Resumen de "Tout beau, tout esclatant, tout brave, tout superbe": le vetement dans les portraits
Ever since the time of Jules Quicherat and François Boucher, costume history of the French Renaissance has taken for granted that the clothing represented in the portraits was that worn by the sitter and has unwaveringly established vestimentary fashions based on paintings. However, the passive role as fashion illustrations is hardly appropriate to these portraits, which were first and foremost works of art. All representations reflect the entwined requirements of several participants: the sitter and the artist, but also the patron and the spectator, who are rarely the same person as the model. As is the case with the pose or the direction of the regard, the choice of a garment corresponds with consciously defined, even imposed, requirements. Also, the artist, who is not a tailor, and is therefore not limited by worries about the cut, the price or the weight of the clothing and the jewelry that he represents, is free to follow, to the slightest detail, any request of the patron, and need only respect a semblance of verisimilitude. Thus can he easily dispense with clasps, seams and pleats, adding pearls and collars, modify the fabrics and the forms, and even substitute one costume for another. Whether it followed fashion, dictated it or on the contrary, ignored it, whether it was "in the French mode" or foreign, for a grand occasion or for mourning, ordinary or exceptional, real or invented, the painted garment is never a passive reproduction of the garment being worn, and, possibly, it can even be quite different.
