De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diuerse parti del mondo (1590) by Cesare Vecellio: partial translation and critical essay

Author(s)

Larissa Sousa de Carvalho

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2013-02-27

Examining board members

Luciano Migliaccio; Maria Cristina Louro Berbara

• Advisor: Luiz Cesar Marques Filho

Abstract

This research presents as main object of analysis the book De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diuerse parti del mondo (1590), by the Italian author Cesare Vecellio (c.1521-1601). A second edition was published with the title Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo in 1598. This edition presents a project different from the first one. Its iconographic content is expanded, whereas the author's comments are either reduced or even omitted. The emergence of this type of publication, called costume books, occurred during the Sixteenth Century, along with the cartographic and encyclopedic interest. The period in which the author lived, witnessed the rapid expansion of the printing press in Venice, as well as of the studioli, the cabinets de curiosité and Wunderkammern. Apart from that, those years followed the creation of an interconnected network of publications that established a repertoire of "social types", repeated throughout the years, and helped in the idea that, especially the Venetians, had about the rest of the world. The content of the work covers the habits - in a very broad sense - combined with the representation of a variety of costumes. Vecellio does not only represent European clothing, but he also includes Asian, African and American costumes. This anthology of world clothing is also considered, by some authors, as the first modern history of costume, since it covers commented images from Antiquity until the time of the author, in a broad geographical spectrum. In this text we aim to understand the project of the Vecellian work. Starting with three essays of the current study, we will discuss the ruin of the old values and the mutation (clothing associated with the Venetian myth, the issue of good governance and prosperity of cities, the relationship between ancient and modern etc.); then we will problematize the posture of Venice, which projects a positive image of the city within a turbulent context, as well as the Vecellian way of discussing this subject while presenting the "social types" (doge, Venetian virgin, courtesan...), associated with the State's self-image; finally, we will present an overview of his work, whose purpose will be to understand the author's posture and the discourse towards otherness, discussing some problematic notions of the "I", which is defined from the confrontation with the "Other". Furthermore, together with this, we propose a partial translation of the content of the book into a Portuguese version (unpublished and commented), with the intention of contributing to the theoretical debate - very restricted in our Brazilian reality -, without abandoning, however, the scope described herein (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/13296-7 - De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diuerse parti del mondo (1590) by Cesare Vecellio: parcial translation and critical essay
• Grantee: Larissa Sousa de Carvalho
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master