Using Bruegel Paintings to Research Renaissance Period Clothing

This post is about the Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/1530 – 1569) and why his paintings are useful for researching Renaissance clothing. In summary:

1. Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted lower and middle class people, while many of his contemporaries focused on the wealthy and upper class people.
   
2. Bruegel painted accurate, detailed scenes of people going about everyday activities.
   
3. Bruegel painted people, even historical figures, dressed in the clothing of the 1500s.
   

The Peasant Wedding painted in 1568 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. [Public domain], via Wikimedia.(1)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a talented painter of the Northern Renaissance. His paintings feature peasants and middle-class people during the late 1500s in Flanders. Flanders was a region in Northern Europe that included parts of what is today north France and Belgium and south Netherlands.(2)

Location of Flanders in 1500s.(3)

Flanders was a major economic center of Europe and many trade goods passed through the region. It was the equal, in power and wealth, of the Italian city-states. As observed in The World of Bruegel, “The creation of a great age in art . . . seems to require vast supplies of manpower and money. The Flemish cities, through their flourishing trade, had accumulated enough of both to nourish a brilliant artist flowering.”(4) This wealth resulted in a Northern Renaissance separate from the Italian Renaissance, though occurring during the same time period.

In the 1400s, Northern painters were being commissioned by Italians to paint portraits and pictures. By the time Pieter Bruegel the Elder came along in the 1500s, foreign painters were being lured to Flanders in a manner similar to the visits foreign painters paid to Italy. One thing that foreign artists sought in Flanders was the technique of vibrant colour where “Depth was suggested not by a geometrical calculation of perspective (an Italian trick), but by the gradation of hues, achieved by the painstaking application of multiple layers of paint and gloss.”(5)

Northern Renaissance art was distinctly different from the art of the Italian Renaissance. While artists of the Italian Renaissance strove to portray the ideal human, Northern painters portrayed humanity in its rougher and less perfectly beautiful terms: “. . . the Northern masters painted as they did . . . from the insight that perceives that truth can sometimes be better conveyed by a pale, awkward figure than by a gloriously graceful one.”(6)

In many of his pictures, Pieter Bruegel the Elder portrays these grittier and more realistic details of life. This is one of the reasons why his artwork is so useful to the researcher of Renaissance period clothing. In addition, Bruegel focused on peasants and middle-class people, providing valuable details of their clothing. Reportedly, Bruegel “often attended village festivities and took pleasure “in observing the behavior of the peasants in eating, drinking, dancing, frolicking about, wooing and other droll carryings-on . . .”(7) His focus was unusual because most painters of his time, and certainly, most Italian painters focused instead on their wealthy patrons and the nobility in all their glorious and colorful fabrics. Bruegel did travel to Italy for a couple of years around 1552.(8)

Bruegel’s paintings, even paintings of Biblical scenes, were placed in his century in Flanders. This is not unusual for his time and place. As Foote notes, “That it seemed logical to Bruegel to dress Biblical characters in contemporary costumes reveals a 16th Century attitude toward the past that is not easily shared today. Unlike 20th Century man, Bruegel’s countrymen were not separated from preceding ages by an abyss of feeling or an acute awareness of intervening technological growth. For them, the past was a time, not very different from the present, when the common folk must have lived much as they were living in the 16th Century. They had only a vague knowledge of geography and a murky notion of whatever centuries-long changes in costume and custom had taken place.”(9)

Also, key to interpreting Northern Renaissance paintings for clothing details is the observation that “. . . Northern painters were growing more and more worldly in their ways of handling the Bible. In the first place, the Flemish fondness for realistic detail was being emphasized more and more, to the point where Biblical incidents were often subordinated to general scenes of everyday affairs. This was particularly true of Bruegel . . .”(10)

Below are more pictures by Bruegel:

The Peasant Dance painted in 1568 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. [Public domain], via Wikimedia.(1)

The Peasant and the Birdnester painted in 1568 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. [Public domain], via Wikimedia.(1)

The Land of Cockaigne painted in 1567 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. [Public domain], via Wikimedia.(ref)

Sources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder
2. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., “Flanders,” 31 December 2010 [on-line article]; available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders; internet; accessed 18 January 2011.
3. Adapted from map of Europe by Google, 2011 [on-line map]; available from google.com; internet; accessed 12 February 2011.
4. Timothy Foote and eds., The World of Bruegel c. 1525 – 1569 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1975), 21.
5. Paul Arblaster, A History of the Low Countries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 105.
6. Timothy Foote and eds., The World of Bruegel . . ., 18.
7. Herwig Guratzsch, Dutch and Flemish Painting (New York: Vilo, 1981), 116.
8. Herwig Guratzsch, Dutch and Flemish Painting . . ., 261.
9. Timothy Foote and eds., The World of Bruegel . . ., 94-95.
10. Timothy Foote and eds., The World of Bruegel . . ., 95.

Thank you for reading my blog about Renaissance period clothing!

Tips for Renaissance Clothing Research

Finding out what historically accurate Renaissance clothing looks like can be a bit difficult. There are thousands of resources available on the internet and no doubt thousands of books on the subject as well. Knowing which of these resources are accurate can be difficult. This post includes some things I have learned while trying to find information about clothing worn during the Renaissance period.

#1: Primary sources are always most important. These sources are first hand accounts by the people actually living during the period. Look at artwork, sculptures, and effigies created during the Renaissance period to see what people of the time were wearing. (1) Even original writings may refer to clothing, if you can decipher them. Keep in mind that artists may have added fantasy elements to the costumes their subjects were wearing. Thus, not all artwork will show historically accurate Renaissance clothing as it was being worn at the time. Keep in mind that the color of the clothing in artwork may not accurately reflect the actual color of the clothing worn. For example, Amy Butler Greenfield notes in her book, A Perfect Red, “Peasants sometimes appear brightly dressed in medieval and Renaissance works of art, such as the duc de Berry’s lavish Très Riches Heures. This is less a reflection of peasant wardrobes than of the fact that wealthy patrons could afford precious pigments and expected their artists to use them.”(pg 9)

So how does a person know whether an artist’s renderings are accurate? By looking at other paintings during that time period it is possible to see the trends in clothing worn. So if a particular style is depicted multiple times by different artists, then it seems more likely that it is accurate. Keep in mind information about colors, status, and social traditions.

Also, some knowledge of a particular artist is useful. Knowing the country and city where the artist worked and grew up may provide information about the elements and style of clothing in a geographic region. For example, say you want to know what men wore in the early 1500s in Florence, Italy. Then look at pictures painted by artists working in Florence, Italy in the early 1500s. In addition, knowing whether the artist frequently indulged in fantastical imaginings and depictions will indicate the trustworthiness of the clothing depicted.

Now the question arises of where to find and view these primary sources. The library is always a good place to start. Search in art history books and magazines, books about museum collections, and books about the Renaissance. They usually feature pictures of artwork completed during the Renaissance and thus show Renaissance clothing. Period artwork can also be viewed on the internet. Search for Renaissance art, English Renaissance art, or whatever area strikes your fancy. Searching for websites about Renaissance clothing will also result in references to period artwork.

#2: I’ve also found secondary sources interpreting the primary sources to be very useful. The reason is that once I started looking at the primary sources, I still didn’t really know what I was seeing. Are the people depicted upper class or lower class? How are their clothes put together? Is it a summer or winter fashion? Is it everyday clothing or party clothing? Interpretations are always useful. For example, in 1510 Vittore Carpaccio painted a picture called Two Venetian Ladies on Terrace. When I first looked at this picture I thought the sleeves were made of puffy white fabric sewn to the darker patterned upper fabric. It wasn’t until a week later when I actually saw a present-day renaissance costume showing the sleeves (http://www.festiveattyre.com/gallery/ghirlandaio/index.html) did I realize that the puffy white fabric is the separate underclothing or chemise and that the darker patterned sleeves were tied over the chemise. Suddenly, references about detachable sleeves that I had vaguely comprehended earlier in other secondary sources made perfect sense. What gives me confidence about the costume’s accuracy at festiveattyre.com is how the Renaissance paintings from which the dress is designed are shown as well. A good secondary source will refer back to the primary source from which assumptions are drawn.

Evaluating the accuracy of secondary sources can be interesting. One method of evaluation is to review the opinions of other people about a source, while presuming in a hopeful manner that they know what they are talking about. For example, many books on the subject of Renaissance clothing have been reviewed by consumers at amazon.com. I would be inclined to trust most of the information in a book with twenty opinions giving the book a top rating over a book with three mediocre opinion ratings. Also, popular books that are referred to by multiple costuming sources as accurate increases my perceived value of the historical accuracy of those particular books.

The websites for re-enactment organizations, like that of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. (www.sca.org), contain links to pages about Renaissance clothing and other historical costumes. A source referred to by the SCA gives me greater confidence in the accuracy of the information. As with all research, viewing a large variety of sources will improve the researcher’s ability to evaluate information accuracy.

Secondary sources are pretty easy to find. Again, go to the library and look for Renaissance clothing, historical clothing, and historical costumes. Run an internet search on the same key words. If you are looking for a particular type of clothing, then run a search on that topic specifically.

That’s all for now and as always – thank you for visiting my blog about Renaissance clothing.

Notes:

(1) In this case an effigy is the sculpted likeness of a person placed on the top of his or her grave.

Sources:

Amy Butler Greenfield A Perfect Red (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005).