Albrecht Dürer : Three Mighty Ladies from Livonia (1521)
Livonia was the area on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Found at Uncertain Times. I wish I had time to look up some information about this curious fashion, but garden chores await...
p.s. - for some reason the triangular top on the lady on the far left reminds me of a flatworm...
Update: A reader from Latvia comments that these costumes are not traditional eastern Baltic outfits, but are rather dresses of the German aristocracy of the time.
Is there an element of "hear no, speak no, see no" couture at work here?
ReplyDeleteFor some strange reason, I'm also seeing a flatworm, though I also wanted to say flukeworm for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it. I did find this about ancient Latvian dress -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.li.lv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=42&Itemid=1129
but it doesn't show anything like that above.
This blog gets several hundred visits/month from readers in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. Perhaps one of them will know.
Hi, I am from Latvia (Riga) and I can hopefully explain. :D
ReplyDeleteFrom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonia
Livonia was inhabited by various Baltic and Finnic peoples, ruled by an upper class of Baltic Germans. Over the course of time, some nobles were polonized into the Polish-Lithuanian nobility (Szlachta) or russified into the Russian nobility (Dvoryanstvo).
As our host Mr. Minnesotastan has found out - those indeed are not clothes worn by native Latvians/Livs/Lithuanians/Estonians. Those are dresses of German "aristocracy" - and as such they are not considered Latvian/Liv/Lithuanian/Estonian.
Besides that. A german artist could only honour german ladies and never defeated and conquered people, especialy when they were defeated and conquered by a german knight order.
DeleteOne more thing is interesting, that it has been published like 4 years before the end of Teutonic State and beginning of the Duchy of Prussia.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSean, I deleted your comment because it doesn't add anything to TYWKIWDBI - you're just trying to use my blog to insult someone at another blog (?).
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thanks for your comment; I've added that information to the post. :.)
ReplyDeleteThese are incredible! When I first glanced at them, i though - hm, looks like Edward Gorey or someone like that - uch more recent. But...Durer! An old favourite. And such witty, almost cartoonish little drawings. How fun!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous is not wrong, my Family is from baltic-german descent, espacially my grandmother identifies more as a baltic (Livonian) than as a german. It is a bit onedimensional saying baltic-germans weren't baltics. My fathers-Family lifed in the baltic states since the 14th century and came as merchant (not aristocrats). Riga were also found Boy germans and Part of the hanseatic ligue... tue baltic Germans were in the second world war deported by the Nazis and shot, if found, by the russians. Of course there were also crimes of the mostly baltic-german authority, but this idea of a multicultural baltic community, with swedes, danes, germans, russians, lithuanians, latvians, estonians, all living together in not segregated states for every Comunity is far more liberal, than the things, the nazis and russians tried to do...
ReplyDeleteSumma sumarum, the dresses you can see in Friedrich Dürers painting are one of the many results of this cultural melting pot. There also sone sami influences, who did weare those strange hats as the right one.
I went to the baltic states now a days a lot of times, and I love it there
Good thought about the Sami culture. I think of them as Arctic, but their homeland extended to the Baltic.
Delete