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Originalveröffentlichung in: Grabski, Józef ; Wałek, Janusz (Hrsgg.): Leonardo da Vinci - Lady with an ermine : (1452 - 1519) ; from the Czartoryski Collection, National Museum, Cracow, Vienna u.a. 1991, S. 24-27 ZDZISLAW ZYGULSKI, JR. Costume Style and Leonardo's Knots in the Lady with an Ermine Costume Style Pollaiuolo, Sandro Botticelli, and Piero della Francesca. A particularly good example is offered in the fresco por­ trait of Giovanna degli Albizzi by Domenico Ghirlandaio To understand the costume worn by the sitter for in the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella. Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, it is necessary to recall the In such portraits, foreheads remain uncovered, but evolution of womens' fashions in Quattrocento Italy. the high Gothic headdresses have been replaced by trans­ Regional differences reflected the political disintegration parent veils and nets and the hair is arranged in elaborate of the Italian nation into several independent states, most plaits, braids, and knots, partly flowing and richly or­ of which were simply city-states. Nevertheless, until the namented with ribbons, fillets, and pearls and other middle of the fifteenth century, in some places even jewelry. Blond hair prevails, being praised above all. longer, the international court fashion originating in Gowns are made of heavy, patterned brocades and vel­ France and Flanders predominated in Italy: high, pad­ vets, with added embroidery. Bodices are still tight and ded, heart­ and horn­shaped headdresses or turbans; laced, sleeves are tied with ribbons, decoratively slashed, high, uncovered, and convex foreheads; small V­shaped and white blouses show through the slits. Skirts fall in or­ decolletages; tight­fitting bodices; and long, trailing gan­pipe pleats. skirts. The style of the period can best be seen in the paint­ Despite the existence of their own highly developed lo­ ings and drawings of Antonio Pisanello, as well as in the cal style, Italian women were receptive to fashions imported figurative decorations on cassoni. from abroad. Spanish influence coming via Naples, ruled The style of the Italian Early Renaissance was estab­ by the Aragon dynasty, was especially strong. lished in the second half of the fifteenth century, with its A unique new style was born at the Castilian court chief center in Florence. It is well documented in profile around 1470. It incorporated medieval traditions, Moorish portraits by Alesso Baldovinetti, Paolo Uccello, Antonio motifs, Italian Renaissance ideas, and some innovations 24 of its own. Dark brown or black hair was generally fa­ connected to the Aragon court in Naples. Beatrice, vored, divided in two smooth waves circling the cheeks, daughter of Eleonore of Aragon, married the duke of Mi­ gathered at the back in a long queue, covered on the head lan, Ludovico Sforza ("il Moro") in 1491, and introduced with a cap, the braid being hidden in a long cloth casing the Spanish style to Milan. Until then the ladies of Milan (called in Spanish el tranzado, in English pigtail). In the had worn costumes similar to the Florentine style, with front the arrangement of the hair was identical with the some German influences {alia tedesca). Inspired by Bea­ dominant fashion for centuries among Oriental women trice, they combed their hair down in smooth waves, as far as Persia and Arabia, as well as Moorish Andalusia. adopted the pigtails falling from small caps and the black Braids were put into ornamented casings already in fillets, and ornamented the coiffure and the neck with Romanesque France. The small cap at the back was fixed pearls and other jewels, favoring beads of black amber by a fillet across the brow. (ambra nera). They accepted the sbernia, but were not brave The bodices of the Spanish gowns were similar to enough to wear the farthingales and buskin shoes. Italian ones but the skirts were entirely different. In 1468, This severely formal fashion is depicted in a great when Juana de Portugal, the wife of the king of Castile, number of court portraits on panels, in miniatures, Enrique IV el Impotente, was pregnant with an illegiti­ murals, marble busts, and even tiny cameos. Yet it was ex­ mate child, she invented a bell­shaped underskirt tinguished after Beatrice's death in 1497 and Ludovico's stiffened by reed hoops (los verdugos or guarda-infante, in En­ expulsion from Milan two years later. The most notable glish farthingale). A typical Spanish los verdugos gown was portraits of Milanese ladies in Spanish dress are as fol­ completed by a cape with one vertical opening for the arm lows: Beatrice d'Este in the Pala Sforzesca (Brera Gallery, (sbernia) and buskin shoes (los chapines), also an Oriental Milan) and in a bust by Gian Cristoforo Romano invention. (Louvre, Paris); the supposed Beatrice in the Dama alia The fashion style alia castellana could only be created Reticella, school of Leonardo (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, on Spanish soil as a successful combination of different Milan), and in a painting by Alessandro Araldi (Uffizi elements in a highly organic and original form. It deter­ Gallery, Florence); Bona of Savoy (The National Gallery, mined a new system of movements, poses, and gestures, London); Bianca Maria Sforza by Ambrogio da Predis contributing to the Spanish court etiquette which was (National Gallery of Art, Washington); and Lucrezia soon to fascinate Europe. In a very short time the Span­ Crivelli (?) in La Belle Ferronniere, school of Leonardo ish style for women had penetrated neighboring coun­ (Louvre) [Fig. 15]. tries, appearing ephemerally in France, Flanders, En­ The Lady with an Ermine belongs to this distinguished gland, and Germany and making its greatest conquest list. The three­quarter position of her head allows one in Italy. It rarely kept its rigid form; more often than to see only the outline of the cap and pigtail. A gauze veil not, some typically Spanish features were combined held by a black fillet covers the head. The auburn hair, with local ones. Who was capable of imitating fully the combed down, has lost its original wavy line and now Spanish ladies? comes under the chin due to a fault in renovation. The It was about 1480 that the Spanish fashion entered Ita­ sitter wears a necklace of black amber. Her gown, ma­ ly through Naples, and over the next ten years it reached roon in color, is embroidered in patterns of knots and the northern part of the country. Its path may be traced loops. The black lines in the front of the bodice and the with great accuracy thanks to a profusion of literary and tapes of the sleeves are unfortunately repainted. She iconographic sources. One of the first paintings with la­ also has a blue sbernia with a golden lining. dies represented in Spanish style is Lorenzo Costa's The Most scholars have dated the painting about 1483, Bentivoglio Family Before the Madonna Enthroned, dated 1488, in just after Leonardo's arrival in Milan. This view is the church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna. based upon the correspondence between Cecilia Galler­ Lucrezia Borgia and Isabella and Beatrice d'Este ani, a lady of the Sforza court, and Isabella d'Este. In were greatly responsible for the spread of the new fashion a letter of 1497, Cecilia wrote that she was quite young to northern Italy. The court of Este in Ferrara was closely at the time when Leonardo painted her, and that she was 25 14) Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine, Czartoryski 15) Leonardo da Vinci, La Belle Ferronniere, 1490-95, detail, Collection, Cracow. Louvre, Paris. no longer like the portrait. Nevertheless, it cannot be Leonardo's Knots proved that she is in fact the subject of the Lady with an Er­ mine. We do not know any Milanese portrait of around 1483 showing Spanish dress; almost all those portraits in The sitter's gown in the Lady with an Ermine is decorat­ which the fashion appears were painted about 1490 and ed with specific ornaments known as "Leonardo's knots" in the next decade, at the time of the great matrimonial {nodi di Leonardo). No scholar has paid any attention to connections of Milan, Ferrara, and Naples. It would them, possibly because they are located in the dark por­ therefore seem correct to date the Lady with an Ermine tions of the picture and are partly deformed by about 1490. repainting. 26 Three different types of ornaments may be discerned: to knot) and Vinci. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy inter­ First, double loops in figure-of-eight form repeated in an preted the emblems as an old labyrinth subject or even a endless system (on the edge of the decolletage and on the universal form denoting the cosmos. Mircea Eliade ex­ sleeves); second, endless knots, slightly deformed, repeat­ plained the knots as an ancient magic sign and an attrib­ ed in square fields (on the right side of the bodice, as well ute of such Indo­European gods as Varuna, Ahriman, as at the top of the right sleeve); and third, knots as above and Odin. Marcel Brion, in summing up the opinions of with the addition of quatrefoil loops (on the left sleeve un­ his predecessors, also stressed the symbolic values of der the layer of red paint, visible only when lighted from Leonardo's knots. a certain angle). These investigations were largely devoid of analysis of A comparative basis for the problem is offered by the the forms Leonardo's knots take. Here the knots may be knots Leonardo drew in his manuscripts, in particular in divided into several groups. Some of them simply repeat the Codice Atlantico; the emblematic etchings founded on mainly Moorish and Turkish patterns, others are free var­ the knots and interlacing motifs with the inscription iations on Oriental motifs, while still others are the artist's Leonardi Vinci Academia, which are attributed to Leonardo, invention based on the European ornamental tradition.

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