IX. Illustrations of Costume in the Alba Amicorum

Abstract

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries small, brightly coloured pictures seldom more than three inches high were often painted in autograph albums (Alba Amicorum). It is here intended to describe those which illustrate the dress of all ranks of society in England, Italy, and France. In England, social historians have occasionally reproduced some of them, French costume historians have made use of them, while the Italian writers on costume prefer the larger and more accurate woodcuts in the contemporary costume books of Cesare Vecellio and others. On the whole they have not attracted the attention they deserve.