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Vecellio's Renaissance Costume Book
All 500 woodcut illustrations from the famous 16th-century compendium: nobles, matrons, peasants, more. New English captions. Includes clothing from Italy, France, Spain, England, Northern Europe, Germany, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, European Turkey, Africa, Asia, and America.
156 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 3, 2024
"The 500 carefully drawn woodcuts show the costumes of the world known in
Vecellio’s day: Italy, France, the Lowlands, Burgundy, Spain, Portugal, Scandin¬
avia, the German lands, the Slavic lands, Hungary, the Balkans, the Aegean, North
Africa, Arabia, Syria, Armenia, Persia, India, China and the recently discovered
New World (the Roanoke colony, Florida Indians, Mexico, Peru). Throughout
the book Vecellio shows the poor and the emerging mercantile class as well as
famous leaders and kings: slaves and pages of the Sultan, a Turkish pirate,
soldiers, peasants, students, magistrates, a Greek nun and monk, an artisan’s
wife, a Jewish woman in Syria, the King of France, of Spain, of Poland, Prester
John,, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Grand Duke of Muscovy, the Greek Patri¬
arch of Constantinople, the Sultan of Turkey, the Shah of Persia, the Great
Khan of the Tartars, a “king” and “queen” of Florida"
Vecellio was a cousin of Titian, and the book was first produced in Venice I think around 1560?
Vecellio’s day: Italy, France, the Lowlands, Burgundy, Spain, Portugal, Scandin¬
avia, the German lands, the Slavic lands, Hungary, the Balkans, the Aegean, North
Africa, Arabia, Syria, Armenia, Persia, India, China and the recently discovered
New World (the Roanoke colony, Florida Indians, Mexico, Peru). Throughout
the book Vecellio shows the poor and the emerging mercantile class as well as
famous leaders and kings: slaves and pages of the Sultan, a Turkish pirate,
soldiers, peasants, students, magistrates, a Greek nun and monk, an artisan’s
wife, a Jewish woman in Syria, the King of France, of Spain, of Poland, Prester
John,, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Grand Duke of Muscovy, the Greek Patri¬
arch of Constantinople, the Sultan of Turkey, the Shah of Persia, the Great
Khan of the Tartars, a “king” and “queen” of Florida"
Vecellio was a cousin of Titian, and the book was first produced in Venice I think around 1560?
September 27, 2011
If you're really into costuming, this book is awesome. Want to know what a Venetian prostitute would have worn in the sixteenth century? How about a merchant from Westphalia? A Persian lady's street dress? An English peasant or a nobleman from Cuzco or an Ethiopian princess?
It's pretty much just woodcuts and captions, though. There are no labels on the different parts of the costume, and I'll confess that the Venetian noblewoman's costume didn't look all that different to me from the prostitute's. Clearly there are subtleties of dress escaping me. So this will not be your sole resource. But the fact that the drawings themselves are historical and done by the same hand makes for some fascinating comparisons.
It's pretty much just woodcuts and captions, though. There are no labels on the different parts of the costume, and I'll confess that the Venetian noblewoman's costume didn't look all that different to me from the prostitute's. Clearly there are subtleties of dress escaping me. So this will not be your sole resource. But the fact that the drawings themselves are historical and done by the same hand makes for some fascinating comparisons.
June 30, 2012
Vecellio's Renaissance Costume Book by Cesare Vecellio is a Dover reprint of the woodcut illustrations from a late sixteenth-century Italian book of costume. It's a useful source of hard-to-find information on the dress of central Europe, among other things.
As with many more modern fashion books, this book focuses overwhelmingly on the minutiae of the fashions of the author's own country, gives less attention to other nearby countries, and cursory attention at best to really foreign lands and the past. The book shows great detail on the dress of the various classes of late Renaissance Venice, but only general figures from England, Hungary, Turkey, etc. It has some odd figures of Native Americans, probably not drawn from life, and some very peculiar "historic" fashions based, seemingly, on old artworks without a real understanding. The farther one gets in space and time from the author's native Venice, the less reliable the information.
There is almost no text, just a brief identification of each figure.
The woodcuts are a little graphic and simplified, not as lush as oil portraits of the same period, but they are still an interesting view of how sixteenth-century Venetians saw themselves and their neighbors.
As with many more modern fashion books, this book focuses overwhelmingly on the minutiae of the fashions of the author's own country, gives less attention to other nearby countries, and cursory attention at best to really foreign lands and the past. The book shows great detail on the dress of the various classes of late Renaissance Venice, but only general figures from England, Hungary, Turkey, etc. It has some odd figures of Native Americans, probably not drawn from life, and some very peculiar "historic" fashions based, seemingly, on old artworks without a real understanding. The farther one gets in space and time from the author's native Venice, the less reliable the information.
There is almost no text, just a brief identification of each figure.
The woodcuts are a little graphic and simplified, not as lush as oil portraits of the same period, but they are still an interesting view of how sixteenth-century Venetians saw themselves and their neighbors.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews