Classical Dress and the Italian Renaissance

A great deal has been written lately about the time spirit as it is reflected in clothes. In the shape of the vaulted roof of the Crystal Palace, for example, it is interesting to discover the crinoline of 1851; and the further discovery that both reflect the materialism, or the piety, or the wealth of their period is bound to produce a warm glow of amused superiority. But materialism and piety, and even wealth, are present at almost every period of the world’s history. Works of art, including clothes, can give us far more precise and complex information about the past than easy generalizations of this kind. Like angels on the point of a needle, an infinity of implications can be accommodated in a single pen-stroke by Leonardo, or Rubens, or Rossetti. A sumptuary law passed in Florence in 1356 forbidding servant women to wear buttons above the elbow is a window through which we can examine the state of mind of Florence, not only towards buttons and servant girls, but also towards the highly-complicated phenomenon of emergent humanism.