courts. To illustrate the account of his exploits, he had portraits drawn and painted of the different princes and kings, portraying each not with his crown and scepter but with the distinctive fashion of his court. This diary—not printed until the 19th century—was circulated in manuscript and shows, in addition to the interest in personal portraits, the growing interest in the dress of individuals.

Although the earlier painters of the Italian Renaissance recorded the decorative and often exotic dress

of their times, their portraits of individuals consisted in the main of medallic heads and busts. It was the German portrait painters who, to a greater extent, recorded and disseminated the knowledge of fashions. Hans Burgkmair painted himself on the occasions of his betrothal in 1497 and his marriage in 1498,5 and in the 16th century Hans Holbein the younger noted

on his drawings the dress material and colors of the clothes worn by his sitters.6 Even a much less distinguished person, Matthäus Schwartz, a clerk employed by the banking firm of the Fuggers at Augsburg, had a book prepared showing the clothes he wore at what he considered to be the most important stages of his career.7

The first person to have such pictures printed was Sigmund von Herberstein, who deserves detailed consideration.8 In his diplomatic career, which extended over 30 years, Sigmund von Herberstein served three Emperors—Maximilian I, Charles V, and Ferdinand I. He was a student of Russian history and an outstanding linguist, who, having learned Wendish as a boy, found no difficulty with the Polish and Russian languages. When, in his old age, he printed his memoirs, he doubtlessly aimed at giving information on how an ambassador should conduct himself and to this end included illustrations of what he actually had worn, which in many copies of the memoirs are carefully colored by hand.9 Concerning his journey in 1517 (fig. 1), he states that “In these robes I was sent on the embassy to Sigismund King of Poland,” no doubt the fashion for the formal dress of an envoy. On his first embassy to the Grand Duke of Moscow in 1517 he was presented with a Russian fur-lined robe, but on his second embassy in 1526, he received a greater distinction (fig. 2): “Having been sent a second time by the Emperor Ferdinand then Archduke to Moscow, the Grand Duke bestowed upon me these robes.” This dress was far more sumptuous than the formal black velvet gown which he normally wore for embassies to the Spanish and other courts.

By 1541 there was a change in fashion (fig. 3). Von Herberstein wrote: “We two orators were sent in this dress to the Turkish Emperor,” and it was in this dress that von Herberstein, suffering perhaps from arthritis, complained of having great difficulty

in bowing low enough to kiss the hand of the seated Sultan. The imperial fashion of breeches and hose might have seemed indelicate to Suleiman “the Magnificant,” who gave the ambassadors other robes (fig. 4): “The Emperor of the Turks presented us also with these robes.” The long-gowned costume shown here should have been completed by a turban, but von Herberstein evidently would not allow himself to be depicted in this.

Von Herberstein seems to have kept his robes in his palace in Vienna, along with his collection of Russian and oriental weapons, illustrated in his history of Russia:10 these, and stuffed specimens of Aurochs, then almost extinct, and European bison, formed the first museum of costume and natural history on record.

With the development of ceremonial, some of the princely courts of Germany had illustrations prepared of what should be worn by the officials of different grades (fig. 5). Several copies of each of these Hofkleiderbücher—books giving rules or standards for correct court dress—were no doubt issued, but none seems to have been printed for the general information of the public. The first printed book on tailoring, by Juan de Alcega, was published in 1588 and includes diagrams showing how to cut ceremonial robes from the roll of cloth,11 but there are no illustrations of what the completed garments should look like.