Search

The article discusses the significance of cloth-of-gold textile borders which challenges the Burgundian and post-Burgundian manuscript illumination in the Benelux countries. It is stated that the illusionistic borders function to establish order and hierarchy within the manuscript such that used to augment the traditional rinceaux borders typical of Burgundian illumination of the middle-century. It is indicated that the illusionistic borders acts as a means of organizing most divisions and choice of motif of the manuscripts. It is also indicated that the textile borders provides crucial narrative functions which denotes status and ethnicity.

The Field of Cloth of Gold, the meeting between Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England which took place on the confines of the English Pale of Calais from June 5 to June 24, 1520 is an event which while both well known and intensively studied cannot be said to have surrendered all its secrets. At first sight, the historical evidence relating to the Field of Cloth of Gold impresses by its sheer quantity. Two anonymous plaquettes, one in Latin and the other in French describe the events from the French side.

The article assesses the possible reasons why the garment called tabbaard or rock came to be depicted in portraiture and what its different associations were during the first half of the seventeenth century in the Netherlands. The tabbaard had become the main fashionable outer garment for men by 1500 and it continued to dominate men's fashions until 1550. During this period the sleeves and length of the garment varied. In I531, the wearing of tabbaards, made out of cloth of gold or brocade, was prohibited by Emperor Charles V in a sumptuary law. In the seventeenth century no official dress existed for ministers, and contrary to, for instance, magistrates and professors, ministers never seem to have worn the tabbaard in public.