Indulging my Gothic tendencies

Our local SCA group is having an event centering on the Decameron, an Italian collection of stories from the mid-14th century.  Since our lovely hosts were so enthusiastic about it, I decided to hop on the bandwagon of people dressing for the occasion in proper 14th century style.  Technically, the Moorish clothing that I wear most frequently for SCA events is based on 14th century examples.  But, for this day I figured I'd try out some of the Christian styles of the time.  The Decameron was first published around 1350, so I'm looking at the later half of the century for inspiration.  This is the story of how I started planning an outfit for the Day of the Decameron.

It's a bit of a ride, so buckle up!

I could have just made the standard "cotehardie" style clothing that is seen very commonly among the SCA and other reenactors.  But, since my interests generally slide back and forth along the Iberian timeline, I thought I would see if there was any way to give the style a more distinctively Iberian flair.  This is not as easy as you might think it should be.  The clothing of Spain and Portugal is rarely given more than a passing mention in books on the history of European clothing in general.  While the clothing of Christian people in Iberia is not disconnected from that of the rest of Western Europe, until the late 16th century (when the rest of Europe adopted Spanish fashions) things south of the Pyrenees were always just a bit different.  Sometimes quite a lot different!

Also, it seems like there's a paucity of artwork from 14th century Iberia - or at least artwork depicting people and their clothes.  As in the rest of Europe, much of the artwork from this era is religious in nature.  Saints are often depicted in flowing, draped fabrics, which is likely meant to evoke a sort of old-timey appearance to the viewer.  There's lots of evidence for clothing from the 13th century.  The Cantigas de Stanta Maria and the Book of Games of Alfonso X, El Sabio (both from the mid-13th century) provide dozens of images of men and women in quite a variety of dress.  There are even several surviving garments from royal burials in the 13th century.  And once we get into the 15th century proper, the blossoming of painting associated with the Renaissance provides much more variety of art.  Plus, a lot of secondary sources have focused on the later 15th century, since this is the age of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel.  However, in between those two eras, there's a bit of a gap.

So, what sources could I find from the second half of the 14th century in Iberia?

Moors and Christians in Granada

I revisited my main source for Moorish clothing of this era: 3 paintings on the ceiling of the Hall of Kings (Sala de los Reyes) in the Alhambra.  These were probably done in the late 14th century.  There are three sections of the ceiling, each depicting realistically rendered figures.  The central portion shows ten Muslim kings, or possibly judges or courtiers.  However, the two side sections show battle/jousting and hunting scenes, which include people dressed in both Christian and Muslim styles.  This hall was unfortunately closed for restoration when I visited in 2010.  But there are some great post-restoration images on Wikipedia.  Also, Milia Davenport's The Book of Costume includes plates of these.  Those of the two lateral sections appear to be line drawings taken from the painted ceilings.  My guess is that this was done in the 18th century, since there was a surge of interest in the Alhambra at that time.  However, since the condition of the paintings had clearly deteriorated a lot subsequently (as can be seen in this this photo) I suspect that drawings or copies from the 18th century were used by the conservationists to guide the restoration.

Interestingly, the Christian men shown in the lateral paintings of the Hall of Kings all have pretty typical "cotehardie" style clothing.  It's not substantially different from the styles seen in Anglo-French clothing of the mid to late 14th century.  This garment could, in fact, be a jupon, which is a point I'll get to later.

Ceiling from the Hall of Kings at the Alhambra

As seen here, the men have tall hosen.  One figure is shown with his hosen rolled down to below his knees.  The more fancy looking guys have relatively short cotes, suggesting full split hosen or even joined hosen.  (Just when joined hosen came into use is a bit of a contentious subject which I am completely side-stepping here)  People who seem to be more closely involved in the manual labor of hunting (on the right hand side of this image) have less fitted clothing.  The cotes of the more fancy figures are fitted, buttoned down the front, and have long, fitted sleeves with buttons from elbow to wrist.  Most seem to have the extended cuff reaching down to the knuckles that is seen in contemporary art from other areas.

The one feature that I can't recall having seen in art elsewhere is that the cotes seem to have a slit at the bottom of the side seams.  Men's tunics/cotes from earlier in the Middle Ages sometimes have slits.  But, those are generally longer garments, usually coming to below the knees.  Cotes like these, that end at the level of the upper thigh or mid-thigh, don't always need to have a slit for functional purposes and, while they may have dagged hems, slits like this are unusual.

There are several figures wearing hoods, generally with short hems and some indication of a liripipe (the tail hanging off the back), and more than one has what look like buttons closing the center front under the chin.  The mounted figure in this painting (upside down at top right) seems to be wearing a waist-length or hip-length cape, closed by three buttons at the neck.

Another section of the Hall of Kings ceiling

So, if I were to just use these images, I could probably justify styles that are more or less the same as those seen in other parts of Western Europe.  In the 1380s-90s we start to see some new developments in fashion.  In France, England, and Italy some more interesting sleeve shapes and tall collars show up toward the end of the century.  Sometimes these accompany the shift to a more flared body (which essentially is the earliest form of the houppelande).  But, there are plenty of examples with fitted bodies as well.

Transitional styles at the end of the 14th century

Looking for some of these transitional forms in Spanish or Portugese art was tough.  This retable in the Victoria & Albert Museum was painted around 1400.

Retable of St. George by Andres Marzal de Sas, c. 1400

The bag sleeves are a style I've wanted to try out for a while.  I'm particularly intrigued by the square bits hanging from the sleeve seam on the man at far right.  I can't think of another source where I've seen that decorative element.  But then it shows up in a different form in this retable from Tarazona, dated to the 1390s.

Detail from a retable, Tarazona Cathedral

Unfortunately, most of the rest of these two men's outfits is obscured by the toturer in front of them (the image is St. Lawrence on a grill).  They both have tall collars.  They both have red sleeves but a body garment of a different color.  The one in blue has the hint of maybe buttons on his left shoulder - making me think that this could be some sort of cloak or mantle.  I've never seen a cloak or mantle with a tall collar before, but like I said, things south of the Pyrenees are different.  I really can't tell what's going on with the man in black at all.  Both of these fellows, as well as St. George's torturers in the above picture seem to have the looser bodied garments that are new and fashion-forward for this decade.  I think I'd like to stick with the fitted cotehardie-style silhouette, but I'm really looking for some more exciting sleeves (and, to be honest, an excuse not to have to make a million buttonholes for those long, fitted sleeves).  I would love to do a fitted cote with tall collar and bag sleeves like the left-most one in this illumination (from a manuscript of 1395), but so far I'm having no luck finding this style in Iberia.

Adventures in translation, or How different is Catalunya?

This is where my whimsical research started going into rabbit-hole territory. Someone on Facebook made me aware of the existence of a book in Catalan: La Moda a la Catalunya del Segle XIV by Montse Aymerich Bassols.  It's available on Amazon.   Now, I don't speak Catalan.  I can read Spanish, but I'm not fully fluent.  So, with a lot of effort and the help of Google I CAN understand the Catalan writing.  But I really haven't had the time to go through all the text.  Luckily, Aymerich Bassol has included lots of pictures.

So, looking through this book there's a lot that's similar to comtemporary Anglo-French fashion.  There's some Iberian oddities to be sure (a musician wearing a parti-colored cote with one half being a green and white check pattern, for instance, or a birth attendant whose parti-color garment seems to have one half from plaid on the bias).  Aymerich Bassol breaks the ubiquitous cote (cota in Catalan) into three types, plus the cota ardia (seemingly a Catalan cognate to the English cotehardie).  I haven't made it through enough of the text to understand exactly what the distinctions are between her types A, B, and C.  The pictures included in those sections all seem to show tunics similar to the geometrically constructed ones found in the rest of western Europe throughout the Middle Ages (check out my post on geometric clothing for some examples).  There are some with buttons down the front, but they generally don't look fitted enough to need a front opening.  For the most part these images are from prior to 1350, so a bit early for what I'm aiming to replicate.

It's difficult to say without translating the whole text, but Aymerich Bassol seems to be using the term cota ardia to refer to an over-garment with short sleeves that have a hanging part in back.  She uses a word that I think means 'shovel' to describe the shape, which I think is apt.

 I THINK that she's using the term gonella to refer to the long sleeved garment under it, whose sleeves are usually buttoned from the elbow to wrist.  She also uses the term gonella to label the inner garments from the 13th century burials in Burgos.  In Spanish these early close-fitting garments are usually called sayo (or saya, for a woman's garment).  I can't even guess what the origin of the term gonella is.  Aymerich Bassol's cotas ardias are not universally close-fitting.  Even more surprising, none of pictures in this book of cotes with these shovel-shaped sleeves seem to show buttons down the front.  So, despite the obvious cognate, I'm forcing myself to dissociate Aymerich Bassol's cota ardia from what we in the SCA usually call a cotehardie.  The garments comparable to these cotas ardias in the Anglo-French tradition are usually just called cotes or over-tunics.

But, the other surprising thing (compared with fashions north of the Pyrenees) was the prevalance of a garment that Aymerich Bassols calls the gramalla.  This a a loose, flared garment with very characteristic decoration of two hanging flaps at the front of the neck.  This garment shows up in the Anglo-French setting as well.  Mary Houston calls it a 'sclavine' or 'esclavine' but I've seen some sources use the term 'garnache'.  It seems to be exclusively a protective outer garment in more northern countries and is a style more characteristic of the 13th century.  But, apparently these gramallas are all over Catalunya (and possibly the rest of Iberia?) including on pictures of kings.  The same garment shows up on the Moorish kings in the Alhambra ceilings - including with the funny little flaps at the front neck - and on the mounted Moor in the picture I included above.  They are long - pretty much between mid-calf length and ankle length.  They often have an attached hood, but not always.  This is such a ubiquitous garment that Aymerich Bassols calls it essential to 14th century style.  In the pictures, the gonella, cota, and the gramalla are often shown all being the same color - possibly indicating that they were made as, and considered to be, a suit.  Most of the images she shows of the gramalla have the distinctive shovel-shaped sleeves of the cota ardia visible underneath, but she also has a brief section on titled "La gramalla, la gonella i la cota no ardia".  There are a few images of men wearing the gramalla with one or more long-sleeved garments under it that do not have the shovel-shaped pendant.

The other type of garment to consider is the one Aymerich Bassols calls a gipó.  This word is clearly related to the French jupon which seems to get used interchangeably with 'pourpoint' in a lot of writing about Anglo-French clothing of this era.  The Catalan gipó is much the same: a closely fitted, short garment, buttoned all the way down the front.  Aymerich Bassols specifically compares it to the surviving jupon or pourpoint of Charles de Blois.  Note, there are 2 surviving garments attributed to him.  She includes photos of this one which has a narrow skirt with slit side seams.  [edit: I can't seem to link directly to the item on the Musee de Tissus page; type "pourpoint" into the search and it will come up.] The other has a more flared skirt and less complex cutting for the sleeve but is very similar and there's a thorough analysis of its construction in this article.  The surviving garments from Charles de Blois are both quilted.  Likewise, most of the pictures that Aymerich Bassols identifies as gipós have lines or other markings that seem to suggest quilting (see the sculpture included to the left).  Not all the pictures she includes of gipós have close, buttoned sleeves, and some have a weird band of a different color at the waist (like the one below from Tarazona cathedral).  This is not a belt; at least one picture clearly shows a belt over it, so I'm a bit at a loss as to how to interpret it.  But ultimately, this is probably the same type of garment shown on the hunting guys in the Alhambra ceiling.

Retable, Tarazona

Since I'm drawing so much on this Catalan book, I need to step back a minute and ask an important question.  How different is Catalunya from the rest of Iberia?  In the 14th century, Catalunya was already part of the Crown of Aragon.  But, the individual Christian kingdoms of Iberia hadn't yet subsumed their individual identities to the degree that would happen later.  In fact, even now Catalunya still holds onto a distinct cultural identity and its language.  So, how much can I generalize Catalan styles to the rest of Christian Iberia?  The only answer I can give for now is that the styles Aymerich Bassols shows aren't all that different from broader European trends at the time.  She includes some images from Castille and France.  And the characteristics that diverge from fashion elsewhere in western Europe do show up elsewhere in Iberia - the images I've included here are from Tarazona (Aragon), Xèrica (Valencia), and Granada.  So, while there may be a distinctively Catalan style of the later 14th century, most of the characteristics that distinguish it from fashion north of the Pyrenees are probably more broadly Iberian.

Conclusions

So, if I want to create an outfit that demonstrates a distinctly Iberian style from the second half of the 14th century, there seem to be two broad categories to choose from.  (1) The gipó in its various forms, and (2) an ensemble of gonella, cota (particularly the cota ardia), and gramalla.  Aymerich Bassols also has a chapter on a garment she calls the aljuba, which I'm ignoring for now because it's still very unclear to me what this garment is and how it differs from any other garments.

The gipó is very fitted, quite probably quilted to greater or lesser degree, with long, close sleeves buttoned from the elbow to wrist.  The length is often to just barely below the crotch, and there may be slits at the side seams, or a fuller hem.  This short style requires tall hosen - the type that come up to the waist or at least the hip-bones.  Whether they are all joined hose (the kind that are connected along the crotch with a codpiece in front) or the earlier split hose is a bit of an open question to me, and just when joined hose come into use is a topic that is up for debate.  Like elsewhere in western Europe, these close-fitting styles are worn with a belt that rides low on the hips.  The guys on the Alhambra ceiling have characteristic 14th century hoods with liripipes (the long, narrow tail hanging from the point of the hood).  Some of the gipó-wearing men in the pictures from Aymerich Bassols' book have other sorts of soft hats and some are bare-headed.

Men wearing the cota ardia generally have a garment with long, buttoned sleeves under it.  However, the only pictures that Aymerich Bassols shows of men wearing a garment with long, buttoned sleeves without something over it are the gipós.  I'll have to translate more of her text about the gonella to see if she has any indication of the shape of the body of this garment.  It could be similar to the 13th century gonella/sayo which has a distinctive cut-in, square armhole and tight fit.  Or, toward the end of the 14th century, there could be a variation on the gipó under the cota.

The cotas, whether ardia or no, range in length from  just above the knee to mid-calf.  I think that the shovel-shaped cota ardia sleeve would be more distinctive to the second half of the century.  Given the length of the cotas, they could be worn with the earlier style of separate hose or the later split hose.  Again, without any more distinctively Iberian evidence I would have to go by practices in the rest of western Europe at the time.  The addition of a gramalla, especially in a fabric that matches the cota and/or the gonella would be more characteristically Iberian.  Of note is that a belt is never shown over the gramalla.  The two men in the picture I included above have swords hanging from long belts over their shoulder, but the gramalla does not get held in by a belt at the waist.  When we see the cota without something over it, it could be belted or not.

The typical 14th-century liripipe hood is in evidence on men wearing the cota.  The gramalla sometimes has an attached hood.  There are also plenty of pictures of men with or without the gramalla wearing a hood as a hat (with the face opening rolled up into the brim - a style well-documented elsewhere in Europe at this time).  Some men are bare-headed and some seem to be wearing simple coifs.  There's a few other hat styles in Aymerich Bassols as well.

So, what will I do to join in for our Decameron event?  I have to decide how many layers/items I'm willing to make.  And how "cutting edge" I want to be.  Details, and a construction diary of sorts, will follow once I've put the outfit together.