Decollete

Decollete tag:www.blastmilk.com,2010:/decollete//14 2010-03-07T18:24:27Z A Severed Head Gallery. Guillotine and the Tudors, Judith and Salome. Art and literature according to a decapitation enthusiast. Movable Type 5.01 <![CDATA[Démodé: 1790's real women's clothing directory]]> tag:www.blastmilk.com,2010:/decollete//14.3908 2010-03-07T18:16:31Z 2010-03-07T18:24:27Z

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Jacket; c. 1790; French
Red and white striped silk brocade with
silver-colored buttons; fold-back collar.
Source: Kyoto Fashion Institute Fantastic historic dress resource! Particularly useful for isolating by decade the time period you are researching. Démodé: 1790's real women's clothing directory Every example is precious. This is a beautiful example of sartorial enthusiasm for the revolution. Or, it could just be a gorgeous red & white striped parisien jacket. ]]> Study of Beatrice Cenci, by Julia Margaret Cameron 1866 tag:www.blastmilk.com,2010:/decollete//14.3901 2010-02-15T22:54:53Z 2010-02-15T23:02:47Z

This showed up on Wikimedia Commons today. Will add to my Beatrice Gallery. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Study_of_Beatrice_Cenci,_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron.jpg Study of Beatrice Cenci, 1866. Model is May Prinsep....

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/ Beatrice Gallery.

490px-Study_of_Beatrice_Cenci,_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron.jpg

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Study_of_Beatrice_Cenci,_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron.jpg Study of Beatrice Cenci, 1866. Model is May Prinsep.]]> Noire Gloire: 18th Century Mourning Customs in a time of Revolution tag:www.blastmilk.com,2009:/decollete//14.3650 2009-08-09T20:13:08Z 2009-08-09T20:22:49Z

Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin 1792 [source] Up until the 18th century mourning was a luxury enjoyed (sic) mainly by royalty and those with sufficient aristocratic pedigrees. When Sir Henry Unton, a mere Ambassador, MP and civil servant extraordinaire, died of bubonic...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin 1792 [source] Up until the 18th century mourning was a luxury enjoyed (sic) mainly by royalty and those with sufficient aristocratic pedigrees. When Sir Henry Unton, a mere Ambassador, MP and civil servant extraordinaire, died of bubonic plague while in the queen's service in 1596 he was accorded a baron's funeral for services rendered, a full two stations higher than his own of Knight. Certain mourning customs that were familiar to the Victorians, the worlds best mourners, would have seemed equally at home four-hundred years earlier. While the 16th century was awash in black, the upper class women (and by that we mean aristocratic) draped themselves in various veils and bauble-free headgear, usually in black, sometimes in white if you were Marie Stuart (please clip those "r"s like a proper scot). Men donned a hooded cloak, seen quite clearly in Sir Henry's funeral procession. These are not monks, but friends and family, who would be expected to wear the garment up to six months depending on their relation to the deceased. Male mourning would later lose the mourning cloak and cowl, and substitute darker, more somber versions of au current fashion. Prior to Et in Arcadia ego (Nicolas Poussin, 1637-1638) death iconography was quite literal, and consisted mostly of deaths heads and crossbones, reapers, and uniquely animated cadavers out to pay a call. During the enlightenment era a fundamental change occured. While mourning goods became more affordable by the middle classes, mourning customs began to be sentimentalized as the enlightenment philosphies began to change the very basis of family life and family feeling. Rousseauian ideals and neoclassical motifs collided so that by the second half of the 18th century every grieving mother envisioned herself a stoic Roman matron mourning her Brutus while posing attractively on the lawn with an obelisk. Early on it was primarily in mourning iconography that women played out these neo-classical fashion fantasies, long before they appeared draped over the heaving bosoms of the demi-monde at the Palais Royale. Mourning Jewelry and Portraiture It was common custom for a person to stipulate in their will to have memorial jewelry made for loved ones (rings, brooches, lockets) either using macerated hair to paint with, or locks of hair woven to create a pleasing pattern or design, with a sentimental phrase, pertinent names, dates etc. The to-be-deceased would have set aside some locks of hair for this purpose. So it is with little surprise that (especially) during the Terror, when people were certain of their own demise, we find the condemned preparing for death, and their own remembrances there-after. Locks of hair and other tokens are exchanged frequently, bequeathed, and smuggled out of prisons by sympathetic, and sometimes merely pecuniary, opportunists. This was especially the case for the royal family. Despite thorough efforts by the revolutionary government to deter the traffic in royal relics, there were reports of locks Louis XVI hair being sold in little boxes, and "large silver rings, which have secret openings, containing in their upper part, made convex for this purpose a small piece of the coat of Monsieur Veto..." [source: The Politics of Appearance - Wrigley] Royalist Sympathies

Le Comte Pierre-Jean de Bourcet et sa famille
Charles Paul Landon 1791
Inscription: Landon—officier de la maison
de feu Mgr le Dauphin—1791

The year is 1791 and Bourcet, as an official in the house of the Dauphin, is displaying his royalist sympathies with a lack of subtlety that does him credit. Upon the table to the left are marble busts of the king and queen, one white lily (of france) lies dying upon the table, while a second remains in a french blue vase. I speculate that the lilies are the two dauphins of france, the elder of the two perished just before the fall of the bastille in July of 1789. The Bourcet family seems to be mourning their own loss. M. de Bourcet's downward gaze falls upon the fallen lily, hand empty and outstretched, while the other holds his eldest affectionately to his side. The four children stand between their parents. The eldest, father's little soldier, gazes forlornly at the portrait on the floor, a toddler on Maman's lap reaches towards the portrait upon the wall, too young to understand where his deceased brother has gone, while the young girl watches pensively by her youngest sibling's cradle, the infant turns away, perhaps ready to join the elder sibling who went before, and take her place in the empty frame above. Madame and Mlle. are the only two who gaze at the viewer. Who is the painting beneath the table? The Victim's Ball To read more on the most unusual mourning practice of the age, view my post and gallery on Les Bal des Victimes!

Will posterity believe that persons whose relatives died on the scaffold did not institute days of solemn and common affliction during which, assembled in mourning clothing, they would attest to their grief over such cruel, such recent losses, but instead [instituted] days of dancing where the point was to waltz, drink and eat to one's heart's content.
—Mercier

]]> Pre-1780

1772
Marie-Thérèse de Habsbourg Impératrice d'Autriche, mother of Marie Antoinette

1759 Louis Carrogi
La Veuve Reysfeltz, de Wesel [source]

18th cent. Louis Carrogi
Madame la comtesse de Cossé, belle-soeur du maréchal de Brissac [source]

1760 Louis Carrogis
Monsieur le curé de Deuil
dans la vallée de Montmorency [source]

Monsieur Pinson
by Lié-Louis Périn-Salbreux

Widow
by Lié-Louis Périn-Salbreux

1780-1789

1780 Lévite de Deuil
Marie Antoinette's mourning for her mother
l'Impératrice Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche [source]

Late 18th Cent. Mourning Portrait
Baby waiving goodbye
Reverse: hair-work ivy, weeping willow & forget-me-nots
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

Canadiens au tombeau de leur enfant
18th Cent.

Mourning brooch circa 1780
Eternal flames burn at the mourners feet

1787 Dame assise sur un canapé, tenant un enfant
by MaximilienVillers
Women clutching their infants in proximity to black crepe shawls are always to be suspected

La famille Mégret de Sérilly
Parents on the mantle, Maman wears a black shawl while les enfant turns its little face away
Jacques Thouron 1787

FRONT: "In heaven and in my heart"
Memorial to a husband, 1780s-90s
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

BACK: "In heaven and in my heart"
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

1790-1799

1790 Widow

1790 Mademoiselle de Salienne, future Madame Isabey
Jean Baptiste Isabey
Note: In mourning

Vêtue d'un costume de deuil
Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin 1792 [source]

1792 Madame Vanhée née Dewinch
With urn and drooping rose, this could very well be a mourning portrait if that is an obelisk in the background.
by Augustin [source]

Baronne de Chalvet-Souville. Née, Marie de Broutin. Musée Carnavalet. Francois-Andre Vincent, 1793
The Baronness points to a drawing of her husband, the Baron de Souville, once Governor of the French colony of Reunion, her first finger encircled with a black enameled mourning band, around her neck we presume it is his portrait that hangs. It is 1793, and sartorial mourning is no longer politick.

1794 Robe a la Turque
Half Mourning

FRONT: 1792 French Memorial Pendant
disolved hair, seed pearls & gold wire
Mother grieving for her daughter
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

BACK: 1792 French Memorial Pendant
Hair work with initials in seed pearls "JK"
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

1795-ish Jean Baptiste Isabey
Costume of the Directoire
in half-mourning

Portrait de femme vue jusqu'aux genoux
Inscription sur la feuille de papier tenue par le modèle :Le temps qui détruit tout conserve l'espérance
Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin 1798 [source]

Aristo Attorney executed
during the Lyons Massacre, December 1793
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

Late 18th cent. memorial portrait with hair work
[source: Mourning Art & Jewelry]

1797 Portrait un Femme
Pierre Charles Cior

Young woman in black mantle
Late 1790s
Note fashionably cropped hair, transparent costume still evident with mourning crepe

Mid to late 1790s
Mother and Son holding miniature portrait of a loved one

Portrait de Laetitia Bonaparte
Isabey

Mourning Crepe

Silk french cap with mourning crape

Portraits with bits o' black crêpe, taffeta, velvet and no provenance, but that are intriguing none-the-less:

1789 by Séné Louis
Portrait de femme en robe-redingote noire

1790s M&eagrave;re et enfant
by Peter Edouard Stroely

1800 Portrait de femme en robe empire noire

1775 La prière du matin
Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Portrait de jeune femme, avec une robe aubergine by Guerin

1795 Jeune femme assise s'appuyant au dossier d'une chaise
Lagrenée Anthelme-François

Portrait de l'artiste et de sa première femme, Marie Sophie Giguet
by Charles-Etienne Leguay

1798 Portrait de la comtesse Regnault de Saint Jean d'Angély, née Laure de Boneuil
François Pascal Simon Gérard

Capote en Crêpe jaune, garnie en noir, Sac Falbalassé
Yellow crepe hood, trimmed in black, Falbalassé bag
Journal des Dames et des Modes 1797

1798 Cornette de Crêpe, à Longues Pointes

1798 Chapeau de Paille, garni d'une, Echelle de Rubans

Sentiment

1790 Le comte de Beaujolais (1779-1808) à onze ans
by Jean-Urbain Guerin [source] [source]

Portrait de Madame de Boullongne en vestale by Guerin

Portrait de femme vue jusqu'aux genoux
Inscription sur la feuille de papier tenue par le modèle :Le temps qui détruit tout conserve l'espérance
Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin 1798 [source]

]]> Life of Sir Henry Unton 1557-1596 tag:www.blastmilk.com,2009:/decollete//14.3651 2009-08-09T19:12:11Z 2009-08-09T19:14:47Z

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

(500k) Life of Sir Henry Unton 1557-1596
Anonymous —National Portrait Gallery, London Up until the 18th century mourning was a luxury enjoyed (sic) mainly by royalty and those with sufficient aristocratic pedigrees. When Sir Henry Unton, a mere Ambassador, MP and civil servant extraordinaire, died of bubonic plague while in the queen's service in 1596 he was accorded a baron's funeral for services rendered, a full two stations higher than his own of Knight. His widow assures that this momentous honor will not be forgotten by her neighbors, had a brilliant and surreal panel painted depicting his birth, life, achievments, but mainly his oh-so-glorious death which takes up a good three-quarters of the panel. His death, including maladie, doctoring, dying, sailing back to England in a black sailed mourning ship, the above mentioned mile long funeral procession and packed church, ends with his tomb, upon which he rests rather cheerfully, looking as if he were resting in a field of daisies, the Widow Unton looming over him like a spider. All of this layed out rather counter-intuitively from right (birth) to left (entombment).

Sir Henry Unton Resource: Nifty teaching tool that examines each little part of the painting. Please complete the workbook at the end of each section and submit.
Sir Henry Unton (1557-1596): at the National Portrait Gallery
Source: National Portrait Gallery Visitor's Guide, Revised 2006

Detail: Sir Henry Unton
Black sailed mourning ship
funeral mourners

While my main focus here is French mourning, I mention Sir Henry because the painting is so very cool. Well, that and the further you go back in time, the more difficult it is to dig up the evidence on google. French and English customs have long been in a neck and neck horse race. One is never far behind the other, and so too goes the mourning customs. That there is my excuse for rambling on about the very awesome Life and Death of Sir Henry Unton (which I didn't actually find on google, but saw rather in person during a recent visit to the National Portrait Gallery in London). So here I depart from England. ]]> Get your hands off my butch history - Times Online tag:www.blastmilk.com,2009:/decollete//14.3869 2009-07-03T17:11:20Z 2009-07-03T17:19:24Z

Interesting article about the Tudor's most recently prolific presenter: David Starkey. Get your hands off my butch history: The historian David Starkey says his field has become all too girlie but his female colleagues are quick to slap him down...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/ Get your hands off my butch history: The historian David Starkey says his field has become all too girlie but his female colleagues are quick to slap him down

History, he proclaimed in the Radio Times, had been "feminised" because "so many of the writers who write about [it] are women and so much of their audience is a female audience". Even the subject of his latest television series, Henry VIII, had been "absorbed by his wives", he said, "which is bizarre".

That said, Starkey's "Mind of a Tyrant" was pretty entertaining. With more of a focus on Henry VIII himself than even his own previous series have had.

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]]> <![CDATA[L'Histoire du Costume Féminin Français.]]> tag:www.blastmilk.com,2009:/decollete//14.3856 2009-04-02T19:10:25Z 2009-04-02T19:50:39Z

Source: Ebay. 1922 Original Prints, Costumes worn 1789-1799....

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Source: Ebay. 1922 Original Prints, Costumes worn 1789-1799.]]> By the Sword Divided - From Revolution to Restoration in Period Drama tag:www.blastmilk.com,2009:/decollete//14.3849 2009-01-22T00:14:17Z 2009-01-22T00:23:06Z

What I did over the Christmas holidays... It started out with Mr. Kallisti downloading "The Devil's Whore" for me "cuz it sounded like your type of thing. Y'know, whores..." It snowballed from there as I watched Charles I beheaded three...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/ 1638 to 1660: The Devil's Whore [IMDB]

By and large, there are two categories of period drama. The first is White Petticoat Drama, where people do a bit of frisky fan-work, have a picnic that involves a huge ham, and then live happily ever after. The second is Dirty Period Drama - where everyone is covered in boils, wees out of the window, and palpably suffers from the lack of antibiotics and/or mobile telecommunications. The Devil's Whore is definitely in the second category. John Simm's fleas should make the credit list. Oliver Cromwell clearly pongs. It makes a dirty war a very dirty war. But one that, against all the Civil War odds, makes great telly. -Caitlin Moran, The Times

1640 to 1660: "By the Sword Divided" (1983) [IMDB] [WIKI] A bit obvious to say, but if you liked Poldark you'll really enjoy "By the Sword Divided." Classic low budget, yet brilliantly written and performed eighteen hour series from the BBC. It also aired on Masterpiece Theater in the late 80's. One of the few period dramas to deal with the English Civil War, before and aftermath.

1660 to 1685: Charles II - The Power & The Passion (The Last King in the U.S.): [BBC] [IMDB] 2003, covers the life and adventures of Charles II of England, played by the ever roguish Rufus Sewell. Mwrowr.

1673 to 1722: The First Churchills [IMDB] The First Churchills: 1969! Covers the period 1673 through 1722, based on the biography by Winston Churchill of his illustrious ancestors, the first Duke & Duchess of Marlborough. Susan Hampshire & John Neville are sublime.

]]> Guardian.co.uk: Top 10 books about Elizabeth I tag:www.blastmilk.com,2008:/decollete//14.3842 2008-07-29T12:34:36Z 2008-07-29T12:34:36Z

Michael Dobson and Nicola J Watson are the authors of England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (Oxford, 2002). It is a guide to the nation's 400-year obsession with the Virgin Queen. "This is a deliberately miscellaneous selection, since...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/ Michael Dobson and Nicola J Watson are the authors of England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (Oxford, 2002). It is a guide to the nation's 400-year obsession with the Virgin Queen. "This is a deliberately miscellaneous selection, since one of the most extraordinary things about Elizabeth is the sheer range of material she has inspired, and continues to inspire, from Spenser's Faerie Queene to Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth and beyond." Read the full list: The Guardian.co.uk - Michael Dobson and Nicola J Watson's top 10 books about Elizabeth I Or take a spin on my li'l carousel!

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]]> Tudor terror: John Guy is on a mission to bring history to the masses tag:www.blastmilk.com,2008:/decollete//14.3841 2008-07-28T12:28:04Z 2008-07-28T12:41:44Z

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/ Tudor terror: John Guy is on a mission to bring history to the masses—The Independent

It is the summer of 1535, just weeks after the execution of Sir Thomas More. A small rowing boat makes its way along the Thames from Chelsea to London Bridge. The oarsman's passengers are a 29-year-old gentlewoman, Margaret Roper, and her maid, who carries a basket. A horrific sight meets their eyes as they approach the bridge: a dozen or more skulls on poles protruding from the parapet, which have been boiled and tarred to prevent them being fed upon by circling gulls. As new heads arrive, the old ones are moved along the row until they reach the end of the line, when they are thrown into the river. At the door of the north tower of the bridge, the maid negotiates with the bridge-master, handing over the contents of her purse. In return she receives one of the skulls, carefully wrapping it in a linen cloth and placing it in a basket. This is all that remains of Thomas More. One day the skull will join Margaret Roper herself, when she is interred in the family tomb at Chelsea, a burial symbolic of the special attachment between father and daughter. This is the gripping opening scene of John Guy's study of the relationship of Margaret Roper and her father, Thomas More.

To be released: A Daughter's Love: THOMAS MORE AND HIS DEAREST MEG by John Guy

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Margaret More (1505-1544), Wife of William Roper, 1535-36 Hans Holbein the Younger (German, 1497/98-1543) Vellum laid on playing card; Diam. 1 3/4 in. (45 mm) From: Metropolitan Museum of Art]]> BBC NEWS | Rare Elizabeth I portrait found tag:www.blastmilk.com,2008:/decollete//14.3837 2008-05-27T12:53:19Z 2008-05-27T13:00:59Z

A rare portrait of Queen Elizabeth I as a young princess has been discovered in a private collection at a stately home in Northamptonshire. The portrait, dating from 1650 to 1680, was found in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

A rare portrait of Queen Elizabeth I as a young princess has been discovered in a private collection at a stately home in Northamptonshire. The portrait, dating from 1650 to 1680, was found in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection at Boughton House. — Continue Reading Article...

]]> The Victim's Ball tag:www.blastmilk.com,2007:/decollete//14.3267 2007-11-29T15:00:47Z 2007-12-04T14:31:00Z

Croisures à la victime, 1798from "Fashion in the French Revolution" by Aileen Ribiero Or, les Bal des Victimes... The celebratory atmosphere following the "Reign of Terror" gave way to a number of frivolous yet gruesome fashions and pastimes, one of...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Croisures à la victime, 1798
from "Fashion in the French Revolution" by Aileen Ribiero Or, les Bal des Victimes... The celebratory atmosphere following the "Reign of Terror" gave way to a number of frivolous yet gruesome fashions and pastimes, one of which was the Victim's Ball. In order to qualify for admittance in one of these sought after soirees one had to to be a close relative or spouse of one who had lost their life to the guillotine. Invitations were so coveted that papers proving your right to attend had to be shown at the door, and some were even known to forge this certificate in their eagerness. All the rage at these grand balls was to have the hair cut high up off the neck, in imitation of "le toilette du condamne" where the victim's hair is cut so as not to impede the efficiency of the blade. There were several popular hairstyles including cheveux à la titus or à la victime for both women and men, where the hair is given very short and choppy cut, and the "dog ears" worn by Muscadins, where long flops of hair are left on either side of the face, but cut right up to the hairline on the back of the neck. And for the ladies, a thin red velvet ribbon worn round the neck, or red ribbons worn croisures à la victime, a kind of reverse fichu, or ceinture croisée, across the back of the bodice forming a symbolic "x marks the spot" across the upper back.

Will posterity believe that persons whose relatives died on the scaffold did not institute days of solemn and common affliction during which, assembled in mourning clothing, they would attest to their grief over such cruel, such recent losses, but instead [instituted] days of dancing where the point was to waltz, drink and eat to one's heart's content.
—Mercier

Like most fads, these reactionary styles and those of the Incroyable et Merveilleuse crowd that ruled Paris the days after 9 Thermidor, this one was over before it began. By the end of the decade once mutually exclusive sartorial insignia such as knee breeches (monarchist) and the tricoloure were sported together with verve, irrespective of their once pertinent symbolism. It's just fashion! The short and sassy hair cut à la titus never caught on outside of France for women, but lasted in France into the next century. Men's hair never recovered. From the unpowdered long locks of the revolutionary sympathizer, to the dashingly short titus, men have endeavored to look unfussed ever since, even if it took a whole lot of fussing to achieve. Sources:

Gothic Thermidor: The Bals des victimes
Journal des Dames et des Modes (Costume Parisien): [source] [source] and eBay ^_^
The Art of Louis-Leopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France
Fashion in the French Revolution by Aileen Ribeiro

]]>

Being summoned to execution

1796 Les Incroyables
by Jean-Louis Darcy after Carles Vernet
Muscadin on the left wears his hair in the "dog eared" style

1795-96 Note the hair à la victime, in immitation of the toilette du condamne.

Madame Arnault de Gorse
by Louis-Leopold Boilly
the subject wears her hair à la titus

1796 The Painter in her Studio
by Louis-Leopold Boilly
subject wears red or violet ribbon à la croisures

1797
Chignon à la Grecque, entrelacé avec un Fichu de couleur, Bandeau en Cheveux, Collier de Perles, Ceinture à la Victime

1797 Capote Anglaise, garnie en Crêpe Bandeau de Velourz, Guilloche en Or, Petit fichu croise

1797 Fichu en Croise detail

1798 Ceinture Croisée, Robe Overte sur le Côte
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

1799 Turban au Balloon, Ceinture Croisée. Redicule à Chiffre
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Portrait de femme, à mi-corps, robe blanche, rubans violets et turban
by Jean Baptiste Jacques Augustin

]]> Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles tag:www.blastmilk.com,2007:/decollete//14.3648 2007-11-17T17:24:33Z 2007-11-17T17:28:17Z

Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles Legion of Honor, San Francisco November 17, 2007 — February 17, 2008 Now, if my google alert box weren't quite so overwhelming, I might have caught this press release when it went out....

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/ Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles Legion of Honor, San Francisco November 17, 2007 — February 17, 2008

Now, if my google alert box weren't quite so overwhelming, I might have caught this press release when it went out. But due to the sharp eyes of a good friend, Nadja (♥), I have the link! Aieeeee! The blurb:

Marie-Antoinette, the Austrian-born queen of Louis XVI of France, was given the Petit Trianon, a small château secluded in the park at Versailles, upon her accession in 1774. An icon of French neoclassicism, it exemplifies the perfection of 18th-century French architecture through its delicate balance of form and proportion. Its interiors were furnished to the queen's order with pieces of the utmost elegance, restraint, and beauty. This exhibition gives a visual history of the Petit Trianon through 88 pieces of the finest furniture, paintings, and sculpture from this château. It is complemented by watercolors, prints, and drawings of the house and its innovative landscaping, including the picturesque Hameau, a rustic village where the queen and her favorites could relax away from the prying eyes of the court at Versailles. This is the only venue of the exhibition, which is organized by the Musée National of the Château de Versailles.

One of my favorite things about trumpeting your hobbies loud and proud (on the internet and otherwise) is that friends and strangers alike are sure to let you know of something dead or decapitated... in case you missed it. Yay! I'd be running down there this instant if I didn't have so much going on this week with Dolpa & Work & Thanksgiving & OH GAWD! Heh. In any case, it is showing at San Francisco's Legion of Honor from today til 2/17/2008, with lots of very cool special events planned. We'll report back. For reals. I still have 2837434 pictures from my Severed Head, er, Absinthe tour of Europe last summer! And more on the revolutionary fashion stuff. I'm a busy girl. But it is all coming along. Mwah! Kallisti ]]> Tudor England Links tag:www.blastmilk.com,2007:/decollete//14.3645 2007-11-09T14:26:23Z 2007-11-09T14:37:15Z

Links: Wikipedia: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Catherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots TudorHistory.org! Happy clicking. Bright and fun to read, wonderful pictures and good selection of portraits with lots of juicy tidbits....

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Wikipedia: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Catherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots

TudorHistory.org! Happy clicking. Bright and fun to read, wonderful pictures and good selection of portraits with lots of juicy tidbits. Awesome time-killer!

]]> Les Incroyables et Merveilleuses: Fashion as Anti-Rebellion tag:www.blastmilk.com,2007:/decollete//14.3503 2007-07-27T16:05:01Z 2007-12-04T14:01:44Z

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Point de Convention (Absolutely no agreement)
Louis-Léopold Boilly 1797
A Merveilleuse is mistaken for a prostitute
and refuses the coin offered to her. The Muscadins (or Incroyable, the Incredible) first appeared around 1792, known for their royalist sympathies and so named for the musk perfume they wore in defiance of revolutionary austerity. They re-emerged after the fall of Robespierre, ending the Terror, and were key thugs in what has become known as The White Terror, a backlash against jacobin oppression, violence, and Robespierrean virtue. The jeunesse dorée roamed the streets of Paris drinking, toasting the monarchy and lashing out at patriots with sticks. And they looked fabulous doing it. Typified by their adherence to ancien regime knee-breeches and exaggerated English style frock coats with impossibly large collars, and powdered hair dressed outlandishly in either multiple braids or "dog-eared" style, cut short in the back à la victime and long beside the face. They were literally roving bands of angry dandies. By the late 1790's however, sporting a Muscadin hairdo would no longer get you arrested (as it could in 1795) as the various styles were adopted and absorbed into the fashionable and ephemeral society of the Directoire. Aileen Ribeiro says of this image (les Incroyables) :

Caricaturists found a perfect subject in the form of the masculine fashions of the late 1790s. Both young men wear tight-fitting square-cut coats with huge lapels, and knee-breeches decorated with loops of fabric. Their political sympathies are not necessarily clear. Although their culottes date from the ancien régime, their printed cravats are working-class in origin; and, while the man on the left wears his hair plaited at the back à la victime, the man on the right has a revolutionary cockade prominently pinned to his hat. Both have shaggy hair, the side locks falling like spaniel's ears. The implications seems to be that fashion is more important than ideology. — Fashion in the French Revolution, Aileen Ribeiro

Les Merveilleuses, or Marvelous Women, ruled the live fast, die young social whirlwind that took over the salons of Paris after the Terror. At their front Thérésa Cabarrus Fontenay Tallien and Joséphine de Beauharnais (later Empress) both of whom just barely survived the Jacobin regime. It was partly on Thérésa's behalf, with whom Tallien had been conducting a torrid affair, that he spearheaded the Thermadorian take down of Robespierre and the Montagnards. The à la Grecque style typified by Thérésa, Joséphine, and Madame Récamier consisted of clinging, flowing classical Greek and Roman styles in white silks and muslins, draped with brightly colored shawls and ribbons edged with classical motifs. The once allegorical fashion left the painters studio and took to the streets and ballrooms, their dainty feet shod in golden sandals, and dresses dampened to enhance their cling (though wearing knitted flesh colored stays and stockings to preserve a vestige of modesty). Madame Tallien though was the real deal, and famously appeared at the Paris Opera wearing a white silk dress without sleeves and sans petticoats (gasp!). Charles Maurice de Talleyrand commented: "Il n'est pas possible de s'exposer plus somptueusement!" ("It is not possible to exhibit oneself more sumptuously!") [source: wikipedia]. Hair was worn curled and dressed with ribbons à la grecque or clipped short à la victime or à la titus, in emulation of the last haircut the condemned received before being sent to the guillotine so as not to impede the blade. This short and sassy style lasted amazingly til the early 1800s, but never caught on in England or other countries, unlike the empire waisted dress, which proved the silhouette du jour for nearly thirty years.]]>

1791
Revolutionary Dandy, note hercules club for patriotic debate

early 1790's les Incroyable
Note exaggerated hats and lapels,
aristocratic pastime such as gambling

1792 Victoria & Albert Collection

1793
"Ah! Quelle Antiquité" and "Oh! Quelle Folie que la Nouveauté!!!"
1778 meets 1793

1794 meets 1742

1794 le Depart et le Retour
Jean-Baptiste Isabey

1795 Muscadins knock over a bust of Marat [source]

Anon. 1795
Jeune fille brune en négligé
[source]

1794-95 (possibly) Madame Theresa Tallien by David

1795
Theresa Cabarrus (later Tallien)
Jean-Baptiste Isabey

1796 Joséphine Beauharnais as Venus
Andrea Appiani [Source]

1796 Le Petit Coblentz
Jean-Baptiste Isabey

1795-96 A Merveilleuse as seen on the boulevard. Note the hair à la victime, in immitation of the toilette du condamne.

1796 English Caricature

1796 Merveilleuse in her exaggerated bonnet & classical motif scarf

à la Grecque

le Incroyable

1796-97 Costume à la Sauvage et à la Grecque

1796

1797
Faites la Paix
Léopold Boilly

1796 Les Incroyables
by Jean-Louis Darcy after Carles Vernet

Palais Royale during the Directory

Léopold Boilly

1797
L'Anarchiste

Late 1790s Directory Soiree

Late 1790s Palais Royale [source]

The Directory. Allegory warning women about being 'bought'.

1798 Portrait of a Young Woman
Circle of David

1798-99 Madame Raymond de Verninac, born Henriette Delacroix, elder sister of Eugène Delacroix by David

1799 Mervellieuse

1800 Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier
Jacques-Louis David

1800 Parisien Ladies in their Winter Dress
English caricature by George Cruikshank

Journal des Dames et des Modes: Fashion plates and the followers of fashion 1797 - 1800. [source]

Plate No. 25, 1795-96
Note the hair à la victime, in immitation of the toilette du condamne.

Plate No. 16, 1797
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 13, 1797
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 52, 1797
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 39, 1797
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 8, 1797 Fichu en Croise

1797 Fichu en Croise detail

Plate No. 16, 1797

Plate No. 12, 1797 Cocarde en Feuilles

Plate No. 58, 1797
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 14, 1797 Ceinture de Velours Noir

Plate No. 9, 1797
Chignon à la Grecque, entrelacé avec un Fichu de couleur, Bandeau en Cheveux, Collier de Perles, Ceinture à la Victime

Plate No. 37, 1798
Croisures à la Victime
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 52, 1798
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 80, 1798-99
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 100, 1798-99
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Plate No. 145, 1798 Cornette de Crêpe, à Longues Pointes

Plate No. 81, 1798 Demi-Capote posée de côté, Fichu, Tablier, Ridicule

Plate No. 151, 1798 Peigne d'Or, Fichu, Ceinture

Plate No. 104, 1798 Chapeau de Paille, garni d'une, Echelle de Rubans

1798 Chapeau à la Minerve, garni de Gances entrelacéea, Doillette bordée en Velours

1798 Ceinture Croisée, Robe Overte sur le Côte
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

1799
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

1799 Turban au Balloon, Ceinture Croisée. Redicule à Chiffre
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

1799
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

1800
from Journal des Dames et des Modes

Links & Sources:

Fashion in the French Revolution, Aileen Ribeiro
Incroyables et Merveilleuses: Du renouveau de la Canne
Follow the salle suivante button at the bottom of the page for a lovely tour!
Muscadin: at Wikipedia
Jean-Baptiste Isabey: miniature portraits in France's museums
Jean-Baptiste Isabey: A Bio
Reign of Terror: (September 5, 1793 – July 28, 1794) or simply The Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period of about ten months during the French Revolution when struggles between rival factions led to mutual radicalization which took on a violent character with mass executions by guillotine.
White Terror: Post Thermadorian Reaction to the Jacobins and their supporters
Directory (Directoire): Held executive power in France from November 2, 1795 until November 10, 1799 (5 Brumaire year III to the 18 Brumaire year VIII): following the Convention and preceding the Consulate.

]]> Sans-culottes: Artisans of Paris tag:www.blastmilk.com,2007:/decollete//14.3502 2007-07-20T14:21:02Z 2007-07-20T14:27:47Z

Sans-culottes carrying a model of the Bastille, 1793Sans-culottes: Literally "without knee breeches" i.e. not a Mr. Fancy Pants, an aristo, as the working man wore trousers. This became the defacto uniform for the Sans-culotte, along with the Phrygian Cap, removed...

Kallisti http://www.blastmilk.com/

Sans-culottes carrying a model of the Bastille, 1793Sans-culottes: Literally "without knee breeches" i.e. not a Mr. Fancy Pants, an aristo, as the working man wore trousers. This became the defacto uniform for the Sans-culotte, along with the Phrygian Cap, removed from the lofty spear of Liberté, and the tricolour cockade. ]]>

1792
Sans-culotte

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