As portraits, private diaries, and estate inventories make clear, elite families of the Italian Renaissance were obsessed with fashion, investing as much as forty percent of their fortunes on clothing. In fact, the most elaborate outfits of the period could cost more than a good-sized farm out in the Mugello. Yet despite its prominence in both daily life and the economy, clothing has been largely overlooked in the rich historiography of Renaissance Italy. In Dressing Renaissance Florence, however, Carole Collier Frick provides the first in-depth study of the Renaissance fashion industry, focusing on Florence, a city founded on cloth, a city of wool manufacturers, finishers, and merchants, of silk dyers, brocade weavers, pearl dealers, and goldsmiths. From the artisans who designed and assembled the outfits to the families who amassed fabulous wardrobes, Frick's wide-ranging and innovative interdisciplinary history explores the social and political implications of clothing in Renaissance Italy's most style-conscious city. Frick begins with a detailed account of the industry itself -- its organization within the guild structure of the city, the specialized work done by male and female workers of differing social status, the materials used and their sources, and the garments and accessories produced. She then shows how the driving force behind the growth of the industry was the elite families of Florence, who, in order to maintain their social standing and family honor, made continuous purchases of clothing -- whether for everyday use or special occasions -- for their families and households. And she concludes with an analysis of the clothes themselves: what pieces made up an outfit; how outfits differed for men, women, and children; and what colors, fabrics, and design elements were popular. Further, and perhaps more basically, she asks how we know what we know about Renaissance fashion and looks to both Florence's sumptuary laws, which defined what could be worn on the streets, and the depiction of contemporary clothing in Florentine art for the answer. For Florence's elite, appearance and display were intimately bound up with self-identity. Dressing Renaissance Florence enables us to better understand the social and cultural milieu of Renaissance Italy.

This book examines a Renaissance Florentine family's art patronage, even for women, inspired by literature, music, love, loss, and religion.

Covering the history of Renaissance Florence from the fourteenth century to the beginnings of the Medici duchy, Richard C. Trexler traces collective ritual behavior in all its forms, from a simple greeting to the most elaborate community festival. He examines three kinds of social relationships: those between individual Florentines, those between Florentines and foreigners, and those between Florentines and God and His saints. He maintains that ritual brought life to the public world and, when necessary, reformed public life.

Accompanying an exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this catalogue explores one of the most important and historically neglected art forms of Renaissance Florence: cassoni - pairs of chests that were lavishly decorated with precious metals and elaborate paintings and were often the most expensive of a whole suite of decorative objects commissioned to celebrate marriage alliances between powerful families.

This reference brings together seminal writings on fashion. The geographical range of the essays crosses Europe, Asia and North America. The essays reveal the wide set of methodological approaches which all bear on the study of fashion - sociology, art history and cultural history, anthropology, social theory, dress and textile studies.

Through the presentation of nine different arts and humanities topics, such as architecture and design, literature, religion, and visual arts, this volume describes Renaissance Europe, from 1300 to 1600.