Recreating Fashion: A dress in 1530

Standing against a dark background, a woman holds a platter containing the grotesque, dismembered head of a man. Less disturbing are the opulent velvet dress and heavy gold jewelry she wears. In the painting Salome with the head of John the Baptist by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the woman\u27s clothing says more about her implied social status than it does about the biblical figure she portrays. Northern Renaissance paintings such as this provide a unique insight into regional fashions not seen or understood from the rare extant garments from the period. However, it is unclear to what extent Salome\u27s dress reflects contemporary fashion versus how much Cranach invented in his pursuit to portray the biblical anti-heroines in a fantastical setting. In addition to determining the degree to which Salome\u27s fantastical costume represents a three-dimensional, cut and tailored garment, the project of reproducing this dress will help illuminate the way women\u27s clothing expressed and helped shape feminine social roles in the sixteenth century. In reconstructing the fantastical style of dress depicted in Cranach\u27s paintings, I aim to understand the relationships between fashion, clothing, women\u27s bodies, and Cranach\u27s style of depicting biblical events in contemporary court culture