Women’s dress continued to be based upon the chemise, a long-sleeved undergarment of undyed linen (Boucher 445). An allegory of love by a follower of Botticelli (Fig. 1) shows us what the chemise looked like in this decade, its fullness gathered by means of drawstrings at the neckline, high waistline, and upper sleeve. Over it went the dress, called the gamurra in Italy (Herald 217). The gamurra was cut to fit tightly, with the bodice fronts deliberately too narrow to meet in the front, and sleeves too narrow to encircle the arm. Sleeves were also modular pieces that could be made of contrasting fabric and were typically only semi-attached at the shoulder. This style of split bodices and sleeves had originated in Spain and taken hold in Italy beginning in the 1470s (Frick 158). What is new in the 1490s, as seen in Lorenzo di Credi’s Portrait of a Young Woman (Fig. 2), who may be Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forli and niece of Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, is that the bodice fronts are very far apart, necessitating the use of an inserted triangular stomacher. In this portrait the gamurra is made of blue fabric, either wool or silk, and the stomacher is green. Red was chosen for the laces that hold the bodice and sleeves together, across the gaps where the white chemise is exposed. Another new feature in the 1490s is that laces, which had been primarily utilitarian in the past, become more important as details that focus attention and coordinate an ensemble (Herald 193). The dark red color of these laces matches the belt, which conceals the seam at the waistline where the moderately full skirt of the gamurra is joined to its fitted bodice. The entire garment and the stomacher would be lined in linen to protect the outer fabric and reinforce the tight fit (Herald 210). The slightly high waistline and the hairstyle in this portrait are in the Florentine style.

In the engagement scene from Verona (Fig. 3), we see a higher waistline, creating a silhouette that is like a straight, slender column. The three young women are all wearing outer garments over their dresses. The woman at the far left wears a black gamurra with contrasting golden-colored sleeves that are split in two places to reveal her chemise. The red garment on top is the giornea (Herald 218), a sleeveless cape made of two widths of fabric, one covering the front and the other the back of the body; the giornea can be sewn closed at the sides, as in these examples, or left open. The other young women also wear giorneas layered over their dresses. The woman who is receiving a ring from her future husband wears a creamy white giornea that is slit in the front to reveal the golden skirt of her gamurra underneath. The V-neckline of the giornea, emphasized with a trimming of gold braid, allows us to see the front of her gamurra, or possibly a stomacher, made of red silk velvet embroidered with gold crosses. The gamurra sleeves are also of red velvet.  Because the layered garments are made of unpatterned silks that are lighter in weight than brocades, narrow in cut and belted at the high waistline, the desired straight and slender silhouette is maintained. The bride-to-be wears a small black cap that comes to a point over her forehead, where a brooch (called a fermaglio, Herald 216) has been placed, and her long golden hair flows freely down her back unveiled, traditionally the  privilege of unmarried women (Van Buren and Wieck 180). The other women wear veils of very fine, transparent linen or silk, a style that originated in Bologna (Herald 195).

The simplicity seen in Verona, which in the 1490s was part of the Republic of Venice, contrasts with the fashions of the court of Milan. Ambrogio da Predis’s profile portait of Bianca Maria Sforza, sister of Duke Ludovico il Moro (Fig. 4) illustrates a gamurra of voided silk velvet with the entire ground of the weave  brocaded in gold; this textile qualifies as the “cloth-of-gold” that was the ultimate Renaissance luxury (Monnas 323). Such a quantity of metallic fiber would have made the dress very stiff. The fitted bodice has a square neckline and a waistline at the natural level, much lower than that seen in Verona. The sleeves are in a style considered to be particular to Milan, constructed in narrow vertical strips held together with laces. In fact this type of sleeve originated in Spain, as seen in a Catalan painting from the 1470s (Fig. 5); what was added in Milan were the stringhe (Herald 220), the long ends of the laces that were left to hang down the arm, sometimes tied in bows. Another important aspect of Milanese fashion that was adapted from Spain is the hairstyle, which in Spain was called the cofia tranzado (Bernis 52). The hair was center-parted and drawn back into a long coil, which in Milan was called the coazzone (Herald 202). The coazzone could be entirely encased in fabric and/or covered by criss-crossing ribbons, as seen in this portrait; a fine linen or silk hairnet (called the rete, Herald 202), usually decorated with embroidery, was placed at the back of the head. The finishing touch was a headband called a lenza, usually a fine black silk cord tied around the crown of the head, sometimes with a jewel at the center of the forehead (Herald 222).

Bianca Maria Sforza wears a large fermaglio brooch, incorporating the Sforza motto “merito et tempore” (with merit and time) with pearls and other gemstones, at the side of her gold and pearl-embroidered rete. Her coazzone’s interlaced ribbons are studded with pearls. She wears more pearls and other jewels in the forms of a necklace and a belt. However great the debt to Spain for the original inspiration, by the end of the 1490s these styles, championed by the Duchess of Milan, Beatrice d’Este, were considered decidedly Milanese (Herald 202). What struck visitors to the court were the many details that contributed to the richness of women’s attire, a quality that was not to the taste of all observers. The humanist Baldassare Castiglione, who advocated dressing simply and soberly, derided Milanese style as overly “loud and showy” (quoted by Herald 203). He might not have approved of Venetian fashion, either.

Beatrice d’Este (Fig. 1), Duchess of Milan from 1494 until her death, was easily the hardest-working fashion leader of the 1490s. She was responsible for the Milanese style, and she put great effort into gathering information about fashion elsewhere, urging Milanese ambassadors to send descriptions and drawings home (Herald 201-202). The fact that fashion in Milan was so heavily influenced by Spain had to do with Beatrice’s identity and upbringing. She was the daughter of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and the Spanish princess Leonora of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand I of Naples. When Beatrice was two years old, her mother travelled back to Naples with her children, to attend the wedding of her widowed father. At the conclusion of the festivities, Leonora was persuaded to leave Beatrice behind, to be brought up at the court of Naples (Scott 168). When she was about seven, she was given a brial (Spanish for dress) made of red silk trimmed with ribbons embroidered “in Moorish style” (Scott 168). Having worn Spanish fashion during her formative years, it is not surprising that she brought it to Lombardy when she married Ludovico “il Moro” Sforza in 1491, at the age of sixteen. The wedding was orchestrated by Leonardo da Vinci, who was just one of the artists employed at the brilliant court of Milan in the 1490s (Beamish).

Men’s fashion began with the basic underwear, consisting of a shirt and a pair of drawers, both made of undyed linen (Frick 160). The next garments were the doublet (called the farsetto in Italy) and the hose (calze) which were laced together (Herald 211, 216). In the 1490s, these garments were extraordinarily close-fitting, as seen in a painting by Luca Signorelli (Fig. 1). The doublets are made, like the bodices of women’s dresses, of pieces that are deliberately too small to fit together, so that an expanse of shirt is exposed in the front, with the laces straining across the gap. The shirt is seen at the back as well, since the doublet is too short to fully connect with the back of the hose. As in women’s fashion, men’s sleeves can be made of contrasting materials and only partly attached to the body of the garment, and the laces that connect the garments, and the various parts of the garments to one another, can become the focus of fashion. These men’s doublets are parti-colored, made of color-blocked parts; the colors chosen sometimes indicated the arms or preferred colors of a certain family or confraternity, or the livery accorded to servants and attendants, or the individual’s taste. A garment or accessory that was parti-colored was said to be adigato or adivisato in Italy (Herald 209, 215). Contemporary observers as well as historians have taken note of the unprecedentedly tight fit of doublet and hose, commenting that men appeared naked even while fully clothed. Jacqueline Herald writes that “never before had young men gone about in such tight doublets and hose, openly wearing them without a tunic, as part of general fashion” (Herald 192).  Other fashionable features seen here are the small round caps (berrettas, Herald 210) and the shoulder-length blond hair. The leather belts with attached bags were a Catalan fashion (Herald 205).

Despite the rejection of outer garments by many young men, a variety of them existed in the 1490s. Early in the decade, a formal occasion such as an engagement called for a long coat (as seen in figure 3 in womenswear) that could have a variety of sleeve types. These straight and narrow coats had come into fashion in the previous decade on a wave of general Spanish influence. Some historians refer to them as “gowns” or “robes” (Van Buren and Wieck 232) or use the equally vague Italian vestitos and vestimentos (Herald 230-231), the Spanish mongiles, albornices or ropa (Bernice 36-50), or see a connection to the Ottoman caftan suggested by the Italian words turca and tunica alla turchesca (Herald 230). Historians’ confusion about what to call this and other outer garments mirrors the “confusion of styles” (Herald 195) experienced by contemporaries. The loose, flowing silk coats with contrasting linings, worn by foreign ambassadors from a “pagan” land in Carpaccio’s telling of the legend of Saint Ursula, in the later 1490s (Fig. 2) may be inspired by the close contacts between Venice and the Ottoman court.

In another painting in this cycle (Fig. 3) we see the shorter coat, ending above the knee, that will be more widespread in both Italy and northern Europe. This example is of red silk with black velvet lining that folds back on the shoulder to form lapels; the slit sleeves are wide enough to reveal the tight split sleeves of the young man’s gold silk doublet. This doublet is so narrow in the front that all we see are its laces, and the shirt underneath. The young man is wearing parti-colored hose, with one leg further divided into two different sides. His companion wears only doublet and hose, further evidence that for the young, outer garments were optional. Their blond hair is extremely fashionable in Venice, which is attributed to the presence of many long-haired, blond German merchants in the city (Herald 200). The influence was mutual, however. Albrecht Dürer displays a great deal of Italian style in his self-portrait of 1498 (Fig. 4) after his first trip to Italy, revealing his gold-trimmed shirt all the way to the waist and slinging a cape around one shoulder, alla togata (Herald 57).

In other portraits of men from this decade we see the simplicity and sobriety that the iconoclastic friar Savanarola preached. The young man portrayed by the Venetian painter Marco Basiati (Fig. 5) wears a doublet of darkest brown, almost black, with a high neckline. It was not until the final decades of the century that black finally lost its automatic assocation with mourning in Italy, and was instead appreciated for its elegance as it had long been in northern Europe (Frick 175). Another doublet with a high neckline, in turquoise blue (turquino, a color named for Turkey, Herald 230), accompanied by a green coat is seen in a portrait by Leonardo’s pupil Marco d’Oggiono (Fig. 6). Shoulder-length wavy hair and a coat trimmed with a spotted fur would be very fashionable in the new century that was just a few years away. We see similar coats and hairstyles in a French manuscript (Fig. 7). During the 1490s, men’s fashion in Italy and in northern Europe came closer together.