Margherita Paleologo - Initial Research

Margherita Paleologo Portrait Interpretation

Initial Research and sampling

I finished my degree nearly 2 years ago now but since then I've done a couple of lectures on my Italian Renaissance gown project but was never able to include all my information on the subject because otherwise I'd be talking for 2 hours straight. As such I thought I'd type up all of my research and the process of making it on here.

In our final year we were free to choose our projects so for my historical project I chose to interpret this portrait:

Portrait of Margherita Paleologo, 

1531, Giulio Romano,

Royal Collection Trust

I chose this portrait for a two main reasons.

1. Visually it's elaborate which I wanted as my final expression of what I'd learnt at university.
2. This time period doesn’t have a lot of first hand resources and I love researching so wanted the challenge; most of the few resources we have from 1500s focus on France, England and Spain.

My choice in interpreting this portrait was to make a historical interpretation and not a simplified version for film/theatre. After proposing this gown to my tutor she agreed on the condition that I limit the braid pattern to just the bodice and sleeves and leave the skirt due to time constraints. 

Research into Portrait

Initial research into the portrait was to establish more about the subject, Margherita Paleologo (sometimes written as Margaret Paleologa). I found that the portrait was believed to have depicted her mother in law Isabella D’este for a long time and only more recently has it been identified to be Margherita instead. The date checks out to when Margherita married Isabella’s son Federico and it seems reasonable that the resemblance to her mother in law would be a way of showing favour/respect to her new family and that the portrait itself was painted to commemorate her marriage. Through her marriage she was Duchess of Mantua and a few years later became the ruling Marchioness of Montferrat, her birthplace, following the death of her uncle. 

Isabella D'este, Titian, c.1534-6

Portrait of Margherita Paleologo, 

1531, Giulio Romano,

The Royal Collection Trust, who own the painting of Margherita, in its description of this painting mentions that the knotwork pattern was likely to be the ‘fantasie dei vinci’. This was a pattern designed specifically for Isabella and her sister, though there is no known confirmation of what the design looked like. Personally I think that this is a good guess to be the correct pattern as it is very intricate and complicated. It also mentioned that the headdress was a style favoured by Isabella and from looking at other portraits of her we can see that that is true, so my theory that Margherita is emulating her mother in law seems to be holding. These two portraits are painted within a few years of each other and the similarities are obvious. By this point Isabella refused to sit for a portrait and only allowed painters to copy older portraits as she didn’t wish to be seen ageing hence why she looks the same age as her daughter in law. There are also some theories that the woman visiting Margherita in the top right corner is Isabella herself with her maids. 

Knotwork Research and Sampling

In my research I found a website archived in 2007 for Kings Studio which seemed to be a costume project based in Italy, although their entire website was in Spanish for some reason. They’d researched into the portrait as well so it was useful to compare notes and see where we disagreed or agreed. They’d managed to draw up the continuous design for the knot pattern and fortunately included an image of that which saved me from having to sit and draw it all out as well. The easiest way for me to get the volume of embroidery required of this project was to use the embroidery machine, this required a computer image of the design needed for the machine to process. As the image was tiny and very pixelated I traced it on photoshop so that the machine could interpret the design correctly.

Braid design from Kings Studio

My traced version on photoshop

My first sample for it was far too small to match the dress and the stitch type was not correct so I did another sample which worked better but was again too small. I also realised that as the area that the machine could work on was not that big I’d have to make sure I could match up the edges when I moved to the next section of fabric. Which led me to redrawing the knot pattern and tweaking it until I had one image that tessellated perfectly with itself to make a continuous design.

Tessellated Design

                 First sample from embroidery machine

I then used this tessellated image and did more samples this time using metallic thread and velvet as this was what I’d need to make sure worked. Velvet is a thick fabric and can be temperamental so I needed to know this process would work, the same with the metallic thread which tends to snap when used on machines unless you’re very careful. My sampling showed that as long as I kept an eye on the process the thread wasn’t a problem.

Metallic thread on velvet sample

Metallic thread on velvet sample close up

However after trying for two hours I had to conclude that there was no way I could make our machine tessellate the images perfectly as the machine just couldn’t be relied on to start in the exact same place every time. So I was forced to look for an alternative for the gold knotwork.

My second plan was to use gold braid laid onto the velvet layer and use a sewing machine to couch the braid down. I tried multiple different braids until I had one I was happy resembled the portrait enough. I then used this and my chosen black velvet fabric to do more samples to ensure that the metallic thread worked well and so I knew what tension I needed to work at so the back black thread wouldn’t be visible. I also needed to ensure that I could safely cut away the sections of the velvet without it fraying to complete the knot pattern. This worked well by just sewing a very close zig zag stitch along the edge of the braid and then cutting the velvet just away from this line of stitching which prevented the fabric fraying.

Experimenting with different braids, chosen one is the top right section

Sample with chosen braid and fabric

Final sample checking the cutaway method of zig-zagging over the raw edge

I was at this point happy to choose this method. Historically, while braid was used to decorate in this time period, I still think the portrait shows embroidery but as I don’t have the time to embroider all of this I was happy to make this concession. 

(excuse the weird formatting in places I cannot make this thing format pictures correctly)

References

• Kings studio website
• "Fashion & Virtue: Textile Patterns and the Print Revolution, 1520–1620" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 73, no. 2 (Fall, 2015) ~ Femke Speelberg
• Details on knotwork designs in 16th century Italy
• Royal Collection Trust's page on the painting