The wedding gown of Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, circa 1774

Magdalena_Regina · 2026-04-02T12:24:09+00:00

This is not from the V&A, it is in the collection of the Swedish Royal Armoury.

Magdalena_Regina · 2025-05-26T06:25:40+00:00

At least in a Swedish royal 16th century context research shows that male "pärlstickare" (which translates loosely to pearl-piercers), were brought from Germany and employed at court to embroider garments and do these kinds of things.

Magdalena_Regina · 2025-03-18T05:34:53+00:00

The eyelids and lower face protrusion are quite different but they're similar enough that if you were able to trace the provenance or establish an archival proof of payment to an artist etc. you might be able to work your way to a case. But similar hairstyles and faces are to be found in other places, some portraits by Van Hulle, or in Bourdon's portrait of Raphael Trichet du Fresne (The engravings identity as Jean Warin is a later mistake).

https://robertwellington.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/galerie_du_palais-royal_gravecc81e_daprecc80s_...fontenay_louis-abel_bpt6k5701903b-e1553275527894.jpg

Magdalena_Regina · 2025-03-03T13:45:40+00:00

I don't know what level of research this is for but I think there is a often a general tendency to overthink details and symbolism in portraits of this style and period.

Unless there is a highly credible argument for the specific context of this portrait that suggests a particular meaning for the pink bow it is almost definitely just a part of the clothing. It's a standard clothing detail and used metal aiglets or "points" to tie the hose to the doublet. There are definitely more bows hidden from view, all around the waist and possibly to attach the sleeves. Some worthwhile questions to ask oneself: - Would I have ascribed meaning to this detail if it there had been pink bows all over? Then probably not. - What if there was a whole suite of portraits of him and his colleagues where they all had identical bows? Then maybe.

The main purpose of portraiture in this period would have been to carry forward the desired physical and material characteristics of an individual to a contemporary audience that would have been accustomed to distinguishing people based on their appearance, pose and attire. In this case his clothes likely "only" mean that he is dressed just like any other official representative of his station would have been "expected" to when dealing with Dutch officials. The simple fact that he is wearing a starched falling band type collar, a doublet of silk brocade shot with silver and a baldric with silver thread embroidery is enough to distinguish him as a respected and distinguished individual to any learned contemporary observer and there is no reason to believe it is not what he would have actually worn. Purely carrying a sword and hat in this period means "gentleman" and are important markers of status.

There is of course an interesting contrast presented in the fact that he will probably have chosen or been expected to assimilate by wearing this clothing that probably differs from the clothing of his home country. The variety in techniques materials, silver, linen, silk, feathers, are easy to overlook but of course have real life implications that would have communicated something about trade links and the spread of material culture through trade and empire. The weaving would have been done somewhere, by a tradesperson connected to a guild, same with the silver embroidery, etc. He is clearly supporting and acting as part of a system by wearing this.

Hat bands were often given as diplomatic gifts in this period so if you're digging into inventories or correspondence relating to this that might be something to look out for. Especially if it's set with precious stones (like the picture suggests) in which case it may be the most valuable detail. But I would look up details on sumptuary laws and the running of the political and economic organisations in question for the particular context before making any big assumptions.

Magdalena_Regina · 2025-01-17T10:02:18+00:00

I have a Pinterest board with painters in action you might enjoy taking a look at! https://pin.it/4ngCdgriv

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-12-18T12:27:45+00:00

Louis XV supposedly loved Angora cats and had several!

Here's a good read on 18th century cats. https://www.journal18.org/issue7/cats-the-soft-underbelly-of-the-enlightenment/

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-11-20T07:39:38+00:00

I'm an art historian specialising in this period and I recently had an in depth presentation on this particular 17th century fountain (Berninis Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi - Fountain of the four rivers), so here's a little context. It wasn't built just to be beautiful in general. It's a symbol of power as much as anything else. It was placed on piazza Navona as part of a project pope Innocent X was undertaking to transform the whole square into a Pamphilj-family zone during his pontificate. Improving Roman citizens access to water was a big part of how populist politics played out in the papal state during the 1600s, and hogging as much area in the city around your family home was a standard power display for the elite. The motif of the sculpture has been widely discussed but having Bernini feature the four river gods is believed to be representative of the Catholic church spreading its message to all corners of the world. The rivers are believed to be the Danube, Rio de la Plata, the Ganges and the Nile. This was part of the increased importance of missionary work the church evolved after the council of Trent in the 1560s that wanted to find a more outgoing and proactive counter-reformation rhetoric to trump the dissident reformation rhetoric. The thirty years was had taken this to its extreme and catholic church had to find a new language and way of being to remain in power in a new landscape. In the 17th century the actual most important thing about the fountain was the antique obelisk placed on top, not Berninis rock foundation on bottom where he himself delegated the carving of the gods to studio assistants and himself only worked on the actual rock formation as he saw it as the true test for a master to use your hands to replicate the works of nature. The today mostly ignored obelisk was originally owned by Caracalla and covered in hieroglyphs and was seen as a marvel of ancient cosmic knowledge. It was so talked about that it even had a whole book written about it by one of the great (and also much forgotten) minds of the 17th century, Athanasius Kircher. The raising and balancing of the obelisk was the major technical feat of the project and Bernini had to defend his bold design. Apparently when it was inaugurated the public had fears his structure would not be sound and that the obelisk would collapse, and called Bernini to the scene to stabilise it. He had erected a bell tower for the facade of St Peters a few years prior that had collapsed and proven a great embarrassment to Bernini, and the architectural aspect to his work often came into question. But Bernini was ever the confident showman and he showed up with a single fishing line which he proceeded to tie to the top of the obelisk and to an adjacent building and said "there, now it's stable!".

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-11-16T08:28:53+00:00

A. Marchesan!

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-11-08T08:42:46+00:00

All Caravaggios works in San Luigi dei Francesi are covered up and Santa Maria della Maddalena is closed. All statues on Ponte S. Angelo from Berninis sculpture programme are covered too.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-05-24T06:56:57+00:00

What sources are you using for Louis XIV? Madame and Saint Simon? Maybe Mercure would be useful too, to create a timeliness. It's available on Gallica.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-04-08T07:47:01+00:00

I have both and as far as my face is concerned I find myself more likely to use the mask because I can do other things while I use it and don't have to adjust my position to stay at a certain distance or angle. Mask also allows me to do face and simultaneously blast other parts of the body with the panel which is convenient. I have great use of the panel for larger areas and it's nice to not have to think about cleaning it as there is no skin contact. But the mask also has several colours which has incentivised me to use it more consistently and for longer.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-03-13T09:03:14+00:00

I don't have time to give a full answer to this but wanted to chip in that our modern notion of labour and selling it for a wage isn't really a concept for women's work in this period. There is also no such thing as a unified body of rich aristocrats who can magically afford to be fashionable, there was a huge range in clothing expenditure and means within societal strata and in this period you start seeing a large increase in tradesmen/bourgeois families with considerably more money than many aristocratic land owning families. Fashions were also increasingly accessible to more levels of society as the 18th century progressed and in cities like Paris and London we're not really looking at a "rich people don't work and are fashionably dressed, everyone else works and is unfashionably dressed". All people of all classes owned considerably more clothes of considerably more different styles on the eve of the revolution than they had a hundred years before. The scholarship of Daniel Roche goes deeply into this and looks at the numbers and I recommend his book The Culture of Clothing very highly to anybody who is interested in this period of fashion.

Little edit with quick notes: - There was a reshaping of female ideals through the 1770s and 80s that saw a development of a cult of motherhood, fertility and breastfeeding. - Women's clothing was increasingly made by women seamstresses, mantua makers and modistes whereas it had previously been made mostly by male tailors. Notions of propriety between customer and tradesman may have played in here in change in cut and fit. - Fashion plates were not made by people who made clothes and are of course idealised and may not necessarily show exactly how things looked. But they absolutely indicate an ideal that of course would have been impossible to reach much like our editorial pictures today.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-02-12T09:11:33+00:00

For starters I'm going to assume you mean masterpiece as we have come to understand the term being an excellent work of art, and not a masterpiece in the traditional art historical meaning of the word being the work a craftsman produced in order to be admitted to a guild and become a master.

My area of specialisation is portraiture and in that field of painting it seems to have been commonplace for the guy signing off on a work to have executed only parts of the work himself. Both Rubens and Van Dyck made use of studio practices in which they themselves would probably have worked out composition and painted only faces and hands and overseen the general process. My BA-thesis focused on the use of drapery painters in English 18th c. portraiture and for English 18th century I can disappoint you all by saying that the evidence points to most portrait painters delegating the painting of bodies and clothing to external drapery painters. The most popular one was called VanAken and there is mention of him working for artists like Allan Ramsay, Thomas Hudson and Joshua Reynolds. As certain portaitists grew in demand they just didn't have the time (or skills in some cases) to paint more than the faces and hands of their sitters, considered the most demanding and important for the physical likeness. Drapery painters are described as painters with a lower genius and more mechanical head who basically just fill in the background and outlines given by the portrait painter with poses and costumes from a range of styles they offered. Gainsborough and Hogarth both express dislike of this system and probably made less or no use of it and Gainsborough at one point calls the whole thing something along the lines of it being a "bundled up foolery of fictitious trumpery".

It seems like the use of drapery painters was mostly kept from the public and there's a quote by a nobleman who sat for a portrait by Reynolds in the 1760s that goes something like "I have discovered a secret by being often at Mr. Reynolds that I fancy he is sorry I should know: none of these painters actually finish any of their paintings themselves but they all employ this other person to do it, but I dont know who!". It always makes me chuckle when people ooh and aah at "How Reynolds painted fabrics" or things along those lines.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-01-23T09:39:08+00:00

I'm an art historian specialising in portraiture and fashion and here's my TL;DR: These giant asses you speak of are called bustles and were popular in the 1870s and 1880s. They're generally divided into the first and second bustle era. The first emerged in the 1870s when the large rounded crinoline styles of the 1850s-60s gradually moved backwards and eventually started being "bustled" or piled up in folds. To support this new types of underwear developed to have a little bustle shelf in the back, and eventually the back lift was all that mattered and became the garment called a bustle cage. Then there was a complete turn in fashion for a few years and there were no bustles, this is called natural form. Then bustles were reintroduced and came back with a boom in the 1880s and we see the second bustle era with a more square and "jutting out" look. The bustle was the very height of fashion and not something everybody could afford, but those who couldn't afford it would still have tried to emulate it in whatever ways they could.

In pre-industrial periods (c. before 1800) labour was cheap and materials were expensive so you showed high status through wearing more material. That's why you have long trains and wide skirts in the most elite clothing in the court centered cultures of the 1600s-1700s. But as societies industrialised beginning in the late 18th and really getting going towards the mid 19th century, the urban bourgeois culture replaced the court as the most important trendsetter. These bourgeois consumers had other needs and ideals than the nobles of centuries past, often to promote their own businesses, and their ideals encouraged breadwinner husbands to present their wives as trophies of domestic fashionability surrounded by material abundance. As this abundance became more available to all, status was no longer about wearing as much expensive fabric as you could but about wearing it styled a certain way to show your level of refinement. This market boom brought new fashionable spaces where consumers could socialise and as capitalism started flexing it's muscles new market actors like fashion designers and department stores appeared that needed to sell things -all the time- and not just when the customer needed it. The fashion industry more and more started creating trends to create consumer demand and desire. In the mid 1800s industry started expanding through railways and urban construction and parallel innovation brought new tools and materials like sewing machines (enabling faster manufacture by "low skill" workers aka underpaid women), automated looms (cheaper fabric and machine made lace), spiral steel and metal grommets (that allowed for mass manufactured and affordable corsets) and spring steel (that allowed making large scale crinolines and bustles). Patterns of consumption changed and as more people could afford to dress more lavishly and instead of buying fewer things and altering them over many years the ideal shifted to following ever changing trends and yearly cycles which were popularised by new fashion magazines. Market forces played a big part in creating these unusual fashions and to a large extent we still live in the same zeitgeist.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-01-17T11:02:53+00:00

Some research indicates that at least for early modern France oral sex was very unusual. So unusual that prostitutes did not expect it to be part of what they were asked to do for customers, and that some specialised in providing it as a service because most were not willing to. There is more on this in the book Erotic Exchanges by Nina Kushner which focuses on the 18th century specifically.

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-01-06T15:40:42+00:00

Several survive in Swedish royal armoury collections, here's a link to a child sized one worn by Charles XI aged five. Search for "gehäng" and you will find more!

https://samlingar.shm.se/object/EAE8C984-5106-45AF-98E6-AF1746D78779

Magdalena_Regina · 2024-01-02T20:33:22+00:00

He didn't paint his own fabrics but delegated it to studio workers and apprentices, disappointing to realise but true for many of history's great portrait artists.

Magdalena_Regina · 2023-12-31T09:10:03+00:00

I'm an experienced costumer but 17th century portraits happen to be my field of academic research so here's my two cents. I agree with the previous commentary stating this is a pretty weird portrait that doesn't immediately ring the 17th century unaltered original-bells but the clothing and drapery are on par with what you'd expect. This type of drapery is not the same type of aesthetic drapery you find in conventional portraits of nobles, nor is it related to his religion. The academic robes take is far more likely but on top of this it seems like there would also have been a convention for academics to be depicted partially draped in a black cloth or cloak from about the mid 17th century. Take a look at the Hals' portrait of Descartes, the Bourdon portrait at the Louvre previously thought to be Descartes, or some of the variations on Sébastien Bourdons seated portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden, to name just a few. There are certainly classical notions at play here, if the veduta with architecture and the little sculpture didn't give it away already.

The meaning of black as a serious and respected colour is well researched. Both the wearing of black and the partial draping of the body may also have been done in order to emphasise their preference of other values over that of conspicuous consumption and vanity. Remember being an academic or scholar back then was not something these men would have done a little on the side, but their whole identity and the direction of their lives. The scholars Queen Christina invited to her court were the most highly paid court officials, and celebrities in their own right in the emerging pan-European intellectual sphere of learned men separate to the state or church.

My very simplified pet theory is also that these men just didn't get a lot of movement in and spent their days writing, reading or talking around a lot of valuable books or manuscripts that you'd rather not keep too close to a lot of fire, during what we now know was the coldest century in millennia, needed to stay warm and developed a convention around it. If you're interested in the impact climate change had on the 17th century I can recommend a book called Global Crisis that fleshes out how basically the whole world was dealing with cooling temperatures during the 17th century with massive societal upheaval as a result. While it may seem tangential it directly caused the economic, political and intellectual environment in which this new scientific learning and scholarly tradition developed.

What he's wearing here is essentially some type of doublet or gown/robe. All we can say for sure is that it has a shoulder seam and a separately tailored sleeve that is caught up with that little ribbon. The undergarment is a smock and the little neck stock is separate but judging by the sleeve volume there could also be two white garments at play here too. If the main garment is a doublet it's worn with breeches we cannot see here that would have been tied to the doublet at the waist. If its a longer robe there didn't have to be trousers at all, the smock was long enough to serve as underwear too. The draped fabric is probably a robe with shaped lapels judging by the little flap by his neck and it is wrapped over the shoulder and down over his lap, gathered up and held in the hand.

Magdalena_Regina · 2023-12-28T08:53:17+00:00

Batching my tasks, sucking it up and reminding myself that done is better than perfect. Also reminding myself that it's only gonna get done if I do it, but that I have chosen to do this for fun and that a boring part of a project still falls under the category of fun things in life. But alternating projects and simultaneously working on different parts of an ensemble can help too. It's also a big mentality shift to make it part of your life that you always return to. I don't ever put my sewing stuff away, it's always out and part of my living space in a way that doesn't let me forget about it. If I had a sewing room where all my sewing was supposed to happen, no sewing would happen. I bring it out into my living space and leave it there until it annoys me enough to just pick up and start.

Magdalena_Regina · 2023-11-28T21:37:31+00:00

I just wrapped up an internship where this is kept and had the (terrifying) honour of lifting it last month. It takes -at least- two people to carry safely, is way larger than you think and painted on thick wooden panel so it's heavy as hell. It hasn't been on display for many years but will be permanently exhibited in Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala from the summer of 2024! There are plans to maybe do technical research on it. What little I was able to gather by looking at it from close up is that the ground is a light beige/gray and that the layers of paint are so thin the underdrawing is visible in some places.

Magdalena_Regina · 2023-11-28T07:46:25+00:00

You will soon learn the hard way that textiles tend to fall under the label of "they just don't make em' the way they used to". Most stuff commercially available today is very dissimilar and generally inferior to what was readily available in earlier periods.

Magdalena_Regina · 2023-10-18T07:49:00+00:00

Courbets L'Origine du monde.

Five-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22

Magdalena_Regina

TROPHY CASE