Sewing Discord: Shirts, men, and war in a transnational renaissance Professor Timothy McCall, Villanova University

Event details

History of Art Research Seminar

This talk explores foreign (or what were identified as foreign) fashions in Renaissance Italy, taking as a case study men’s linen shirts, which in the years around 1500 were exquisitely ornamented at (newly) plunging necklines, leaving the throat and upper chest exposed. In the wake of the Wars and invasions of Italy, the peninsula’s men and women became ever more desirous of foreign styles, but simultaneously deeply suspicious of them; at the same time, concerns about these camicie – and about the vulnerable necks and throats of Italian men – proliferated through a remarkably wide array of voices. We will see that dressing across boundaries in an era of international war set into motion far-reaching and potentially disruptive dynamics of allegiance and authority, and of domination and submission, all through fashion in its embodied forms.

Image reference: Bernardino dei Conti, "Gentleman of the Trivulzio Family," between 1450 and 1528, Detroit Institute of Arts, 38.80.