Acknowledgments were made to the late Captain Roberval and to an unnamed Portuguese, but it is not known which of them contributed the portrait of the
English lady (fig. 6). Although she is said to be distinguishable by her square bonnet, it is hard to find the style paralleled in any other picture. The huge slashes on the bodice of her gown surely are exaggerated, as is the smallness of the muff which hangs by a cord from her waist. On the other hand, Joris Hoefnagel copied and used the portrait as one of a group of citizens standing in the foreground of Hogenberg’s 1574 plan of London,[17] so the figure must
have been regarded as approximately accurate.
Figure 7.—Dress of a French woman (front view) with a tight-sleeved bodice through the cuts of which the lining is drawn out in puffs. From Omnium gentium habitus . . . , 1563 ed. (Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London.)
Much more convincing as evidence of fashions are the etchings by Aeneas Vico that appear in Bertelli’s book on the costumes of the peoples, published in Venice in 1563.[18] The French woman shown in figure 7 clearly illustrates a fashion which is familiar enough in portraits. Of particular interest is the back view (fig. 8) showing her petticoat. This type of petticoat was popular in Spain in the late 15th
century,[19] but was not adopted in France, Italy, and England until the second half of the 16th century.
