Sir Galahad's lady

—

Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Book VI: Arthur

“Although Keii might be unpleasant and quite mannerless, he still had not lost the pride of nobility. Indeed, he was so brave that he wouldn’t avoid any monster: he dared fight it no matter how large it seemed to him and whatever his chances of success. You should also know that Arthur was zealous in virtue and in his faultless youth has chosen such attendants as were free of deceit. How could Keii have remained one of them for even a short time if he had been as evil as many have said? The truth is that he liked to scoff and spared no one. That was his chief failing”

Diu Crône by Heinrich von dem Türlin, Chapter Two: The Tankard

The Borgias’ costumes, while gorgeous and I would cut a bitch over most of that fabric, are also a weird mix of some details from the 1490s, and a lot of inspiration from the 1520s-30s.  They compress Lucrezia’s historical timeline quite a bit, but for dating purposes–Alexander became pope in 1492, she married Giovanni Sforza in 1493, it was annulled in 1497, she married Alfonso d’Aragon in 1498, and he was murdered in 1500 (the show ends here–1502 she married Alfonso d’Este and in 1519 she died of childbirth complications).  So everything the show covers takes place between 1490-1500.  I’m sticking mostly with her clothing, since the other women’s tends to be stylistically similar, and I’m just not going there with the guy’s buckled-up doublets and leather pants (what IS it with costume shows and leather pants?).

Late 1480s-90s clothing:

Straight neckline with minimal to no cleavage, sleeves mostly snug along the arm with underdress puffing through the separate pieces, especially at the elbow.  Brocades and patterned fabrics do show up, but not extensively.

Believed to be Lucrezia herself modeling for The Disputation of St. Catherine of Alexandria (patron saint of librarians), Pinturicchio, 1498.  That’s a crown and then a halo around her head, the aging process has made it look a little funky.

(Lorenzo Costa, 1488: The Daughters of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Ginevra Sforza, Cappella Bentivoglio, San Giacomo, Ferrara.)

(Vittore Carpaccio, 1495: Meeting of the Betrothed Couple (detail) Venice, Galleria dell'Accademia.)

1493: Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza,by Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis.  Brocade AF, but also probably her best gown at the time, not an everyday or even church dress.

Unknown Florentine Painter - ‘Portrait of a Lady,’ c. 1500.  The lacing on the lower sleeves is awesome, not entirely sure what’s going on with the closures across the bodice.

The Borgias Costumes:

A Vanozza costume sneaking in, because this is actually one of the more accurate dresses, especially the sleeves.  Neckline is low, but its construction–the two side pieces coming together over a central one–is a step in the right direction.   Not a big one, but it’s a step.  

Also not a bad start here.

The majority, however, have slashed or paned upper sleeves, a much lower neckline showing the undergown (or at least looking like it shows the undergown; most costume shows live in fear of the dreaded undergown, so these may be plackets added onto the gown to look like one instead).  The strong V shapes typically made by the construction of the 1490s gowns is replaced by a straight bodice, frequently made of one piece, with back or side-lacing rather than front.  The skirts are visibly gathered into the bodice, rather than being cut from one long piece (of all costume choices, I do understand this one as fabric conservation at the cutting stage, but there are ways to hide it).  Most of her skirts are also made of panels of different complementing fabrics, so you have these vertical lines of pattern running up the skirt–again, understandable in a “we could only find so many saris we liked” and a way of getting the most out of limited yardage of specific fabrics, but not accurate.

As much as the overskirts splitting to show an underskirt underneath is a favorite look of mine in both historical and modern clothing, and she is getting great dramatic skirt wingage here, nooooope.

Second wedding dress, so historically taking place in 1498.  Headroll, voluminous upper sleeves, bodice of the dress is in fact an underbust, with only the undergown covering the actual bust.  Pretty good shoes, though.

About those headrolls, fluffy sleeves, waist seams, and low necklines…

Raphael’s Lady with a Unicorn, 1505, has some similarities in the bodice and skirt, but not sleeves.

Same with his Portrait of a Young Woman -‘La Muta’, c. 1507-1508.

Portrait of a Lady by Domenico Puligo c.1525.

Paris Bordone, The Venetian Lovers, 1525-30, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.  Her sleeves are gathered to maximize fabric usage and puffage, but the bodice is very like Lucrezia’s second wedding dress.

Sebastiano Florigerio, St. George and the Dragon, Chiesa di San Giorgio, Udine, 1529.

Peter de Kempeneer (previously attr. to Girolamo da Carpi) c1530s.  Except that her partlet comes all the way up to her neck, as you can just barely tell by the lines of gold woven into it, and the skirt is of one fabric, this is basically a Lucrezia dress.  (And yes, I accept that on-screen clothing is almost invariably going to include more boobage than is historically accurate.  This is a fact of costume movies.  I will still comment on it.)

Bernardino Licinio, Portrait of a Lady, 1532.  Yes, I know, they’re all Portraits of a Lady, what are you going to do.  Also the embellishment on this bodice is pretty wild.

Bassano, Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1536.  The upper sleeves aren’t paned/slashed, but otherwise, very close in construction.

Titian, Portrait of a Girl in a Blue Dress (thank you, Captain Obvious), 1536.  Also great example of fancy hair (I admit it, I LOVE The Borgias hair despite its own issues which I’m not getting into here).

None of these sleeves have been slashed or paned the way quite a few Borgias garments are, possibly because that Snow White shit came even later, and I’m reaching here.

Lucas D’Heere, Girl and Women of Saxony, 1575.

Ludger Tom Ring the Younger, Portrait of a Young Patrician Lady, c. 1565

Hans Eworth, Portrait of Lady Mary Grey, 1571.

Giovanni Battista Moroni, Luisa Vertova Agosti, ca. 1570 -1575, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes.

Taken to terrifying extremes by Elizabeth Littleton, Lady Willoughby, 1573.

1570s, Eleonora of Toledo, 1570s Florence.

And to be completely honest, the construction method of long strips of fabric poofing up is later still…

Copy of Peter Paul Rubens Portrait of Anne of Austria, c. 1620-1625.  This is the Queen of France in The Three Musketeers, Louis XIV’s mom.

Anthony  van Dyck, Portrait of Marie-Louise de Tassis, c. 1630.

Conclusion

The Borgias costumes are pretty.  Really, really pretty, and there’s a reason Gabriella Pescucci (also of Penny Dreadful, Dangerous Beauty, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Age of Innocence and The Brother’s Grimm, among others, and doesn’t it all make sense now) was up for an Emmy for them.  But they’re not wholly accurate to any one time, let alone the period in question.

For a wide audience, though (and this is Showtime we’re talking about here), I get where they’re going–the idea isn’t to recreate 1490s Rome, it’s to evoke Renaissance Italy as a sumptuous, decadent time.  The 1490s clothing, especially to a modern eye, is just edging out of medieval silhouettes and styles, it’s not the image a wide audience has of “the Renaissance,” something carried over in the sets as well.  Even though it’s set decades earlier, it’s the heir to The Tudors (also a Showtime production), coming out in 2011 with The Tudors wrapping up in 2010.  So that’s the audience and expectations the show is dealing with, and it does a hell of a lot better than The Tudors did.  The authenticity geek in me cries, especially because the only way to correct widespread incorrect beliefs and impressions, is to, you know, stop perpetrating them in the first place, but that’s not the job the producers chose for the show.  The job they chose–being pretty, decadent Renaissance Italy–it does just fine.  

If you’re interested in more accurate costuming and storyline, Borgia, first produced by a mixed-nationality European company in 2011 and picked up by Netflix for its final season, is worth a watch, and it continues to Cesare’s death in 1507.  It’s far from inaccuracy free, either in costume or plot (the ruff on Lucrezia here is just bizarre), and is less consistent about its inaccuracies, since three different women will be running around in gowns influenced by three different periods, and has a horror of men’s shirt’s as well as women’s undergowns, but it is closer for the most part.  It’s also a harsher, grittier show, so heads up there.  

Embroidery Patterns

Once in a decade there comes a movie that shakes you to your core in the best possible way, opens your eyes, and fills your mind.

b. the time where a nonexistant historical arthur (as attested to in the historia brittonum and annales cambriae in the earliest arthurian stuff) would exist, britain in the five hundreds ad, the native language arthur would have been speaking would have been speaking would be common brittonic, which at the end of the five hundreds rapidly split into various languages based on region (note, goidelic and brittonic are two different branches of insular celtic entirely, the goedelic branch containing irish gaeilge, scottish gàidhlig, and manx gaelg, not really related to this convo, and the brittonic branch (see above) containing welsh cymraeg, cornish kernewek, breton brezhoneg, and cumbric, the extinct celtic language spoken in northern england/lowland southern scotland and also maybe The Pictish Language that’s an entire thing)

but would it make sense for arthur via his class status and background?

c. before the end of the roman rule of britain, when britain entered into its sub roman history period, vulgar latin was spoken especially by the most romanised areas of britain, and especially by the romano-british nobility. (it died out being spoken in britain soon after, not developing like the romance languages that ruled western europe but that’s. an entire thing lol) arthur, as the son of a roman (aurelius ambrosius is given as one in multiple sources, i’d reckon the same applied to uther) would most definitely speak vulgar latin as well, but whether he’d speak it with his direct family? probably so actually, especially considering that guinevere’s mother is noted to be a ‘roman lady’, and at least one of his nephews spent time in rome (they might have not spoken the same dialect of vulgar latin though which is. an entire thing as well look up british vulgar latin on that one. there at the very least would have been a lot of vernacular differences. i don’t even know if gawaine would have been speaking vulgar latin at all he may have learned classical latin but i don’t know that much about the evolution of latin into italian historically yet ahaha)

under the cut for absurd length

Arthur

Mordred

Guinevere

Galahad

Gaheris

Morgause

lancelot was very literally raised in a lake

gawain has a talking fox sidekick who shows him how to cross the river of the dead

morgan le fay’s best frenemy/gf is an ancient greek oracle who slept with alexander the great

gawain has to investigate his own murder not once but THREE times because people just will not stop faking his death

arthur has a pet parrot

one time mordred ate a dead body

gawain said he wanted to be turned into a maiden to be able to love lancelot as a maiden could. he was very high on painkillers at the time

lancelot’s birth name is galahad and his son’s name is galahad and his ex-boyfriend’s name is galehaut and his grandfather’s name is lancelot and his uncle’s name is bors and his cousin’s name is also bors.

there are upwards of ten characters named yvain

gawain was kidnapped by pirates as a child. this explains a lot about him i think

I’ve been having a lot of Arthurian feelings lately, so I thought that I’d put together a selective list of medieval Arthurian texts and where to find them. If I’m duplicating a masterpost of someone else’s hard work that I’ve failed to find in tag searches, apologies (and let me know so I can link back in this for maximum Arthurian goodness!)

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain

Only sections deal with Arthur, but 1) the whole thing is enjoyable and 2) this version has Vortigern and dragons. Full text here.

Layamon’s Brut

Like Geoffrey, Layamon is writing a history of Britain, and Arthur is part of it. It’s readable in Middle English if you have a little bit of background or a lot of patience. Have a link to the Arthurian sections in modern English.

The Mabinogion

These are wondrous and strange and I love them; they are a world of homeliness and magic, where ravens soar and Arthur plays chess for the fate of the earth and bargains with magic beasts, but also where Arthur and his knights sit around telling stories and playing games and eating chicken in the afternoons. (The Mabinogion is also why I started crying when Ioan Gruffudd’s voice-over for the terrible King Arthur movie started; I need to hear more Arthurian stories read in a Welsh voice.) Victorian translation online here, modern one for sale here.

Gottfried von Straßburg, Tristan

Angst, pain, poetry. Full text online here, edition for sale here. There are those who prefer Béroul’s version, but… I just really love Gottfried. It’s so imbued with a sense of the sadness of the world, and the nobility of human endeavor! I have feelings.

Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charette

Chrétien is the reason Monty Python has French jokes. Pick a romance, any romance, but The Knight of the Cart is my favorite Chrétien starting point. I also really like Yvain, though, and have seen it in new eyes ever since hearing a conference paper arguing that his lion could be read as a service animal! <3

Note: I’m leaving out Chrétien’s and Wolfram’s Percival romances; if you want to read about the quest for the Holy Grail, more power to you.

Marie de France, Lay of Sir Launfal

I needed to get Marie on here! And this is a haunting look at the proximity and distance of faerie in an Arthurian world. Full text here, contextualizing notes here.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

This is such a great poem about community and landscape, magic and honor, fear and desire. I first read Tolkien’s translation, but have recently been really into Armitage’s (which has the Middle English in parallel text, yay.)

Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur

the gaang - aesthetics 

===