Dressing Kinship and Allegiance in Sixteenth-Century European Costume Books

Abstract

Printed costume books of sixteenth-century Europe formed the earliest encyclopaedic references of world dress. Comprised of woodcut or engraved figures wearing dress representative of certain cities and nations, these publications sought to comprehend an everexpanding image of the world and its people. The genre developed in Europe during an age of exploration, nation-building and territorial shifts. Costume books appear to have responded to the confusion of fluctuating political borders and boundaries, and sought to stabilise patriotic allegiances through firm delineations of sartorial difference. This study closely examines two of the most significant costume publications of the century: Hans Weigel’s Habitus praecipuorum populorum (Nuremberg, 1577), and Cesare Vecellio’s Degli habiti antichi et moderni (Venice, 1590). Through a comparative study of their costume illustrations and perspectives, this research proposes the capacity of these publications to sustain patriotic identities in the early modern period. Concurrent with the genre was a pervasive concern that the volatile dress habits of one’s countrymen could disrupt ties of kinship. This study investigates how Weigel and Vecellio reacted to this concern from their distinct worldviews based in Nuremberg and Venice. Conceived as ideal German and Italian city-states, Nuremberg and Venice served as metonyms through which virtuous aesthetics could be applied nationwide. To counteract the damaging influence of foreign fashions that undermined patriotic affirmations, Weigel and Vecellio shaped exemplary models of their fellow citizens’ sartorial character which extended into their representations of Germany and Italy. Influenced by his residence in Nuremberg, a centre of Reformatory thought, Weigel grounded German sartorial character in modesty and moral virtue, and measured it against a contrasting picture of Italian sumptuousness. Vecellio, on the other hand, was centred in the mercantile city of Venice. He celebrated material wealth, and aligned Venetian, and more broadly Italian, sartorial identity with conspicuous consumption. To secure the patriotic aesthetics they developed, Weigel and Vecellio also appear to have challenged the sartorial and political hegemony of Habsburg Spain. Spanish-possessed territories across Europe influenced the spread of the austere and conservative Spanish aesthetic. Their representations of Spaniards apparelled in simple, shapeless garb steer clear of depicting the Spanish source of this popular aesthetic, apparently working to destabilise Spanish hegemony. The costume book demonstrates a protectionist concern to uphold distinctions of dress across Europe, and, as a consequence, guarantee legible, visual expressions of patriotic allegiance.