Italian Renaissance gown;

On the left detail of painting Maria Magdalena, by Jan van Scorel d. 1525-1535.

I made this dress for the wedding of one of my best friends and a fellow costumemaker, Deredere.
I just had a baby so my figure wasn't all that and I needed a dress that was late medieval/renaissance in period, looked beautiful and hid my figure. I had seen a dress made after this dress years before on Ebay and had fallen in love immediately. So immediataley this dress sprung to mind.
It's made from green silk and black velvet, embroidered with "gold" thread and sweetwater pearls.

As for authenticity, the source is an allgorical painting of Mary Magdalena, and I've found this type dress in paintings of Botticelli and tijdgenoten, but again always in alligorical and biblical pieces. So this dress might not have been worn in reality. It does however look a lot like the chemise worn in this period and felow SCA member came up with the pattern of a 17th century Italian chemise which looked a lot like this dress.



Source: Cut my cote, Dorothy Burham.

Originally I used the pattern and the explantion you can find at Reconstructing history, but there they set the sleeves in slightly differently. Something that got me in to trouble. It is okay when your are making a chemise, I made one in very thin cotton that worked perfectly, but it doesn't work for this dress.

Currently I am working on sewing the pearls on my sleeves and neckline and fixing a problem in the construction of the dress, sewing the pearls on is probably going to take forever...

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