Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550

Abstract

Covering a period that witnessed the flowering of the Renaissance and the major expansion of the Italian silk industry, this volume examines the Italian silk fabrics depicted in paintings from Italy, England and the Netherlands over the course of 250 years. Who wore silk? the price of silk fabrics, artists' clothing and studio props -- Painters and the design of woven silks -- Cloth of gold in fourteenth-century Sienese and Florentine paintings -- Painting velvet in Italy and the Netherlands during the first half of the fifteenth century -- The transmission of textile designs in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish paintings -- Decorative silks in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italian paintings -- Textiles in portraits in Venice, Florence, and England -- Convention or reality? reading textiles in paintings -- A life of their own: the longevity and changing use of silk fabrics -- Nineteenth-century English textiles and wallpapers designed after fabrics shown in medieval and Renaissance paintings -- Appendices. Looms, textile types and historic terminology (includes glossaries of weaving, dress and painting terms, measurements and money) ; Letter of William Makefyrr, 1506 ; Vestments woven with Christ and St. Thomas in Rome and Florence ; Copes with named benefactors with dates attached, extracted from the ninety-one copes in the inventory of St. Paul's Cathedral, London ; The terms paonazzo and morello ; Letter concerning an order of clothing for the Contessa de Melzo, 1475 ; Carpets at the early Tudor court ; Abridged genealogy of the Medici family -- Tables. Selvedge colours on Italian silk fabrics, 1376-1466 ; Loom widths of Italian silks, thirteenth-sixteenth centuries ; Weaving prices specified by the Florentine silk guild, 1429 ; Prices of silk and wool from a wardrobe account of Edward IV, 1480 ; Prices of silk purchased for the great wardrobe of Henry VIII, 1533-1534 ; Textiles and clothing given to Dürer, purchased by him or given by him, on his journey to the Netherlands, 1520-1521 ; Neri di Bicci's Ricordanze: purchases of cloth, December 1453-January 1461 ; Extracts from the coronation account of Edward VI, 1547.