infodumping all the historical fashion knowledge I learned while research for my 16th century toxic vampire yuri (here on tumblr, here on ao3) because I need to talk about it or I'll go insane
So, I didn't have a specific time period in mind when I began thinking about the fic, and actually I probably would have aimed much later if I hadn't found specific artworks that I really liked for this time period. In general I'm a romanticism girlie, and I find a lot of renaissance art to be just not that good. But, I came across this painting:
This is Portrait of a Young Woman by the Italian mannerist Parmigianino, dating to more or less the middle of the 1530s. Nobody really knows who the woman in the painting is, but a lot of scholars speculate her to be the courtesan Antea, who was Parmigianio's mistress.
There are a lot of interesting things about her clothing. For one, the cuffs of her chemise are decorated with some really fine Spanish blackwork, which is quite simply a type of embroidery using thread died with a specific type of black. Because this type of dye is highly corrosive, we actually don't have any (that I know of) extant pieces of blackwork. What we do have, though, is scarletwork. This is basically just the same embroidery done in scarlet thread, and though I don't know this for sure, I would guess would be less expensive since black dye was one of, if not the, most expensive at the time (which is why so many royals wore black).
The next thing I find very interesting is her apron. Aprons were not very popular among the upper classes at this time, and if you look at many of the paintings of this era, you just won't find them. However, aprons were popular, as they had been for centuries. It was just that noble women had no need for them.
But obviously, the apron that Antea is wearing is not actually functional. It's heavily pleated, it's white, it is blackworked. Just a very strange detail of her outfit.
Another interesting detail is her bodice. The orange brocade around her neck is a partlet, which was used to keep warmth and modesty, and was tucked into the neckline of the bodice. But look at wear her partlet tucks in, that bodice is really fucking low. Her tits are spilling out of that thang. I'm kind of inclined to say that this is some quirk of the painting, because I don't even know how that bodice would support her as low cut as it is.
And finally. Her hair. I looked for SOOOO long to figure out what was in her hair. So, married women at the time covered their hair, full stop, though Antea here doesn't really have a hair covering. This makes sense if we take for granted that she is the actual historical Antea and a courtesan, but there is the issue of that little gem. However, if you look really closely at the painting you can see that she *is* wearing some sort of hair net contraption. This would be a lenza, which I read about in the context of the 1490s rather than 1530s. It's possible that it was more popular among lesser nobility, or that it just wasn't very popular at all and she was just rocking on her own.
So, some of you may have noticed/know that a lot of my inspiration from Pecco's story comes from the poem My Last Duchess, which is like, my favorite poem ever. My Last Duchess is about Lucrezia de Medici, who was rumored to have been poisoned by her husband, but actually probably just died of tuberculosis (rip). It makes sense that I would draw inspiration from her outfit.
Now the only problem is that I HATE this style of dress. Nasty, no good. Stupid as hell. But, for the visual learners out there, this is the style of dress Pecco was wearing while she was at the Duke's court.
Now my little sneaky out for having Pecco not dressed all stupid like was to have Marc dress her in one of her dresses. Because I am a genuis. And now, lucky for me, Lucrezia had a sister who was actually meant to marry her husband before dying of malaria.
And look at that! What a nice dress! Now, it's not for sure if this portrait is actually of Lucrezia's sister Maria, but it's generally accepted that it is a posthumous depiction of her and her little brother who died years prior. Now, Maria died in 1557, but the dress she is wearing is not anything like the dresses worn in Italy in 1557, those are much more like the one Lucrezia is wearing. Also, Marias brother died when he was 15, and the child in that painting is very much not a 15 year old, so it's not super clear what time period of Maria this was meant to be, for lack of a better term. Probably this is a 1540s dress, based on the ruffled sleeves.
Now, why would Marc have a dress from the 1540s when she is wearing 1530s fashion. I don't know. Mind your business.
Now Vale I went really old school with, old school meaning the 1490s, with La Belle Ferronnière
Again, it isn't clear when this painting was done, but we have a range between 1490 and 1496. It was probably more towards the 1496 end based on her fashion. So, if Vale is 46 when she is turned in 1496 that makes her 107 at the time of the fic, which I thought was sufficiently vampy
Now there is very little mystery about her outfit because we basically know all their is to know about gamurras, even though I don't think there are any extant garments. Also they were pretty simple construction wise because they are older, and they didn't have the same ttypes of techniques at the 1550s.
Basically, a gamurra was nothing more than a kirtle with sleeves that tied on and used the chemise to create puffs. Usually some sort of overdress would be worn, but the woman in this portrait doesn't wear one. The good thing about the gamurra when it comes to the fic and vale is that they were a lot more fun with the colors in terms of mixing and matching, so I could have her wear a yellow gamurra with blue sleeves and it be historically accurate.
