei, Ilaria. “Perizia, adolescenza and giovinezza: Images and Conceptions of Youth
in Florentine Society During the Renaissance.” In The Premodern Teenager: Youth
in Society 1150-1650, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, 15–26. Toronto: Centre for
Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2002.
Talvacchia, Bette. “Erotica: The Sexualised Body in Renaissance Art.” In A Cultural
History of Sexuality in the Renaissance, edited by Bette Talvacchia, 175–201. London:
Bloomsbury, 2012a.
Talvacchia, Bette. “Introduction: The Look and Sound of Sexuality in the Renaissance.”
In A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Renaissance, edited by Bette Talvacchia, 1–33.
London: Bloomsbury, 2012b.
Tasso, Torquato. Opere di Torquato Tasso colle controversie sulla Gerusalemme, vol. 9. Pisa:
Capurro, 1824.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1989.
Testaverde, Anna Maria. “La decorazione festiva e l’itinerario di ‘rifondazione’ della
città negli ingressi trionfali a Firenze tra XV e XVI secolo.” Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 32 (1988a): 323–52.
Testaverde, Anna Maria. “Gli abiti per le feste fiorentine del 1589.” In Il Costume nell’età del
Rinascimento, edited by Dora Liscia Bemporad, 175–99. Florence: Edifir, 1988b.
Bibliography 195
Thomas, Keith. The Ends of Life. Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Tinagli, Paola. Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
Tosh, John. “The History of Masculinity: An Outdated Concept?.” In What Is Masculinity?
edited by J. H. Arnold and S. Brady, 17–34. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Tosi Brandi, Elisa. “Cesena.” In La legislazione suntuaria. Secoli XIII-XVI. Emilia-
Romagna. Edited by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli. Publicazioni degli archivi di Stato.
Fonti, 2002.
Trexler, Richard. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. New York and London: Academic
Press, 1980.
Trissino, Giovanni Giorgio. Epistola del Trissino de la vita che deve tenere una donna
vedova. Venice, 1524.
Vannugli, Antonio. “Conte, Jacopino (Jacopo) del.” Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon 20,
München-Leipzig (1998): 600–02.
Van Orden, Kate. Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2004.
Van Veen, Henk Th. “Republicanism in the Visual Propaganda of Cosimo I de’ Medici.”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 55 (1992): 200–09.
Van Veen, Henk Th. “Princes and Patriotism: The Self-Representation of Florentine
Patricians in the Late Renaissance.” In Princes and Princely Culture 1450-1650, vol. II,
edited by Martin Gosman, Alasdair MacDonald, and Arjo Vanderjagt, 63–78. Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2005.
Van Veen, Henk Th. Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-Representation in Florentine Art and
Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Varchi, Benedetto. Storia Fiorentina, vol. II. Florence: Pietro Martello, 1721.
Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori scritte da Giorgio
Vasari pittore aretino, edited by Gaetano Milanesi, vols. III-V. Florence: Sansoni, 1878.
Vecellio, Cesare. De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo libri due, fatti
da Cesare Vecelli e con discorsi da lui dichiarati. Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1590 and
Venice: Sessa, 1598.
Ventura Rosetti, Giovanni. Plico dell’arte del tingere tutte le sorte di colori. Venice:
Alessandro Vecchi, 1611.
Vigarello, Georges. Concepts of Cleanliness: Changing Attitudes in France since the Middle
Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Vivo, Filippo de. Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern
Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, fifth edition, Florence, 1843–49.
Vout, Caroline. “The Myth of the Toga: Understanding the History of Roman Dress.”
Greece and Rome, (Second Series) 43, no. 02 (October 1996): 204–20.
Walsh, Claire. “The Social Relations of Shopping in Early Modern England.” In Buyers
and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited
by Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, Jon Stobart, and Ilja Van Damme, 331–51. Turnhout:
Brepols, 2006.
Waugh, Norah. The Cut of Men’s Clothes, 1600-1900. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1964.
Welch, Evelyn. Shopping in the Renaissance. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2005.
Welch, Evelyn. “Art on the Edge: Hair and Hands in Renaissance Italy.” Renaissance Studies
23, no. 3 (June 2009): 241–68.
196 Bibliography
Werner, Inge. “The Heritage of the Umidi: Performative Poetry in the Early Accademia
Fiorentina.” In The Reach of the Republic of Letters: Literary and Learned Societies in
Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Arjan van Dixhoorn and Susie
Speakman Sutch, vol. II, 257–84. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008.
Willan, T. S. The Inland Trade: Studies in English Internal Trade in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976.
Wilson, Bronwen. “Foggie diverse di vestire de’ Turchi: Turkish Costume Illustration and
Cultural Translation.” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 1
(2007): 97–139.
Wolfe, Jessica. Humanism, Machinery and Renaissance Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge
Zerner, Henri. “Looking for the Unknowable: The Visual Experience of Renaissance
Festivals.” In Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe,
edited by J. R. Mulryne, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Margaret Shewring, vol. I, 75–98.
Bibliography 197
Index
academic dress 49–51 Botti family 84

Alberti, Leon Battista 9, 76, 120 Matteo 28, 30, 53, 64, 71, 84–9,
Alfonso of Naples (king) 75 129, 142
Allori, Alessandro 103, 112 Boullay, Le Sieur 71
Allori, Cristofano 108 Bragaccia, Gaspare 64, 87
Altoviti, Antonio 129 breeches 33, 34, 52, 69, 70, 71, 73, 81, 83,
Ammirato, Scipione 49, 85, 106 87, 88, 97, 104, 115
Anguillara, Giacomo 61 baggy 49, 134
Antwerp 68, 84 martingale 71–2, 98
Appian 42 tight 9, 49, 63, 114
Arditi, Bastiano 71 Bronzino, Agnolo 73, 94–5, 102–4
Aretino, Pietro 105 Buonarroti, Michelangelo the
Ariosto, Lodovico 6 Younger 31, 34, 146–7
Aristotle 7, 76, 120, 121, 122 Buonomini di San Martino 47–8
armour 135, 143 Buontalenti, Bernardo 73, 143
Arrigo Valesio of Poland 139
artisans 60, 68–70, 73, 131 Callot, Jacques 134–5, 143
auctions 80–1, 89, 130 Campanella, Tommaso 110
Cappello, Bianca 103–4
Badoer, Francesco 118 Capponi family
Baldini, Baccio 96 Alessando 82, 95–6, 108
Baldini, Vittorio 30 Giovanbattista 52, 54, 65
Banco, Nanni di 40–1 Luigi 95–8
Barberini, Carlo 112–13 Niccolò di Luigi 65, 69–70, 88, 95–8,
Bargagli, Girolamo 144 104–5
beards 6, 105, 121, 146 Orazio 132
Beccaruzzi, Francesco 137–8 carnival 128, 130, 131, 133, 139–45
Beham, Sebald 52 costumes for horses 143
Belmonte, Pietro 59 Caroso, Fabrizio 136–7
Bene, Caterina del 61 Castello, Bernardo 125
Bisticci, Vespasiano del 75 Castiglione, Baldassare 1, 7, 10, 74, 77,
bizarre 143–4 88, 107, 118, 119, 123, 128, 136,
black in clothing 93–108 144–5, 147
Borghini, Vincenzo 43 Castiglione, Sabba da 120
Bosse, Abraham 59 Cellini, Benvenuto 52, 131
Cenami, Bartolomeo 75 Courtois, Jean 106
Cesalpino, Andrea 52 Cupid 119
Charles V 94, 133, 144
children’s clothes 109–11 Dallington, Robert 105
Chimenti, Jacopo 31, 32, 41, 111 dance 7, 10, 31, 32, 113, 129, 134, 136,
Christine of Lorraine 23, 29, 45, 56, 65, 137, 145
80, 85, 87, 88, 128, 131 Dante Alighieri 37–8
Cicero 107 Della Casa, Giovanni 4, 18, 21, 76, 119
citizenship 21, 38, 42, 46, 52, 106 Della Porta, Giovanni Battista 121
civility 8, 76, 115, 121, 133 diplomatic dress 64, 75, 85–7
Clement VII 49 Dolce, Lodovico 100, 105, 143
cloaks 6, 10, 17, 19, 32–4, 73, 75, 81, 83, doublets 33, 52, 63, 68, 70, 72, 73, 87, 94,
85, 87, 88, 97, 98, 105, 112, 114, 97, 113, 114, 115, 119, 131, 135,
115, 130, 131, 144 136–9
ferraiolo 46, 48, 54 dyes 4, 67, 93, 96, 100–1
lucco 36–56
removal of 136–7, 139 effeminacy 116–27
codpieces 5, 49, 52, 71–2, 135, 137, 146 Eleonora di Toledo 17, 65, 94–6
colors 46, 67, 128 Elyot, Thomas 132
children’s clothes 110–12 embroidery 31, 32, 66, 79, 80, 87, 88,
clothing for sport 131, 135–6 113, 115, 119, 120, 130, 140,
fashionable 114 141, 142
gendered 102–4 Este, Isabella d’ 64, 101
liveries 29, 32
symbolism 54, 93 feast days 23, 27, 46, 129
theory 100, 120 religious processions 24–5
Conte, Gian Giacomo del 73 Ferdinand of Spain 136
convent trousseau 80 Ferdinando I de’ Medici 17, 23, 24,
Cosimo I de’ Medici 3, 4, 8, 36–7, 41, 52, 27, 32, 78–80, 85, 131, see also
54, 64, 93, 96, 103, 131, 140 marriage celebrations
clothing 17, 45, 48–9, 69, 71–2, clothing 31, 45, 49, 73
76, 97 sumptuary legislation 45–8, 54–5
illness 71 festival books 24, 27, 129
on marriage 21 Fioravanti, Leonardo 60, 70, 73, 116
as successor to republican era 36–7 Florence
sumptuary laws 18–19, 20–2, 45 academies
Cosimo II de’ Medici 25, 28, 69, 84, Accademia degli Alterati 88
87, 89 Accademia degli Umidi 144
court, Florentine Accademia delle arti del
aristocratization, process of 20, 42–3 Disegno 36
bureaucracy 43–4 Accademia Fiorentina 36
as magnificent 1, 23–4, 28–31, 129 churches
as modest 3 San Marco 25, 47
courtiers San Pietro Maggiore 129
competitive 11, 25, 129 palaces
crisis of masculinity 7 Palazzo Medici 38, 45
as merchants 42–3, 46, 65, 96 Palazzo Pitti 24
military skills 8, 96, 134 Palazzo Vecchio 31, 36, 44
socializing 75, 85 Villa Valfonda 31–5
Index 199
squares jerkins 9, 48–9, 73, 87, 88, 94, 5, 102,
Piazza di Santa Croce 88, 133–5 111, 135, 97–8
Piazza Duomo 44 Joanna of Austria 67, 75, 142
Florio, John 7, 52, 143 John the Fearless 106
football 131–9 Jonson, Ben 70
liveried 134
foreign textiles and dress 63–9 Knights of Malta 54
Foscari, Mario 42 Knights of Saint Stephen 10, 21, 22, 46,
Francesco I de’ Medici 8, 17, 22, 26, 52, 52, 54, 84, 113, 140
76, 94–5, 103, 106–7, 129, 139
Franzesi, Matteo 145 Landsknechts 52, 134
French fashions 3, 49,63, 69, 88, 113, Lapini, Agostino 75
114, 120 Lassels, Richard 132–3
funerals 74, 82–3 Leo XI 113
Lepanto, Battle of 8
Galilei, Galileo 50–1 liveries 28–35, 55, 81
Ganymede 119 logwood 101
Giambologna 19 London 63
Giannotti, Donato 117 Loreto, Holy House of 75, 80, 112
gifts 10, 28, 31, 61, 75, 79, 80, 94, 131 lucco, see cloaks
Gigli, Giacinto 116
gloves 1, 18, 19, 72, 79, 83, 85, 97, Machiavelli, Niccolò 5, 8
113, 146 Maffei, Francesco 125
Gondi family 47, 65, 69 Magalotti family 66–7, 71, 74,
Gonzaga family 64, 129, 134, 136 109–16, 127
Gozzadini family 61 Magistrato dei Pupilli 89
Grazzini, Anton Francesco magnificence 76–7
(Il Lasca) 129, 130, 141–2 manhood
Gualterotti, Raffaello 131 at court 7–8
Guardi, Francesco 137–8 failure of 116–26
Guazzo, Stefano 107, 121 multiform 6
guilds 4, 29, 39, 41, 68, 70, 71, 101 and nationhood 63
and physical strength 8, 132–4,
hair, long 5, 6, 7, 111, 120–1, 125 136–9
hangings, textile 80, 81, 82, 108 in youths 117–18
Harrison, William 63, 106 Manuzio, Aldo 52
headwear 83 Maria Maddalena of Austria 25, 28,
berets 6, 9, 32, 33, 52, 69, 72, 115, 56, 141
122, 136, 139 Marinella, Lucrezia 146
cappucci 6, 39, 46, 47, 52 marriage celebrations 23, 78–80
turbans 131, 141 Cosimo II and Maria Maddalena of
Henri IV 7, 12, 29, 31, 32 Austria 25, 28, 141
Henry VIII 28, 63, 77, 86, 87, 128, Ferdinando de’ Medici and Joanna of
131, 139 Austria 23, 24, 27, 28, 30–1,
Holmes, Randall 70 65, 73, 86, 128, 131, 132
homosexuality 118–19 Maria de’ Medici and Henri IV
honor 75–89 31–4
Hopfer, Daniel 52 Vincenzo Gonzaga and Eleonora de’
hose, see breeches Medici 134, 136
200 Index
Martelli, Niccolò 4, 130 Philip the Good of Burgundy 106
masques 28, 45, 85, 128, 128–31, 139–45 Piccolomini, Alessandro 100
Medici family Piombo, Sebastiano del 105
Alessandro I 1, 3, 4, 49 poems about dress 52, 71–2
Bernadetto d’Ottaviano 142 Pontano, Giovanni 120
Cosimo il Vecchio 5 Prata, Gian Giacomo 70
Eleonora 134 Priuli, Lorenzo 118
Filippo 26 purl 17, 67, 88
Francesco di Ferdinando I 144
Giovanni delle Bande Nere 48 Rabelais, François 72
Isabella 45 republican dress 18
Lorenzo il Magnifico 23, 38, 73, 140 republican myth 36–7
Maria 31–4, 147 Riccardi, Francesco and Riccardo 28,
Pietro 24, 85, 142 31–5, 52–3, 65–6, 74, 81, 83,
Mellini, Domenico 45, 48, 97 121, 137
merchants 4, 43, 60, 63, 65, 67–9 Ricci, Giuliano de’ 3, 46, 75, 85
clothing 106–7 Riccio, Pier Francesco 94
Michelino, Domenico di 38 Rome 82, 115
Milan 42, 54, 61, 63, 64,67, 69, 70, 73, Rosello, Lucio Paolo 76
83, 143 Rosetti, Giovanni Ventura 101
Mini, Paolo 43
Montaigne, Michel de 23, 115 Salviati family 25, 65, 69, 82, 85, 142
Monte, Orazio del 65 Salviati, Francesco (artist) 144
moresca Sanuti, Nicolosa 117
dance 145 Sassetti, Franceso 38
embroidery 141 second-hand dealers 131
Moryson, Fynes 63 servants’ clothing 31, 79, 83, 84, 86, 97
mourning dress 74, 82–3, 99, 106, 109 Settimanni, Giuseppe 47, 85, 136, 142
Muslim dress 141 Shakespeare, William 119, 127
mutande 72, 115, 142 shoes and shoemakers 33, 34, 41, 46,
111, 136, 139, 140
nationhood shopping 59–69
and the body 63 as a gendered activity 59–61, 103
and dress 63 moral concerns 4, 74
Neoplatonic love 124 by proxy 66–7
Neroni, Carlo 95 siege of Florence 133
Siena, war with 36, 79, 97, 133
Orsini, Paolo Giordano 134 slashing 33, 52, 73, 81, 97, 98, 102, 104,
Orsini di Pitigliano family 73, 74, 78–83 114, 120, 122, 135, 136
Otto di Guardia 52, 97 Soderini family 22
Ottomans 8, 140, 141 softness 121–2
soldiers’ clothing 28, 52–3, 98, 130,
Palmieri, Matteo 119, 121 134–7, 146
Panciatichi, Bartolomeo 101 Spanish fashions 3, 4, 7, 28, 48, 54, 63,
Panciatichi, Lucrezia 101 69, 106, 112, 114, 125
Parenti, Marco 120 Speroni, Sperone 64
perfume 1, 18, 60, 69, 79, 84–5, 113, 140 Spinola, Stefano 65
Petrucci, Antonio Maria 21 sporting clothing 136–9
Petrucci, Battista 117 sprezzatura 107
Index 201
Stradano, Giovanni 26, 44, 95, 96, 98 undergarments 52, 64, 72, 81, 95, 113,
stripes 128 115, 120, 139, 142
Strozzi, family 47, 65, 84, 129 university 49–50
Stuart, Mary 42 Urban VIII 112–13, 116
sumptuary legislation 10, 12, 17, 18–23,
45, 46, 55, 104, 106, 117 Valoriani, Luca 52
exemption from 20–2 Van Dyck, Anthony 102
Suttermans, Justus 56 Varchi, Benedetto 39, 144
Vasari, Giorgio 38, 84, 105, 144
tailors and tailoring 34, 39, 43, 62, Vecellio, Cesare 4, 27, 39, 49, 51, 102,
68–74, 83, 100, 112, 114–16 106, 110, 122–4, 135
Tarabotti, Arcangela 121 Velluti, Paolo 75
Tasso, Torquato 60, 125–6, 141 Venice 23, 42, 51, 59, 60, 64, 66–8, 122
tennis 130, 139 Venier, Sebastiano 52
textiles 4, 62–9 Verdi, Antonio di Ubertino 65
cotton 68, 100 vices 4, 118–21, 125
damask 39, 62, 64, 66, 98, 105, 109, Viggiani da Montone, Angelo 136
112 Villani, Giovanni 40–1
English wool 63 Vinta, Francesco 18, 19, 21
muslin 139 Vinta, Belissario 86
perpignan 66, 68, 112 virtues 7–8, 10, 13, 26, 43, 76, 88, 100,
rash 53, 65–6, 68 106, 107, 119, 120, 122, 127, 136
sarcenet 33, 39, 43, 64, 65, 97, 103, Visconti, Giovanni Pietro 61
105, 115
velvet 33, 39, 43, 46, 50, 66, 73, 75, women
81, 82, 85, 97, 98, 103, 105, 112, as consumers 59–60
114, 136, 144 participants at court festivities 25–8
Thomas, William 60 in portraiture 103–4
Titi, Tiberio 108, 109–10 relationship with fashion 101–2,
toga 36–56, 105 117, 121
Tornabuoni, Cosimo di Donato 61, 73
Tosini, Michele 105 youth 117–18, 122–4
Trissino, Giovan Giorgio 99
Turkish dress 63, 131, 140, 141, 145 zanni 130
Tyndale, William 122 Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de 61
202 Index
203
204
205
206
207
208

Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence - Nodrm

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence - Nodrm

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PRAISE FOR

Fashion and Masculinity

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

First published 2016

© Elizabeth Currie, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-4976-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover design: Sharon Mah

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Part One Fashioning the Medici Court 15

Part Two The Courtier as Consumer 57

Part Three Modes of Masculinity 91

0.1 Michele Tosini (Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio), Portrait of a

xii List of Illustrations

List of Illustrations xiii

Money and Measurements

1 lire = 20 soldi = 240 denari

ASF Archivio di Stato di Firenze

Clothing makes a revealing appearance in an account of Duke Alessandro de’

different individuals, viewing them in the light of contemporary attitudes toward

2 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

4 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

stopped wearing hoods (cappucci), which beforehand almost everyone used to

6 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

8 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

10 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

Through the prism of clothing, we see Florentines participating in similar forms of

12 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

18 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

The court on show 19

1.1 Spiders’ webs and legal loopholes

20 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

The court on show 21

It was considered unacceptable for wives to be forced to wear humbler clothing

Finding ourselves, my consort and I, with a notable quantity of clothing and

1.2 Seeing and being seen

22 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

The court on show 23

Florentine gentlewomen at balconies. He enthusiastically recorded: “After all, I

24 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

The participants’ heightened visibility and the overtones of voyeurism inherent

The court on show 25

sartorial display, in which the individual is subsumed in the crowd. If we

26 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

Arriving two by two, approximately 230 married women and gentlewomen,

As well as the Princesses, I had invited thirty-five gentlewomen and ladies

The court on show 27

While women’s festive dress tended to be a more elaborate and expensive

28 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

The court on show 29

30 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

1.4 The Riccardi host a party

The court on show 31

32 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

obviously intended to echo Ferdinando’s own appearance. The men were to be

The court on show 33

Very many seated gentlewomen leant forwards, ornamenting that very

34 Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence

The court on show 35

Given such preoccupations, it is hardly surprising that Cosimo I, and Ferdinando