Cranach Gown Part 1: Reserch

Ah, the irresistible mystique of the Cranach Gown.  Just what is it about this early 16th century Saxon fashion, which gained its modern epithet by virtue of being portrayed in countless paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), that has so captured the imagination of the costuming world?  Is it the rich, vibrant colors?  Is it the garish, pimp-esque accessorizing?  Is it the piquant expressions on the faces of invariably young, rosy-cheeked strawberry blonds sporting these garments that, along with their whimsical styling, can’t help but make the viewer believe just  for a moment, despite all modern biases, that it was good to be alive (and rich) in 1530’s Saxony?

Whatever it is, its safe to say that I was totally unaware of ANY of it until this September.  I had never heard of Lucas Cranach the Elder or his infamous Gown until I ran across an image of it while searching for something else northern Renaissancey, what I don’t even recall.  And like so many others before me, I fell, and fell hard. The irresistible charm of this outlandish fashion was at work on me.  What followed were several weeks of near-obsessive searching for reference images of all its manifold permutations.  I was determined to “catch them all.

In this image of Mary Magdalene painted by Cranach, we see a full-length rendition of the style of dress now associated with his art.  The red velvet bodice trimmed with gold brocade barely clings to the shoulders, and is laced tightly across the stomach, revealing a smooth white under layer.  The sleeves have some combination of voiding and more or less heavy paning, ending in large gold cuffs, and a decorative gold brocade placket covers and lifts the bust line.  The extremely full skirt falls in tubular pleats with a wide brocade trim at the bottom.

Here is a closer look at the range of subtle differences in sleeve construction and accessorizing.  The bodice was either spiral or ladder laced with a single lace.  Although this style can be considered the prototypical Cranach Gown, many more variations on the theme can be found throughout his work.

Cranach Gown in green velvet.

Black velvet with unusual trim.

A high-necked Cranach Gown.

Very wide brocade bands.

Unusual colors of gown.

A variation in orange silk with black (possibly velvet) trim appears in several paintings worn, as I interpret it, by middling class women as a less opulent, more affordable version of the same style. Here a woman of the mercantile class wears one such dress.

Women of perhaps more modest means in fairly "stirpped down" Cranach Gowns.

Other variations in silk and a rare glimps of shoes.

A very unusual variation of the theme.

Three distinctly different gowns in one image.

This is only a small selection of the numerous images of this style of dress which exist, mostly painted by Cranach.  With such a wealth of documentation, one might be lead to believe that the woman of early 16th century Germany were all running around in tubular pleats.  But in fact, some people have questioned whether the style actually existed at all, or whether it was a product of the painter’s fanciful imagination.  That’s because there are no extant examples of true Cranach gowns.  The closest extant garment is a gown which belonged to Mary of Hapsburg dating from the 1520’s.

While this gown is tantalizingly close to a Cranach Gown, the material is unusual based on what we see in pictorial representations, and the skirt is circular, rather than pleated, and does not fall in the characteristic tubular folds from the waist.  Considering the range of variation we’ve seen, however, it may fit well within that, or constitute a close precursor to full-blown Cranach Gown.

I personally think it’s reasonable to believe that the Cranach Gown as portrayed in the paintings of Lucas Cranach did exist.  It’s true that the vast majority of evidence for them comes from his paintings.  It’s possible that, as with many extreme fashions, the fully-evolved Cranach Gown was a short-lived trend highly concentrated within a small area and Lucas Cranach was simply in the right place at the right time.  He may have had a particular liking for the style, or the preference was that of his patrons or the type and class of women who were his models.  Because no actual gowns survive, however, there is some debate surrounding their exact construction, which I’ll discuss later.