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dress of the Duchess of Parma, together with a sketch by a good local painter, which Vecellio describes and adds:21*

Sotto costumano il verducato, overo faldiglia, qual tien con arte la sottana larga à modo di campana, che torna molto commodo al caminare, ò danzare: & hora si costumano per tutta l’Italia questa sopra detta faldiglia.

Thus, the bell-shaped farthingale (fig. 8) had by 1590 become the general wear of the upper classes in Italy, as it was already in Spain, France, and England.

Of even greater interest is the evidence of Vecellio’s relations with a fashion house in Venice. In his general account of the housedresses of the noble ladies of his time, he mentions the rich modern materials and especially silk brocades of four and even of six colors, admirably woven:22*

Di queste opere si belle è stato in Venetia auttore M. Bartholomeo Bontempele dal Calice, il quale alle volte con le mostre, ch’ egli fa di questi drappi de’ quali lui è stato inventore, mostra la grandezza dell’ingegno suo, la quale è accompagnata da una incomparabile liberalità, e bontà, per ilche è molto amato dalla nobiltà Venetiana, & da molti Principi d’Italia & in specie dal Serenissimo Duca di Mantova. Nella sua buttiga dove molti Signori e Principi mandano a fornirsi, & fino al serraglio del Gran Turco, si veggono broccati à opera di tutte le sorte d’oro e di argento.

It may seem strange that within 20 years of the Battle of Lepanto (1571) Venetian fabrics were exported from Bontempele’s sign of “The Chalice” to Constantinople to compete with the noted velvets of Brusa. After describing the clothes of the best dressed merchants, Vecellio does not hesitate to mention his

friends Master Paolo, spice merchant and vendor of the celebrated Theriakon (known in England as Venice treacle), of the sign of “The Ostrich,” and Bernadino Pillotto, seller of pictures and other ornaments.

At this time there were also woodcuts illustrating hairstyles. The exact date of Christoph Krieger’s Varie Acconciature di Teste (fig. 10) is not known. While Vecellio had remarked that the Venetian ladies were imitating the goddess Diana and surmounting their tresses with two little curls like horns, Krieger made illustrations that were even more fanciful. Each lady bears the name of a city and a distinguishing quality or temperament, but there is no more reason to connect the styles with local fashions than to believe

that the ladies of Ferrara were bold or those of Todi capricious.

Indeed, this series would not be considered in connection with fashion plates were it not for a conversation in Ben Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels, first acted in 1600 by the Children of the Queen’s Chapel. Philautia addresses her friend Phantaste (Act 2, scene 1):

This certainly suggests that one of the little eyases, perhaps even Nathaniel Field or Salathiel Pavy, was wearing a fantastic wig designed after one of the Krieger woodcuts.

In the early 17th century there was nothing published in northern Europe that was closely related to the fashion trade. There are engravings of costume figures such as the Sieben Edelleute verschiedener Nation by Willem Buytewech (Amsterdam, ca. 1614), which are charmingly drawn but, as to costume, idealized and exaggerated.23 The same criticism applies to the

later series by J. de St. Igny, especially in Le Jardin de la Noblesse, and to Jacques Callot’s La Noblesse,24 which depict military and court dress with less caricature than most of this master’s work. Among the engravings of Abraham Bosse, there is a series (fig. 11) relating to the sumptuary law of 1633 by which Louis XIII, at the instigation of Cardinal Richelieu, tried to curb the extravagance and simplify the dress of the ladies and gentlemen of his court. This series is worth mentioning as a record of the dress at this period, but neither these engravings nor the better known “Galerie du Palais” (fig. 12) are, strictly speaking, fashion plates which provide information for dressmakers or wearers of clothes.25