Figured riches: the value of gold brocades in fifteenth-century Florentine painting

• Autores: Rembrandt Duits
• Localización: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, ISSN 0075-4390, Nº 62, 1999, págs. 60-92
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Although the use of stencils and the upgrading of non-brocaded fabrics in the painting of gold brocade have been previously acknowledged as elements of pictorial practice in Renaissance Florence, until now these working methods have not been placed in the proper context of painters catering for a public that did not own actual brocades. Most Florentines were excluded from the select company of princes and prelates whose wardrobes were full of gold brocade, both by sumptuary legislation, and especially by the prohibitive expense of the material—despite the fact that many families were involved in the manufacture of the fabrics. These same families chose to decorate their homes and chapels in churches with paintings in which large amounts of gold brocades were featured. The artists from whom these works were commissioned found ways of creating images of large amounts of brocade using only small amounts of actual fabric.