‘Art Journal 85 LE NOSTRE DONE CORNUTE* DRESS AND ORNAMENT IN THE MELBOURNE PROFILE PORTRAIT Elisabetta Gnignera le nostre done cornute, cum tanti bale’ ... anti rechami' (Our hom-wearing ladies, with their many balzi many embroideries’) Ludovico Carbone, Ferrarese poet and academic Facezio (1466-71) Introduction The 2006 technical examination and conservation trealment of the National Gallery of Victoria's Prof portratt ofa lady, c. 1485 (tig. 1), has served as an essential prerequisite towards the reassessment of this, painting via technical and stylistic aspects of the work. We are now well placed to further enrich our understanding of it including @ possible dating and origin of the portrait - through a more detailed study of the highly distinctive clothing and adornment worn by the sitter. Itwas said of herTo date, the only study of the portrait from a vestmental point of view has been Patricia Simons’s admirable ‘examination of the painting in 1987." Although this study will examine and challenge some of Simons's assumptions, it does so in the knowledge that twenty-five years ago the historical study of Italian fashion was, with the notable exception of the monumental studies of Rosita Levi Pisetzky, sporadic and discontinuous.® While Simons may have successfully identified the type of hairstyle depicted in the portrait by likening it to the Parisian alla Panigina style, including the horned a coma headdress (known in kaly as ala af to denote their transalpine origin), the chronological evolution of these types of hairstyles requires some revision according to Simons, such hairstyles with hams or lobes were mast frequently worn during the years 1420— ‘50, but gradually fell from favour between 1460 and 1470." Its true that horned hairstyles become infrequent in Tuscany during this period; however, as will be shown below, they were subject to revival, and can be documented in northern Italy during the 1460s, particularly in Ferrara and Mantua, As for the head broach worn by the partrat’s sitter, known in Tuscany by the term Brocohetta of testa and in northem Italy as fermaglio da zuto, Simons notes the fine, almost miniaturistic character of the goldsmithing. From a typological perspective, Simons - not without some justification — draws the brooch into a Tuscan context, in particular the workshop of Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo. Less pertinent, from a material perspective, are the author's comments on the shoulder broach crowned with a cherub or ‘spiritello, which shall be discussed below. In addition to revisiting some conclusions of Simons's 1987 analysis of this portrait, this article will also examine an important aspect neglected by the previous study: the fabrics and textile patterns of the sitler's Gress, which provide important evidence with regard to the date and locale of origin of the painting. Through careful examination of all these aspects of clothing and adornment, this paper will propose a more precise dating of the portrait, updating Simons's placing it in a generic ‘late fifteenth century’ conte, sometime in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. A capite usque ad pedes. new hypotheses Profile portrait ofa lady provides us with many clues about the milieu of the subject, from the hairstyle of the sitter, to the jewellery and garments she wears, and the fabrics from which these are made. The manner in which the sitter’s hair is dressed is particularly interesting; the difference in tone between the colour of her eyebrows and her hair informs us that this was undoubtedly a woman of fashion who took to dyeing her natural brown hair a golden blonde colour, a common practice in cities of central and northem Italy during the fifteenth century. We can immediately state that the golden blonde of the sitter’s dyed hair renders a Venetian origin for the painting unlikely. Venetian fashions showed preference for elther an ash blonde (similar to today’s ‘platinum blonde’, as we see, for example, in Vittore Carpaccio’s /elera, The ‘meeting of Etherius and Ursula and the departure of the pilgrims trom that painter's St Ursula cycle of 1495, or conversely, a reddish-brown known as Venetian blonde or red, as seen in two wellknown paintings of the last quarter of the fiteenth century by the Venetian painter Carlo Crivell, both portraying Mary Magdalene and preserved at, respectively, the Polo Museale di San Francesco in Montefiore dell’Aso in the province of Ascoli Piceno (1471-74), and the Rilksmuseum, Amsterdam (around 1480). Simons made note of the sitter’s artificially blonde hair, viewing it — narrowly in my opinion — in the context of the eminently private circles in which this type of portrait was seen. According to Simons, in a painted portrait a lady could evade restrictions on luxury and modes of dress imposed by sumpptuary laws that governed both the modification of appearances - in this case the colour of the hair - and the display af wealth through, ‘ornaments and jewellery, by having herself depicted in a fashion that would have been illegal in real Ife. While itis indeed possible that the hair colour seen in the Melbourne profile portrait is an aesthetic intervention on the part of the painter, this does not necessarily mean that the portrait was intended ‘exclusively for private consumption. According to Joseph Manca, the practice of altering a sitter's hair colour in a painted portrait was very common in some of the northern Italian courts, such as Milan under the Sforzas and Mantua under the Gonzagas, in the court-ike environment of the Bentivoglia in Bologna and, above all, in the d'Este court of Ferrara. Manca suggests that in fifteenth-century Ferrara an interest in northern European culture was keenly manifested among ancient and noble families, including the all powerful d’Este. For the Estensi, blonde hair embodied nobility and supreme beauty. By presenting themselves as blonde, they signalled to viewers the noble origins of the family, which was traced back toRuggero, the hero of the Chanson de Roland. According to Manca, it was a particularly Ferrarese conceit (oceasionally shared by Milan, Mantua and Sologna) to deliberately alter the hair colour by having it painted as golden blonde in official representations in order to make manifest one’s noble rank.© Moving from hair colour to the headdress worn by the subject in the Melbourne portrait, special emphasis needs ta be given to the positioning of the head brooch, which is set very high and far back on the head, something that accords with Tuscan, particularly Florentine, fashions, but is also occasionally to be found in north-central Italy. This fashion was particularly associated with regions ranging fram the present northern Marches, to Emilia Romagna and Lombardy. Simons was therefore not entirely wrong in her assessment of the head brooch when she detected similarities with those found in portraits by Antonio and Piero Pollaiuola (fg. 8). Nonetheless, one needs to bear in mind the wide range of trade and commercial networks thal linked towns and courts, particularly in central and northern Italy. In these regions the circulation of luxury goods, such as jewellery and fine fabrics, revolved around a few prominent centres of production or trade, such as Venice, Milan, Genoa, Florence and, for sik veils, Bologna. In general, the appearance of closely related types of jewellery in different works of art does not necessarily mean that the two artworks come from the same geographical area, but rather that its the jewellery which may share a ‘common origin. We must also bear in mind that skilled goldsmiths are known to have circulated from court to court in this period. Therefore, itis quite possible that items such as head or shoulder brooches, or pendants with gems and precious metals, can exhibit similar settings and workmanship in pictorial alions of quite different provenance.’ Its warth noting. in this he typological affinity between the head brooch in the NGV's Profile porta ofa faay (fig. 1) with the jewelled collar worn by Francesco Il Gonzaga as a young man, in a portrait by Baldassarre d'Este (fig. 2}Rather than dwelling on the formal characteristics of the jewellery itself, lis therefore perhaps more productive to focus on the way it is worn, which may tell us something about the fashions of one region compared to another. Among other portraits possibly coeval with the Melbourne profile portrait is Piero della Francesca’s famous depiction of Battista Sforza (fig. 3) and Francesco di Giorgio Martin's marble rolif of the same subject, Sforza had grown up in the court of Milan and is portrayed with an identfiably northem hairstyle fig. 4). In contrast to these portraits, the Melbourne painting displays a head brooch resting far back on the head, in a manner characteristic of Florence but which is also to be found, in a more circumscribed way, in Ferrara and Mantua. Examples of such brooches set back on the head occur in well known profile portraits datable to around the 1470s by Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo (fig. 5), and on a female figure portrayed a few years earlier by the young Mantegna in the Paduan Ovetari Chapel and dated 0 1448-57 (fig. 6). They also appear in some miniatures of the so-called Bible of Borso of Este (1455-61, fig. 7) and in the two dancers portrayed by the Master of Hippolyta in the manuscript De joratica sew arte ‘rjpudl vulgare qpusculum (On the practice or art of dancing) by Guglielmo Ebreo from Pesaro, preserved in Patis and dated 1463 (Paris, B.N.F..Ms. It 973 f. 21v).‘As well as the jewellery worn on the sitter’s head, the horned structure of the headdress in the Melbourne portrait is worthy of comment. Tuscan examples of headdresses with prominent homs can be found in a series of line-drawn mural paintings by the Pratese artist Girolamo Ristori, originally in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vai in Prato but now preserved in that city's Museum of Mural Painting (tig. 8). The current dating of 1475-90 for these murals is probably too late from the perspective of dress history; the men’s and women's apparel depicted are more likely to span the years 1468-75, making this cycle roughly contemporary with the Salone dei Mesi frescoes of the Palazzo Schitanoia in Ferrara. Another Tuscan example of a homed headdress, typologically similar to the Ristor in Prato, is the one included in the Rape of Helen from the Cronaca forentina fgurata, datable between 1470 and 1475, and preserved in the British Museum,‘These coeval Tuscan iconographic examples, together with miniatures from the Bible af Borso a'Este (1455-61) and the frescoes from the Salone dei Mesi of Schifanoia Palace in Ferrara, along with Ludovico Carbone's comments in his Facezie (1466-71), “all dispel, in my opinion, the incorrect assertion that by 1470 these ‘horned’ hairstyles were either on the way out or entirely out of fashion, either in Tuscany or the rest of Italy. n this regard, it fs useful to recall a letter sent in 1459 by Galeazzo Storza to his father Francesco, in which, while attending the festivities given for the arrival of Pope Pius Il in Florence, he notes that among the 150 ladies present, 50 wore ‘the high French homed headdresses embroidered with pearls and silver." And in 1492 both Beatrice d Este and Isabella of Aragon are described ‘with the hom above their heads’. Indeed, it appears horned headdresses enjoyed a revival in the last decade of the century in response to the neo-feudal mood of the age of Ludovico il Moro. Therefore it seems, ace Simons, quite incorrect to speak tout court of the ‘disappearance’ of homed headwear by the 1470s. Instead we witness {an evolution of their form throughout this period, as they appear in variants composed of small, ateral homs before retuming into fashion ~ around the end of the fiteenth century ~ as a kind of horned: hoaddtess, similar to the Aennin from northern Europe. The distinctive way in which linen cloths forming part of the headdress ate wrapped over the ears of the sittor is also worthy of note: this is more in keeping with fashions from Emilia and the Po Valley areas rathor than Tuscany, where it was more common to use gauze to cover the ear. But the possibilty that the use of benducce (bands of linen) as an alternative for the gauze cannot be excluded, as we see in Lo Scheggia’s Portait ofa faayin the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There is another portrait attributed to Lo Scheggia at the ‘Musée Jacquemart-André, which has in common with the Melbourne portrait linen bands wrapped around the ears of the sitter. In both we see the benaiucce fully cover the ears and wound up across the top of the head to prevent loose locks of hair trom falling forward from the temple.‘Along with homed headdresses supported by wrappings and substructures, a few rare images exist from the second half of the fiteenth century that display horns made of bunches of long wavy hair or carrying thin, veitike strands of hair, just as we see in the Melbourne protile portrait. One of the most significant Italian precedents fr this transalpine style is found in Matteo de’ Pastis famous medal portrait of Isotta egli Atti (1432-1474), consort of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini and the daughter of a wealthy Riminese merchant. In this medal, first produced in 1446, Isoltais shown with horns of hair and crossed ribbons on which a brooch is set far back at the top of her head (fg. 10). Unfortunately, the paucity of surviving fiteenth-century Riminese iconography does not allow us to identiy any specific local vestmental traditions of the area. However, we survey the courts of northern central Italy we learn of done cornu: {homed women) spoken of by the Ferrarese Ludovico Carbone and see them appear in the pages of the Biblia bela (The Magnticent Bible) of Borso d Este; we also see the young Barbara Gonzaga in Mantegna's Camera Picta in Mantua (fig. 11) wearing an antique-style head covering lke @ tutulus made of hair, possibly a hairpiece given shape via a substructure or frame.” This kind of futulus is wrapped with ‘benducce in a gracetul arrangement very simlar to the one found in the Melooume portrait. In tho miniatures in the so-called Ble of Borso o'Este the balzo a capel’style - possibly a genuine Ferrarese hairstyle - appears frequently enough to suggest a aistinct local preference for styles characterised by the presence of loose, /rsées hair al the back. An echo of such hairstyles is recognisable in the Muse Urania from Ferrara's Stuofolo of Belfiore, The recurrent hairstyles shown in the Bible of Borso a'ste, consisting of rearward high masses ot hair with extensive shaving of the forehead, short, wavy locks around the temples, and occasionally twisted Bendlvcce, probably prove the existence of these fashionable hairstyles in the region of the cities of Ferrara, Bologna, Modena and Mantua, reflecting the origin and formation of tho leading artists of the so-called Offcina Ferrarese, the workshop of arlsts entrusted by Borso d'Este with the decoration ofthis masterpiece in 1455. ° This hypothesis appears to receive support trorn images of noblewomen with small horns of hair in the mural paintings of the Sala del Pane in &7 Bentivagtio~ a leisure residence, built by Giovanni II Bentivoglio between 1475 and 1481, northeast of Bologna on the road to Ferrara (lig. 12)Between 1460 and 1470, horned headdresses are commonly found in northern and central aly over an area stretching from today's Lombardy down to the Marches, Itis important to stress that the circulation of fashionable styles among the major Italian courts was quite common. Expedients, such as puve— dolls that closely replicated the types of hairstyles and fashionable clothes of a specific geographic area ~ suggest a degree of transversality and homogeneity in fashion trends, which must be taken into account in this period. The two parts of the so-called Barberini panels by Fra Carnevale (Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini) {rom Urbino, namely the Presentation of the Virgin in the temple, dating to 1467 and originally commissioned for the Oratory of Santa Maria della Bella in Urbino (now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts), and the The Bith of the Virgin (now in in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Arts), are important for our purposes because they witness the contemporaneous presence of various kinds of headdresses with either long or short horns, along with benaiiece wrapped around the head with short, curly locks beside the «ears ina fashion not dissimilar to the ones present in the Melbourne profile portrait Rather more northern - or, more specifically, Irom the Po valley region - than Tuscan, these short, wavy locks appear in the Brera portrait of Bianca Maria Visconti, formerly attributed to Bonifacio Bemibo, datable to the 1460s, as well as in other significant examples by Andrea Mantegna in the oculus of the Camera ica of the Ducal Palace in Mantua (fig. 13). In the latter we see, in adcilion to a lady dressed and coiled 4 comett (with small horns), a semi-dressed companicn in her chemise; both are weating benalicce over their middle-parted hair in styles revealing wavy locks at their temples, which, when viewed in profile, resemble the style of the NGV's Profile portrait ofa faay, with its high-shaved forehead.‘The Ferrarese female profile in the Bible of Borso o/Este, preserved at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena (lig. 2), surprisingly reveals a hairstyle with horns harnessed in a sort of rigid net, with small locks of hair falling loose on the temple in a way that is directly comparable to the style in the Melbourne portrait. In Profie portrait of lady, the long, thin, frizzy veils falling from the horns of hair can be traced back to the silky, diaphanous veils woven in Bologna already in the fourteenth century. A characteristic example of such a veil, even though much later (the late eighteenth century) is the surviving vel fragment attached to a request forwarded by Filippo Trevisani of Verona on 19 December 1782: 'a piece of white fine veil z7tofo, as the example here included!. The surviving vel isin natural sik, wth creping made after weaving (Bologna, State Archive, Negozio per la fabbrica dei veli, famiglia Bettini, lettere ricevute). “In the Melboume portrait, these extra-fine veils are attached to the peaks of the homs with headed pins called aguccha (in central hay), oF agugéa da pomella or da pomelio (in northern ltaly). In the fitteenth century such pins were used ‘quite commonly to fix ribbons and veils. Being functional elements in the service of hairstyles and headdresses, they were rarely ett visible in aly, although some examples where these pins are partly seen can be found in Tuscan-Florentine paintings from the second half of the fifteenth century. Unconcealed pins are mote characteristic of northern Europe dress, for example in Flanders, where extra-fne cloths held in place on the head by visible pins can be seen in Robert Campin’s Portrait of a woman (fig. 14).‘aglielo 0’ Oro Cun un Agnolo 1’ Oro jn una nuvol# A highly distinctive element of the Melbourne portrait is the shoulder brooch with natural pearls and rubies ina gold selting in the shape of a cloud, topped wilh a cherub. These so-called zo/eli la spall, which were very popular from the mid fifteenth century, served to emphasise the shoulders position in relation to the Gress. Derived from the iconography of cupids and victories that had characterised Hellenistic goldsmith production, in the fifteenth century the cherub motif was linked to nuptial symbolism. tt also evoked qualities associated with the archangel, which, in turn, originally derived from the Greek god Hermes’s role of psychopomp (that is, the divine guide of departed souls to the realm of the dead) The cherub motitis found in the region of Milan in Lombardly from the turn of the fourteenth century through to the end of the fifteenth century, and was particularly popular around the third quarter of the Quattrocento, '° Therefore itis not out of the question that during this period shoulder brooches or angel pendants of Lombard origin might have circulated throughout other Italian centres, to appear in portraits from different regions of central and northern ttaly, such as the portrait of Bianca Maria Visconti and in later forale portraits by Tuscan artists such as Antonio and Pioro del Pollaiuolo. In her observations about th shoulder brooch, Patricia Simons omitted analysis ofthe distinctive characteristics of the goldsmithing work, choosing instead to emphasise the possible sacred symbolism of the object, namely the Lady's blessed status in paradise." Although we cannot exclude the possibility that the Melbourne portrait might be posthumous, by virtue of the cherub’s associations with the ‘angel-Hermes’, Simons’s proposed interpretation of the iconography of the brooch is not plausible, since in this case, its probable Lombard or northern manufacture indicates an iconography that was favoured in the last quarter of the fteenth century, and consequenily, of trade outside the borders of Lombardy; omaments featuring cherubs are documented around this time in both Milan and Bologna. The painting portraying Saint Catherine of Bologna with three donors by the Master of the Baroncell portraits in the Courtauld Gallery, London, dated between 1470 and 1480, demonstrates the presence of this omament in the region around Bologna — it depicts in the foreground a young woman, a member of the Bolognese Loiani family, wearing a sumptuous shoulder brooch with a cherub (fig. 15)Finally, since jewels incorporating the cherub moti are often associated with weddings, itis worth considering that the shoulder brooch in the Melbourne portrait might in fact suggest a reminiscence — given the mature age of the woman — of an engagement or betrathal, but interpreted from a merely symbolic point ot view. 7 A similar iconography was employed by Ghirlandaio in the posthumous portraits of Giovanna Albizzi-Tomabuoni as late as 1485-80, where Giovanna is depicted as an etemal bride, as shown in the tempera on panel in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and in the frescoes of the Vistitation in the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Contemporary inventories make note of particular types of precious stones for shoulder brooches, such as pearls (symbolising virginty and purity) and rubies (as harbingers of prosperity and progeny), often paired with diamonds, promoting love and symbols of stabilty. "Indeed, itis of especial interest that an inventory of moveable property of the House of Este (1436-37) includes a record of a ‘golden jewel, with a golden cherub in a cloud, holding in his arms a large eight sided ruby’, not dissimilar to the brooch in the Melbourne portrait. © Itis therefore conceivable that the shoulder brooch on the Melbourne portrait fits into this category, and we might therefore hypothesise a celebratory intent, meant to symbolise perhaps the virtues of a woman, and presumably a virtuous mother, either to celebrate the birth of a child some years away fro possibly the lady's virtues / aetemum in the caso of a posthumous portrait. marriage, or Finally, to conclude the excursus on jewels represented in the Melbourne portrait, | would ike to briefly focus on the necklace worn by the sitter. Made up of small clusters of pearls suspended between two parallel (metal?) threads, this unusual type of jewellery ~ possibly what was refered ta as a gorzarino — is evidenced in portraits of women from northern Italy but is hardly ever encountered in Tuscan female portraiture. This is another important clue indicating a possible north-central milieu for the portrait, reflecting fashions in vogue in the Po Valley. Velvets, satins and allucoiolat!The outfit worn by the sitler in the Melbourne portrait employs two distinct fabrics, each used in one of the ‘utit’s two primary components: the gown, or camara, and the overgown, known as the pellanda or sacco in northem Italy and the eiggae in Tuscany. ‘The camora, ot which only the sleeves are partially visible, employs a fabric decorated with so-called pomegranate moti, a term that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could be applied to patterns ‘employing large thistle flowers, pomegranates, pinecones or lotus flowers; the motifs could be arranged across the fabric in horizontal (0 ammin} or vertical (a gricoia alignments. These textile patterns featured on the most precious fabrics, such as gold brocades, afto-dass/velvets (with varying heights of the pile) and ailucciola (sik velvets with loops of golden thread scatlered through the pile creating a gleaming effect known as vergole dora or rapelanth In Profile portrait of a ladly\he pictorial rendering of the fabric suggests that it may be either a velvely satin (aso vellutato) or a cut-pile velvet known as fanciato, bouclé or liserd. Similar textiles are depicted in the Camera Picta, 1465-74, by Andrea Mantegna, while in the registers of the Este Court Garderobe there are many mentions of so-called velvety satins, called zetan’ velit, primarily of Venetian origin, which were soon reproduced in Florence as zevani vellutat alta ventziana, Ferrara’s major sources of luxury fabrics for the Este court were Florence and Venice."‘The outer garment in the Melbourne portrait, with its wide, wing-like (ad ale) sleeves, sometimes left hanging over the back, is more suited to the cooler months ofthe year, due to the weight of the fabric. This overgown is ornamented with paimettes executed in the aliucciolafo (gleam of fireflies called Azccvo/e) or vergolinatura technique, giving the surtace its characteristic bouclé etect (fig. 16). These types of textiles were called a zo or nzuol, and were woven in Tuscany, Lombardy, Venice and throughout the Po valley.” As for the motif of the fa/mefte (anthemior) itself, the ubiquity of its use in a revivalist manner, both in ‘stucco friezes and in textiles, in the major Italian courts in Florence, Ferrara, Urbino, Mantua and Milan precludes us attributing to it any specific heraldic associations or associating it with any one particular court = although a striking use of such a pattem is evident in the Camera degl Spasi by Mantegna and the paimette motif can be glimpsed on the belt of Barbara Gonzaga,” who married Eberhard V Wurttember in 1474, the year of the completion of the frescoes. But among the major Italian textile manufacturing centres of the fifteenth century - including Florence, Genoa and Milan - Venice was the most highly renowned, especially for its remarkable reproductions of Persian and other oriental textile patterns, among which palettes feature frequently.” Finally, the colour of the overdiess, a deep blue, very close to the luxurious alessanahin’and forchini (purplish deop blues), bears witness — along with the richness of the textile patterns and jewellory — to the very high rank of the lady portrayed. Drawing conclusions From the perspective of dress history, we may identify the following as critical diagnostic features of the Profile portatt of a lady. + the sitters artificially blonde hair, of particular symbolic significance among the courts of northern Italy + the homed headdress with extra-fine veils produced in great quantity in Bologna, but otherwise relatively rare in taly: such a fashion may be traceable to the Malatesta court in Rimini and, in variants with smaller horns, to courts in northern Italy, such as Mantua, Ferrara and Bologna+ the head brooch set far back on the head, according to Tuscan and Emilian custom + the collare (necklace) of distinctive design, present in northern talian female portrature, but only sporadically documented in Tuscan portraits + the probable Lombard andlor northern workmanship of the shoulder brooch with its cherub, an iconography that was in special favour during the last quarter ofthe fifteenth century and subsequently in objects traded beyand taly’s borders «+ the overgown (gellanaé or cigppa), characterised by its palmente textile patterns, made by the process of aflucciolato, which with regards to its textile workmanship and design may be traced back to either Tuscany or the Po Valley, particularly Venice ‘+ the gown (camara or gamurr), the fabric of which is woven with pomegranate motits of ample proportions that could reference (depending on the pictorial rendering) either Florentine or northern velvets, possibly of Venetian origin Having established thal the most plausible dating for the portralt would be between 1460 and 1470 - more specifically around 1465 - and given the prominence of what may be described as northem clothing details such as the homed headdress; the headdress pins lett visible for decorative effect as in the Northern European tradition; the fabrics of a possible Lombard-Venetian origin (without excluding Florence as a place of production); and the cherub-lopped shoulder brooch of a northern if not German provenance, the painting should be placed, in my view, within an elite circle of court cities, consisting of Ferrara, Mantua and possibly Rimini, or perhaps the larger city of Bologna, In such an environment in which official portraits of lords and allies were frequently exchanged between one court and another, a relevant typological precedent for the profile portat’s hairstyle is provided by Matteo de’ Pasti's medal of Isotta deg Alt. The vestmental elements displayed in Profile portrait ofa lacy are associated with a social milieu of absolute privilege and wealth, and consequently indicate the social status of the lady portrayed. It therefore seems self-evident to direct any subsequent investigation aimed at identifying the portrait’s, sitter towards women of great importance within those locations; specifically to women who might have had connections with northem European cours, leading to the incorporation in their mode of dress of some elements of northern fashions. In addition to the aboverentioned Isotta degl Alli from Rimini, who was bor in 1432, and would therefore be about thity-three years old at the time of this portrait (c. 1465) another candidate — especially given a certain family resemblance in their features ~ may be Barbara of Brandenburg, the wife of Ludovico Gonzaga, portrayed by Mantegna in his Camera Peta (tig. 17). At the end of this investigation into the clothing and ornament of the portrait is up to art historians to consider the plausibility of any hypothesis about the sitler’s identity. Nevertheless, the findings of this study appear consistent with that put forward by Carl Villis, that the portrait may be the work of a Ferrarese painter, datable to around 1465. In this case, no other description could be more fiting than the satirical piece provided by the Fertarese post Ludovico Carbone, which provides the tile of this paper: (Our horn-wvearing ladies, with their many Bale, many clogs, many decorations, many fills, many veils, many emroideries, many tails, many chiavacuor'[lterally translated as ‘key to the heart’ but meaning brooches of bets}... this final one they well and truly lack ** This alludes perhaps to the only thing the ladies of Ferrara did nol possess amidst all their omaments: a noble heart! Elisabetta Gnignera is a specialist in Italian Renaissance fashions and hairstyles, and author of /sqaeroh omamenti. Copricapie acconciature nel’ tala de! Quatrocento (2010), (in 2016) Notes. 1 wish to express my gratitude to Cail Vill for invting me to take partin this rewarding colaboratve study. It underlines the importance of adopting a muti-ciscipinary approach, not only inthe service of art Mstary bul aso its twin pursul, the history of dress.10 " 12 13 4 16 16 7 8 20 at 2 Patricia Simons, ‘A profile port of a Renaissance woman in the National Gallery of Vitoria’, Ar Buletn of Victoria, no. 28, 1987, pp. 34-02 { also avaiable online at: hp ngngv vie gav.aulenjoumal/a-profle-pareit- renalssance-weman-i-the-national-galery-of ictal & NCW87BZKPK) See Rosita Lev Pselzky, Storia del Costume in alia, vols 1-5, Isttuto Edoriae Htallano Treccani, Milan, aly, 1964-69. Simons, po. 43, 44 Ihave deduced Simons's dating from her stylistic references. Sne rterred to the Workshop of Antonio and Piero del Pollaualo (1470) uo to Ghirlandaio in Zhe bith ofthe Vig, 1485-20, Joseph Manca, ®lond hair as a mark of nobly in Ferrarese portraiture ofthe Quattrocento, in Muse! Feraresi, no. 19, 1990-91, pp. 51-80 (esp. pp. 51-2). wish to thank Joseph Manca for his kind cooperation in promptly providing me the ted of his paper ‘On the circulation of luxury jeweller atthe Court othe Gonzaga in Mantua, see Giancarlo Malacame, Frusciant vvestimertie scntllant gioie, vol. 1, Linea Quetta, Verona, 2012, pp. 460-1, 463-5. ‘Museo Diocesano di Pittura Murale di Prat’, Assaciazione Muse/ Ecolsiastici allay, , accessed & Nov. 2016, Examples of high-hotned headgear are shown respectively in the months of April (kwer register) and August (upper ragistet LLodevico Carbone, ‘Facezia XXX! n AbchEKader Salza (ed), Facezle of Lodbvico Carbone, Livoino, Raffaello Giust Editore, 1900, p. 30 (authors translation. Paola Venturall,“Copricapi e acconciature ternminil ella Lombardia delle Signore’, in Aldo Castellano (ed), La Lombaraia doll signori, Elocta Fatice, Mlano, 1986, p. 269. ‘Tho tutulis is @ particular conical harsylo-neaddress of Eruscan-Roman origin, generally st very high on the head. In 1495 Borso d'Este commissioned the dacoration of is Abia ela to a group of leading artists; amang them were: Taddeo Crivell Ferrara, 1425 - Bologna, 1479}, Franco de’ Russ| (Mantua c. 1430 — post 1480), Giovanni da Gaibana {(Gaibana-7, Marco dell Avagaro (active in Ferrara 1449-76) and Giorgio d/Aletagna, known as Zorzo Tadesco (Modona c. 1420 thoroin 1479), Marta Cuoghi Costanti, émpajpabil ampel delta mod: vel a seta bologna I fo dela seta. Tassutl antichn Erna Romagna, ittute per Beni Arist! Cutturale Natural dels Regione Emila Romagna, Clieb, Bologna, 2008, pp. 117-20. For the bolognese frizzy vlls in fourteerth century, see Angela Orland, "impalpable trasparent: vel bolognesi nella ddocumentazone daliniana’, in Maria Giuseppina Muzzareli, Maia Gravia Nico Ottaviani and Gabrrella Zar (ed), velo in atea mediterranea fra storia e simbolo. Taro Medioevo-prima Eia moderna, Mulina, Bologna, 2014, pp. 307-24 (esp. pp. 312, 317) See Paola Vonturall, Srato, x6 © prezios!officorla arti suntuarle nel Ducato di Milano tra Viscontl¢ Storza, Marsiio, Venezia, 2008, 9p. 73-6; Serena Franzon, 'l fermagilo con langelo nel Quattrocento: rioerche e conront tra pitura © sculura’ in O40 Risa de’ Ossomatorc per le Art Decorative in tala, issue 8, 10.9, June 2014, p. 1. Simons, p. 43. ‘See Venture, Smaka, aro e prezios,p. 76. Far the documentary and iconographic records in the Bolognese area see Franzon,p. 15; and Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Vue: Art in Renarssance Hal, Gey Trust Publications, Paul Getty Museum, 2001. p. 47. For the symbolism of gems and stones, see Patrizia Casell ‘Le vit dalle gerne, Illoro signticato simbalco © astrologico nella cultura umanistica o nelle crocenze popolari del Quatiracento. Il"Racuporo” delle gomme antiche’, in TOreticeria nella Firenze del Quatrrocento. Catalogo della Mostra (Firenze 1977), Studio per Edizioni Scatte, Firenze, 1877, pp. 307-64; and Stefania Macioce, Ori nel/arte: per una stora del potere segreta delle gemme, Logart Press, roma, 2007, pp. 15-39, Venturell, Seat, aro 0 prez p. 74 For precise annotations on the main exile patterns depicted by Andraa Mantogna in the Camara dogl Spas’, soe Paola Frattarol ‘Gli omat tessili nella Camera degl Spos appunl e antcipazioni per una ricerca, in Vittorio Sgarbi (ed), La scutura al tempo di Andrea Mantegna, Electa Mondatar, Milano, pp. 179-99. With regard to the Este Cour of Ferara, see Elisabetta Bazzani, I primata del velluto alla corte degl Este fra Quatrocento e Chiquecert", in Marta Cuoghi CCostantni and lolanda Sivesti (eds), La colezione Gandini: tessuti del Mecioevo e del Rinascimento, Museo Civico Ate di Madana, Boronia University Press, Bologna, 2019, pp. 83-114 (aso. 9p. $0, 93) ‘See Chiara Buss, Seta oro cremisl. Segete tecnologia alla corte del Viscont @ dagh Sforza (exhib. cat) Cinisella Balsamo, Sivana Editoriale, Milan, 2009, pp. 92-3, 165-6 (authors translation. Previously noted by Frallarl, ‘Gi oral lesili nella Camera degli Sposi28. See George Leland Hunter, Decorative Textiles, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1918, p. 39. 24 Barbara Hohenzoller (1422-1481), eldest daughter of John, called the Alchemist and the son ofthe Margrave of Brandenburg Froderck lof Hohonzollom and Barbara of Saxony. November 1433 Barbara, aged just eleven, arrived in Mantua, where the wedging ceremonies took place. By the succession of Ludwig Il to his father Gian Francesco, who died in 1444, Barbara became the Marchioness of Mantua, personally uling the smal state alongside her husband. 25 Carbone, p. 30 (authors translation)