Sun Sep 2, 2018 12:30 PM

Morning Modelbuch (9/2/2018)

I said I was going to talk about a dress and the interlacing designed from yesterday, so here goes. First of all, I’m going to deviate from what the Met article says about the fantasie dei vinci in the woodcuts being invented by Leonardo. In my research they are an impresa (kind of a heraldic pattern) designed by Niccolo da Corregio at the behest of Isabella d’Este in 1492. They became wildly popular in the Milanese Court. Leonardo borrowed it after. That’s only important because it ties the pattern to Isabella d’Este, her sister Beatrice, and other members of the family.

Martin Kemp goes into this extensively in his 2007 biography of Leonardo, “Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man.”

I first ran across the pattern on a dress that is sometimes described as being in a portrait of Isabella d’Este despite the fact that it is the entirely wrong period to be her and bears no resemblance to her. Trying to track down who the portrait was actually of (Isabella’s daughter in law,) got me twisted up in this pattern and excited by the dress. Running across the interaction of the Durer woodcuts and modelbucher just moved it back to the top of my must make list.

Of course I said similar things when it first caught me eye in 2011, when I decided it would be great to adapt to an Ursula/little mermaid theme in 2013, and when I got high res scans from the museum in 2015. Hopefully this time I manage it.

Link to the portrait in the Royal Collection https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/405777/portrait-of-margherita-paleologo

And to an older blog post of mine

http://daughterofthebull.blogspot.com/2015/10/fantasia-dei-vinci.html