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 Happy Anniversary, Prado Museum! Part III Project DRESS, that aims the reconstruction of a dress for elite women, draws on Prado's many female portraits looking at the shapes, colours, and tactility of the garments, jewelry and various accessories that adorned women in the 1500s, as it happens, among many other examples, with the portraits of Princess Maria Manuela of Portugal (1527-1545), of an unknown artist, and the Princess Juana of Austria (1535-1573), painted by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz. |  Happy Anniversary, Prado Museum! Part II Visual sources, especially painting, are paramount to document and study early modern period clothing, thus the Prado collections are relevant to our research. |  Happy Aniversary, Prado Museum! Part I Today, 19th November 2019, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Prado Museum. The creation of the museum was driven by Infanta Maria Isabel of Braganza (1797-1818, daughter of King John VI and Queen Carlota Joaquina of Portugal) queen consort of Spain, due to her marriage with Ferdinand VII. |
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 Red, Part III As for RED – of which there was a multiplicity of shades – our research related to project DRESS establishes it as one of the sixteenth century Portuguese aristocracy's favourite colours and one of the most used in heraldry. Depending on the circumstances in which it was used, RED could represent love (especially in the case of women), courage, power, glory, audacity, knightly virtues, or festivities. |  Red, Part II As far as clothing is concerned, this means that colours represented the moral qualities of an individual. Thus, the equivalence between the two constituted an important system of symbols with a constant, although not always clear, relationship between the color used and its sociocultural meaning, even in the sixteenth century. |  Red, Part I On 24th October we had the privilege of being at the release of the book RED: HISTORY OF A COLOR by Michel Pastoureau (Professor of Medieval History at the Sorbonne). Michel Pastoureau began his studies about colour in 1989 with the publication of COULEURS, IMAGES, SYMBOLES, in which he developed the idea that color in the medieval period was considered a substance rather than a perceptual phenomenon. |
 DRESS – The acronym for ‘DesenhaR a moda das fontES quinhentistaS’ (Designing fashion from 16th-century sources), is a project of cluster VESTE, that aims the reconstruction of a dress for aristocratic women from the early 16th century. Look for more information at the tab About VESTE, in our main menu. |  In 1580 a Basque tailor by the name of Juan de Alcega published in Madrid the Libro de Geometria, Pratica, y Traça, the oldest known European sartorial treaty. The tailor presented himself in the printed cover with the instruments of his craft, the scissors and the measurement stick, as well as the compass, a symbol of the design and geometry required by the rigorous cut and composition of the costume. | Juan de Alcega, Libro de Geometria, Pratica, y Traça, (…) (facsimile edition, Valhadolid: Editorial MAXTOR, 2009. |
 VESTE team created a website on which to publish the relevant research information and results and share resources with our readers and followers. This is what we are working on right now! |  Vera Bettencourt brought some copies of Azorean whale bone buttonhole cutters for one of our meetings. Buttonhole cutters are an object used in sewing and serves to open buttonholes without tearing or damaging the fibers of the fabrics. |  DRESS project distributed to the members of the research team field notebooks in which we record ideas, drawings, questions, and information, with which we document the development of each assignment. This is the cover of Catarina Garcia's notebook, which was inspired by the 16th century dress models, right after our first meeting. |
 The VESTE image emerged from the visual simplicity of a line of stitches and the subtle movements of the needle sewing the fabric. The creation of the VESTE image is based on the idea of the composition of an item of clothing, brought together in pieces through the use of materials and the precise gestures of the dressmaker. It was Mafalda’s hand that drew this V line, the image of VESTE, a starting point for many other projects. |
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