What would you have said if say the Spanish royal family commissioned a painting with family members depicted as saints? Sacrilegious? Blasphemous? Awesome? Tasteless? Pious? I'm sure all these thoughts rushed through the heads of the citizens of Florence when the Medici family presented this painting to the world:


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Finally got around to update my website today. Because I know there are many of my LJ friends taking interest in the crimson Pisa dress and the similar funeral dress of Eleonora di Toledo, I wanted to share some Florentine portraits I recently found, depicting similar style of dress. There are many more than those posted underneath, but I tried to ( Read more... )

Because Bella at Realm of Venus came up with an "Idle Hands" challenge in October, I just felt a strong urge to make a 16th century muff ( Read more... )

Making another saccoccia, just because I like my mustard one so much and I want more, more, more! This time I'm trying out ricamo. Today that means a special embroidery technique, but in the 16th century it was the name of tucking down cords in a decorative pattern. It was a common way of decorating guards and bands in 16th century clothes, but was ( Read more... )

If anyone has a really good memory, you might remember the blue Florentine dress, the peacock dress, I started on ages ago. Like, two or three years ago. It is for the most based on the pattern of Eleonora di Toledo's funeral dress, and partly on the crimson Pisa dress. Both were made in the early 1560s. For some reason I just never got the skirt ( Read more... )

I just realized something...

...I'm going to Florence tomorrow.... will be staying for a couple of days... and I will be visiting the Pitti Palace.

AKA I WILL FINALLY GET TO SEE ELEONORA DI TOLEDO'S FUNERAL DRESS!!!!! OMG!!!

I'm in Rome. I've had the best Lazio style pizza you can dig up. The temperature is perfect. And now I'm reading about Bronzino. In other words, life is good.

Excpect many rambling updates... Like this one: two interesting notes about some of Bronzino's portraits:


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It appears that there is an extant Italian 1520s dress out thereI've previously posted about what seemed to be a skirt or skirt front I found in a book; that of Isabella of Aragon. Too lazy to get the right HTML tags, so here is the direct link ( Read more... )

I guess none of you wondered.... This list is more for my own sake ( Read more... )

From realm_of_venus: Insanely good closeups of Bronzinos portrait of Eleonora di Toledo and Giovanni:

http://www.haltadefinizione.com/magnifier.jsp?idopera=13&lingua=en

Trust me when I say insanely good. You can see every brush stroke, you can see the small golden ( Read more... )