Art on the edge: hair and hands in Renaissance Italy

Abstract

This paper argues that items designed for the bodily extremities such as hair-coverings, hats, fans and other accessories were valued for the ease with which they could be changed and adapted to express a range of different meanings: political, social and individual. They also provided an important point of contact between the world of commerce, the court elites and the wider community of men and women who purchased and used these goods. In studying these often marginalized items, we can explore mechanism for the transmission of concepts of fashion and innovation in the Renaissance period.

Face‐Work: Making Hair Matter in Sixteenth‐Century Central Europe

“…6 In this portrait, the beard was a central element which deserves further analysis as a visual act that functioned in context of everyday performances. 7 Bronzino's portrait of the sitter's wife, painted around the same time, mirrors the very same visual elements (Figure 2). Her fingers resemble the gesture of her husband's hand and the shape of his beard.…”

Lavinia Fontana's Freedom

“…It may be difficult to see the radicality of Painting's hairstyle given that art historians are trained to focus on the depiction of bodies, objects, and backgrounds and to overlook hair, dismissing it as the province of feminine frivolity. 57 Little do they seem to acknowledge that their neglect is the consequence of the nineteenthcentury creation of aesthetics around the tenet that beauty resides in the human spirit. 58 Hegel, in particular, was vocal in negating hair the expressivity that many people attributed to it in the early modern period.…”

In persona Christi

“…29 As Evelyn Welch has noted, the leather glove was 'an item of high status at court'. 30 They could be perfumed and some had elaborate cuffs, which were covered in silk and embroidered. 31 The Whitworth collection includes a pair of English seventeenth-century white kid leather gloves (T.8231).…”