Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-Century French Manuscript Painting (Cité des

Dames Master, Limbourg Brothers, Boucicaut Master, and Bedford Master)

Author(s): Joyce Kubiski
Source: Gesta, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2001), pp. 161-180
Published by: International Center of Medieval Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/767244
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Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-CenturyFrench
Manuscript Painting (Citd des Dames Master, Limbourg
Brothers, Boucicaut Master, and Bedford Master)*
JOYCE KUBISKI
Western Michigan University
Abstract
A group of miniaturists working in or near Paris between
1400 and 1415 significantly expanded the existing pictorial
repertoire of orientalizing costume. Theydepicted elements of
the eastern fashions worn by peoples with whom the French
aristocracy had had recent contact-in battle and through
diplomaticembassies-including CentralAsian tribes that had
settled in Hungary, thepredominantlyTurkisharmies of Islam,
and members of the Byzantine court. While the miniaturists
often mix together garments from a variety of different cul-
tures into an eclectic costume, the individual elements of the
clothing are authentic representations of foreign dress. This
approach, which paradoxically allowed individualfeatures of
dress to be identifiedwhile, at the same time, obscuring cul-
tural origins in an exotic, fantastical mix, merges easterners
into an indistinct, entirelyforeign other.
Introduction
In the early years of the fifteenth century, a group of
Parisian illuminators--the Cite'des Dames Master, the three
Limbourg brothers, the Boucicaut Master, and the Bedford
Master-greatly enriched the French pictorial repertory of
eastern dress.' While representationsof eastern clothing had
appeared in western art for hundreds of years, these minia-
turists distinguished themselves from their predecessors by
depicting an unprecedentedquantity and variety of oriental-
izing fashions.2These exotic costumes have long been noted,
with scholarly opinion divided as to how realistically French
artists rendered foreign dress. The prevailing opinion is that
the costumes are predominately fantastic in design-the end
result of a little knowledge and a lot of imagination.3A few
scholars have suggested that western artists did at times base
theirrepresentationson actualitems of easterndress. However,
even those who argue for occasional accuracy have offered in
defense of their claim only the drawings of Byzantine court
costume made in the mid-fifteenthcenturyby the Italianartist
Pisanello, as well as rathergeneralreferencesto turban-bearing
Saracens.4
This reexamination of the eastern fashions depicted by
the Cite'des Dames Master,the Limbourgbrothers,the Bouci-
cautMaster,andthe BedfordMasterwill demonstratethatthese
artists strove to representaccurately aspects of contemporary
GESTAXL/2 @ The InternationalCenter of Medieval Art 2001
clothing worn by a wide variety of eastern people including
Turks, Mongols, Mamluks, Persians, Byzantine Greeks, and
ethnic groups in EasternEuropeincluding Cumansand Walla-
chians. Significantly,and for reasons that will be explored, the
artistsrarelyrepresenteda complete ethnic costume. Oftenthey
would depict a foreign hat but not the distinctive garments,
shoes, and accessories culturallyassociatedwith the hat, dress-
ing their figures instead in simple tunics. At times they took
featuresfrom a variety of foreign and domestic wardrobesand
combined them into a rich melange. For example, a single
figure might wear a Turkishhat, pseudo-Romanarmor,and an
elaboratelydagged French gown, while carrying a Byzantine
shield. In these cases, the individual details of the dress are
authentic,while the complete ensemble is fantastical.
Modernevidence for our illuminators'knowledge of east-
ern dress derives mainly from pictorial sources and, in rare
instances, from literary descriptions. Especially valuable are
eastern representationsof eastern clothing, for these provide
independentwitnesses to motifs found in Frenchmanuscripts,
allowing direct comparisons to be made. There is, of course,
always a danger in assuming that medieval representationsof
dress arereliable indicatorsof what people actually wore. Cos-
tume historians are aware that artists may have represented
traditionalor archaicfashions ratherthan contemporarycloth-
ing or altered contemporarydress for iconographic purposes.
Moreover, they may have had incomplete knowledge of the
clothing they were seeking to depict, or they may have been
little interestedin representingit with much detail.5A depend-
able history of medieval dress can only be constructedwhen
pictorial evidence is compared with archaeological material
and written documents. Several generations of such research
into late medieval representationsof dress in both Europeand
the Islamic world support the conclusion that art in this era
can be a reliable indicator of contemporaryclothing, if each
claim to authenticity is tested. It should be noted that this
study is not concerned with the complexities of eastern self-
representation but with how French artists deployed their
knowledge of eastern dress.
The eastern sources drawn upon in this study include
Hungarianrepresentationsof Cumans, a population of Cen-
tral Asian nomads living in Hungary, as well as Byzantine
161
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FIGURE 1. Cite des Dames Master, Princes of the East in Thomas of Saluzzo, Chevalier errant, Paris, Biblioth que nationale de France, MS fr. 12559,
fol. 162 (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France).

self-representationsand Italianportraitsof Byzantine person- clusion to this paper, it can be noted at the outset that depic-
alities. For costumes of people living further to the east in tions of orientalizing clothing in French miniaturepainting
Asia and to the south in North Africa, we must weave together increased dramaticallyfollowing two significant events at the
a variety of kinds of evidence. The Islamic world was a syn- turn of the century:the Battle of Nicopolis, which took place
cretic blend of Arab, Berber, Persian, Turkish, and Mongol in 1396, and the residence of the Byzantine courtin Parisfrom
cultures, and the clothing worn reflects this eclecticism. Turk- 1400 to 1402.
ish influence on fashion was especially strong from the late On September 26, 1396, a pan-European army was
eleventh century on, as Turkish military dynasties came to defeated by the Ottoman Turks at Nicopolis, located on the
control much of the Middle East. Another influx of Central Danube in modernday Bulgaria.7Although the crusadingco-
Asian fashion followed in the wake of the Mongol invasions, alition included Hungarian,Wallachian, German,Bohemian,
particularlywhen the Mongols ruled Persia,from the late thir- Styrian, English, Polish, Spanish, and Italianforces, the larg-
teenthto the mid-fifteenthcentury.6This sharingof vestimen- est single contingent was made up of Burgundianand other
tary traditions means that Europeans during the late Middle French knights led by Count John of Nevers, son of Philip
Ages wouldhave seen the easternotherwearinga richly varied the Bold, duke of Burgundy.8The Turkishsultan, Bayezid I,
arrayof clothing. held the wealthiest of the captives for ransom,including about
A questionfundamentalto this undertakingis how French threehundredFrenchknights.9The vanquishedcrusadersspent
miniaturistsat the beginning of the fifteenth century would nine months in Turkishcustody in Adrianople,Gallipoli, and
have acquiredinformation about foreign dress. The compari- Bursa before they were released to Venice, where they re-
sons madehere between westernand easterndepictions of ori- maineduntil theirransomwas paid in full. They did not return
ental costume are not meant to imply that the illuminators home until February of 1398, almost two years after their
had ready access to easternpictorial sources. Although a more date of departure.Shortly afterthis ill-fated crusade,the Byz-
detailed discussion of possible sources will follow in the con- antine emperor, Manuel II visited Europe with the hopes of

162
enlisting aid for yet anothercrusade against the Turks.10 This
was the first time a Byzantine emperor had traveled so far
west. He arrivedin Paris on June 3, 1400, and was lodged at
the Louvre as a guest of Charles VI. Otherthan a brief trip to
England in the early winter of 1400, Manuel and his retinue
of about fifty remainedin Paris for over two years, departing
again for Constantinopleon November 21, 1402. Most of the
Valois court was in Paris duringthis time, including the dukes
of Berry and Burgundy,who were closely guardingroyal in-
terests as their nephew, CharlesVI, slipped deeper into insan-
ity. These two events broughtdiverse easternculturesdirectly
into the quotidian experience of the French aristocracy.The
simultaneousmultiplicationof easterndress in Frenchpainting
suggests this contact provided artists with both information
and inspiration.

The Cite des Dames Master

One of the earliest witnesses to the new French experi-
ence of eastern dress is a richly illustrated copy of Thomas
of Saluzzo's Chevalier errant now in the Bibliotheque natio-
nale de France." Thomas was the marquis of Saluzzo, a city
in northernItaly with strong ties to France. He made several
tripsto Parisin his lifetime, includingan extended stay in 1401
duringthe residenceof the Byzantine court. Saluzzo wrote the
text of the Chevalier errantin Frenchbetween 1394 and 1396
while he was imprisoned by his political rival, the duke of
Savoy. His chivalric allegory incorporateshistorical and con-
temporarycharactersincludingGenghis Khan,MuradI, Philip
the Bold, and Saluzzo himself. The manuscriptunderconsid-
erationwas the author'spersonalcopy, most likely illuminated
during his fourth and final trip to Paris from 1403 to 1405.12
Millard Meiss has attributedits ninety-four miniaturesto the
Cite des Dames Master and his workshop.13 This illuminator
specialized in the production of secular works written by
Europeanauthors, and he and his shop typically dressed the
Europeanprotagonists,whether contemporary,allegorical, or
historical figures, in French fashions. When illustrating the
Chevalier errant, however, he was called upon to depict a
convocation of the Princes of the East (Fig. 1). This is one of
the most remarkableminiaturesof the time, not only for the
variety of its eastern costume but also for the amount of au-
thentic detail it incorporates.The princes, set in a grassy oasis
and surroundedby tents, wear costumes thathave specifically
Byzantine,Mamluk,Mongol, Turkish,Cuman,and Wallachian
features. A lion, a leopard, and two Persian carpets appearas
well, creatingan exotic melange for the medieval viewer. The
exoticism is sharpenedthroughcontrastwith the facing min-
iature, in which an associated illuminator has painted the
Princes of the West dressed entirely in western clothing and
placed in a typical Europeansetting.14
So precisely accurateare details of the princes'costumes
thatit is possible the Citddes Dames Masterintendedto create
sartorialportraitsof distinct ethnicities, or even personalities.
FIGURE2. Pisanello, John VIII Palaeologus, Portrait medal, ca. 1438/9,
Musde du Louvre,Inv. MRR330 (photo: Rduniondes Musees Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY).
For example, the inner figure of two conversing men in the
lower left cornerof the miniaturemay be a portraitof the Byz-
antine emperor, Manuel II. This figure wears a popular Byz-
antine hat with a high roundedcrown and a pointed brim that
projects over the face, shielding the eyes from the sun. Per-
haps this is the hat that Pseudo-Kodinos said was worn by
emperor and court officials alike in the Palaeologan era-a
hat called the skiadion in reference to the shadow the brim
casts over the wearer'sface.15Although hats like these can be
found in Byzantine art as early as the twelfth century,that de-
picted by the Cite des Dames Master specifically documents
the influence of Turkish,Mongol, and Persianfashions during
the late fourteenthand early fifteenthcenturies.Under Asiatic
influence the crown became higher and was divided into verti-
cal sections decoratedwith gold cording;the brim was always
divided into front and back sections that could be indepen-
dently folded up or down (Fig. 5e).16Although no Byzantine
representationsof this traditionalhat with the Asiatic crown
survive from the early fifteenth century,there are several ex-
amples from mid-century.Manuel Laskares Chatzikes wears
one in the funerary portraitpainted in the church of Panta-
nassa in Mistra shortly after his death in 1445.17The most
famous depictions are owed to Pisanello, who documented
the costume of the Greek court during its residence in Flo-
rence at the time of the Council of Reconciliation (1438/39).
In Pisanello's drawings and in a portraitmedal, Manuel'sson,
John VIII Palaeologus, wears a hat that mirrors closely the
one painted by the Citd des Dames Master (Fig. 2).18

163
 The garments worn by the fictional prince of the East
accuratelyreflect Byzantine fashion. He wears a tunic closed
down the front with gold frog buttons, a fastening system
used by the Saljuq, Ayybid, Mamluk, and Ottoman Turksof
the late Middle Ages-one of many Asiatic fashion features
adoptedby the Byzantine court.19Over this garment,he wears
a mantle with exceedingly long sleeves. Slit at the height of
the elbows to allow the forearmsto emerge, the sleeves fall al-
most to the ankles, taperingslightly along their length. Hang-
ing sleeves are an ancient eastern tradition, traceable to the
fourth century at least in ancient Persia, and they continued
common among Turksand Persiansin the Middle Ages. Long,
slit sleeves appearedin Byzantine art as early as the eleventh
centuryand remainedpopularthroughoutthe fifteenthcentury.
Similar mantles are depicted in the fourteenth-centuryfuner-
ary portraits at the Kariye Camii in Constantinople, and, in
one of Pisanello's drawings, the emperorJohn VIII Palaeolo-
gus wears a mantle with overly long and very wide sleeves.20
Notably, the Cite des Dames Master has dressed his "Byzan-
tine" figureentirely in white, including his hat, and shown him
with a long white beard.Perhapsthe miniaturist,or Thomas of
Saluzzo himself, retaineda specific memoryof Manuel II, who
made his entry into Paris on June 3, 1400, according to the
chronicle of Saint-Denis, "dressed in his imperial garb of
white silk [and] seated . . on the white horse presentedto him
by the king."The chronicleralso notes the emperor's"modest
stature, distinguished by a manly chest and by yet firmer
limbs, though under a long beard and showing white hair
everywhere."21
In at least one other instance in the Princes of the East
miniaturethe Cite des Dames Master seems to have been at-
tempting to representa particularethnic identity.The African
figure standing between the two seated groups of men wears
identifiable articles of Egyptian Abbasid or Mamluk dress.
The clothing style of both dynasties was affected by the in-
corporation of Central Asian fashions of the Turkish mili-
tary,especially afterthe TurkishMamluks(1250-1517), former
mercenaries,replacedthe Islamic Abbasids.The figurepainted
by the Cite des Dames Masterwears a distinctive turban,ovoid
in profile with a long end-piece that trails down the back. This
style of turbanoriginatedin Baghdadduringthe early Abbasid
period and then migratedto Egypt where it was used at court
well into the Mamluk period.22 The Egyptian prince also, ap-
propriately, carries his saber over his shoulder in a baldric
ratherthan on a sword belt. The baldric was used by the first
caliphs in the seventh century, but in the Arab world it had
fallen into disuse by the eleventh century,except in a few tribal
areas in the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. It contin-
ued to be a part of the Abbasid caliphs' ceremonial dress, and
Mamluk sultans soon copied this custom, although they pre-
ferred the sword belt in combat.23The garments worn by this
prince include a short tunic with bell-like sleeves worn over
a long under-tunic.While Islamic fashion often layered gar-
ments, such short tunics were usually worn over trousers.
164
Nevertheless, the cut of the over-tunic correspondsto written
descriptions of Mamlukdress, which characterizethe style of
over-garment worn by high-ranking shaikhs as having wide
sleeves and a single opening over the shoulders.24 Like the one
painted by the Cite des Dames Master, these over-garments
were often finished with a decorativebanding aroundthe neck
and sleeve hem.25 We may note that Ottoman foot soldiers
also employed the baldric, which the French crusaderscould
thus have seen at Nicopolis, andByzantine Greeksvisiting the
French Court may have worn short tunics over longer ones,
since this was common Byzantine dress.26Nonetheless the
illuminator'scombination of wide-sleeved coat, turban with
trailing end-piece, and saber and baldric worn by this African
figure may indicate authentic knowledge of contemporary
Egyptian ceremonial dress.
The accuratelyclad "Byzantine"and "Mamluk"princes
provide the most complete sartorialportraitsin the miniature.
It proves impossible to determine the precise ethnicity of the
other princes, since their costumes are not finished with the
same amount of detail, and the artist mixes features from a
variety of ethnic sources or incorporatesfeatures that are om-
nipresent in the Islamic world. Nonetheless it is possible to
confirmthe accuracyof individual articles of dress. Although
partially obscured by his companions, the central figure of
three seated on a carpet wears a turbandecoratedwith a large
jewel as well as a caftan, side-wrapped and fastened under
the left arm. The form of the caftan is well-attested: found in
many easternwardrobes,including Persian,Turkish,Mongol,
Mamluk, Cuman,and Byzantine, it is a narrowtunic typically
closed by a side fastening underthe right or left arm, although
centralopenings were also used.27The Cite des Dames Master's
caftan is quite similar to one representedin an early fifteenth-
century Turkishcopy of the Romance of Alexander the Great
(Fig. 3). Dated July 13, 1416, this manuscriptincludes an ac-
count of the life of Bayezid I (d. 1402), the sultan who de-
feated the Nicopolis crusaders, and it is one of the earliest
surviving illuminated manuscripts written in Turkish.28The
necklines of the caftans both in this manuscript and in the
Princes of the East miniature are decorated with a simple
scalloped edging. Although the caftan would have been one
of the eastern garmentsmost commonly seen by western cru-
saders and adventurers,like many other articles of oriental
dress, it is not, to my knowledge, representedin French art
until the early fifteenth century.
The turban worn by the prince in the caftan, decorated
with a large jewel, also finds many parallels. Of course the
turbanitself was a ubiquitous head covering among Central
Asian, mid-eastern,and North African peoples. It had an an-
cient heritage and was often used in western art as a sign for
"Saracens."Previous to the fifteenth century,the turbansrep-
resented by western artists were rathergeneric in form. The
Citddes Dames Master, however, has representedten turbans
in this one miniature that demonstrate in a remarkableway
the wide variety of turban-wrappingtechniques used in the
 Islamic world. It suffices to compare the Princes of the East
miniature with drawings that replicate the turbans found in
Islamic sources of diverse provenance dated between 1330
and 1420 (Fig. 4). The Abbasid or Mamluk turbanwith the
................
trailingend-piece has alreadybeen discussed. Thejeweled tur-
ban was another element of Abbasid dress that was adopted
by the Mamluks.The most extraordinaryof these was an enor-
mous turbanwound into an ellipsoidal shape, which was worn
by the caliph. The entire turbanwas ornamentedwith jewels,
while a large, single gem was centered at the caliph's fore-
head.29 Another common practice was to twist the winding
cloth into a thick cord and to wear it as a headband. This is
how the turbanof anotherAfrican prince, standing at the far
* tlI~i ~f'P'il i
right, was painted by the Cite des Dames Master. Another .........

practice was to wrap the cord aroundthe bottom half of a hat

or helmet, creating a thick brim (Figs. 4a, b, f). This type of . . . . . ..:

hat-turbancombination is worn by one of the four princes

seated at the center of the miniature:the figure also has hair
plaited in a long single braidreachinghalfway down his back,
a traditional hairstyle of many ethnic groups indigenous to
the Asian Steppes, including Turks,Cumans, and Mongols.30
The miniaturisthas dressed six figuresin a garmentdeco-
rated with a pointed collar. This is a feature of Turkishand
Persiandress, where the collar is quite thin, and also of Byzan-
tine and Bulgariandress, where the collar is largerand stiffer.
These garmentsusually fasten down the front with a series of
closely spacedbuttonsthatat times continuedecorativelyalong
the inner edges of the collar. In Persianand Turkishexamples,
the garment may have a side closure. Collar and lining are
often in a color contrasting with the main body of the gar-
ment, which may be worn as either a tunic or a coat. In Byz-
antine art it is worn as an outer garment, as demonstratedby
the funeral portraitsin the Kariye Camii and by Pisanello's FIGURE 3. Romance of Alexander the Great, Paris, Biblioth que natio-
portraitof John Palaeologus (Fig. 2).31 The Cite des Dames nale de France, MS turc. 309, fol. 114v (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de
Master has not reproducedthe garment with the same detail France).
found in either the eastern or the Italianrenderings, although
several aredecoratedby tirazbands. Standardfeaturesof both
Islamic and Byzantine dress, used to decorate clothing or tur- to the right carries a small round one. It is difficult to assign
bans, tiraz bands are richly embroideredstrips of cloth, often a specific ethnicity to these shields as both were employed at
incorporating inscriptions, most commonly placed on the various times in the East and in the West. However, these
upper arm of a garment (Fig. 3).32 items, like others in the miniature,likely had eastern conno-
In his depiction of foreign military dress and equipment, tations: at the turn of the century, the Byzantine army was
the Cite"des Dames Masteris selective. A figure in full armor using a full-length kite-shaped shield with this concave pro-
is never represented;rather,small details such as swords and file, while Central Asian tribesmen wielding the composite
shields aredeemed sufficientto signify the easternother.Over- bow preferred a small circular shield for protection.34The
sized and dramaticallycurvingsabersappeartwice: one is held costume of the figure with the saber and kite-shaped shield
by the figure wearing the turbanwith a trailing end-piece and displays another unusual feature. His legs are wrapped with
the other by the central figure in the group to the far right. strips of cloth from the ankle to the knee. This is an Irano-
This weapon came out of the CentralAsian Steppes and was Central Asian feature that was transferredto the Arab world
employed by both Turkishand Mongol tribes as early as the by the Turkishmilitary dynasties. Wornwith sandals, the leg-
eighth century. By the fourteenthcentury it was in common gings held the voluminous fabric of Turkishpants against the
use throughoutthe Middle East and had made an appearance calves; they took the place of expensive leather boots and
in Byzantium and EasternEurope.33The saber-bearingfigure were typically worn by the infantry.35The figure represented
on the left also holds a kite-shaped shield, while his neighbor by the Cite des Dames Master is barefoot.

165
 The rathergeneric quality of many of the garments and
much of the military equipment depicted by the Citd des
Dames Master leaves his distinctive hats and turbans as the
most significant markersof foreign identity in the Princes of
the East miniature.The focus on hats as signifiers may reflect
the recent popularityof hats in Frenchcourtly fashion:36view-
ers would have been primed to revel in these exotic displays.
A tall pointed hat topped with a featherand, more improbably,
a small fleur-de-lys crown and surroundedby a wide, turned-
up brim split in the center is worn by one of the four seated
princes.This hat and a varietyof relatedhats appearin Turkish
manuscripts,as well as in Turkish-influencedPersian manu- a b
scripts producedunder Mongol (Ilkhanidor Timurid)hegem-
ony during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Fig. 5).
By this time Iranhad become a melting pot of Persian,Turk-
ish, and Mongol peoples united by a common Islamic faith.
Many of the medieval hats are still worn today in Turkeyand
Mongolia, pointing to an origin in the CentralAsian Steppes.
They were, and still are, typically made of wool felt or, in
cases where the crown was divided into vertical segments, of
quilted fabric. The crowns vary in shape and size from low
and rounded to very tall and pointed. The brims come in a
variety of profilesrangingfrom flat, triangular,scalloped, and
zigzagged to crescent-shaped. They are often divided into c d
two or four parts that can be alternately turned up or down.
Brims may also be constructed of fur or fashioned from the
winding cloth of a turban, as represented in the Turkish
Romance of Alexander (Fig. 3).
A rich source for the study of these hats and other fea-
turesof late medieval Islamic dress is the Demotte Shahnama,
where thirty-sevendifferenttypes of headgearare depicted. 37
The Shahnamaitself is a recordof Iranianpre-Islamichistory
and legend gathered together in about the year 1000 at the
Turkishcourtof Mahmadof Ghazna,rulerof the northeastern
province of the Persian world. The Demotte Shahnama is a
copy of this text producedbetween 1330 and 1360 under the
Mongol Ilkhanid rulers of Persia. The tall pointed hat with e f
the wide brim representedby the Cite des Dames Master is
similarto one that appearsin the Persianmanuscript(Fig. 51),
except that the French miniaturist has lined the brim with FIGURE4. Islamic turbanstyles: a. Kalilawa Dimna,Istanbul,TopkapuSaray
ermine and placed a fleur-de-lys crown at its pinnacle, un- Museum,MS Revan 1023, Persian, 1413; b. Nihayat al Su'l (Furusiyah),Lon-
doubtedly to indicate the princely status of the wearer. And don, British Library,Add. MS 18866, Mamluk,1371; c. Demotte Shahnama,
indeed two other western-styled crowns appearin the minia- Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS pers. 111, ca. 1330-1360; d. Demotte
Shahnama,Boston, Museumof Fine Arts, 22.392, ca. 1330-1360; e. Painted
ture. One of these, worn by a figure at the far upper left, sits LeatherCeiling, Palace of the Lions,Alhambra,Granada,latefourteenth cen-
atop a turban.Despite these iconographicintrusions,the simi- tury;f Demotte Shahnama,Iran,private collection (Grabar and Blair, 1980,
larities between eastern and western representationsof "Per- p. 149) (drawings by Karen Bondarchuk).
sian"headgearare often so strikingthatwe must conclude that
the Citi des Dames Master and his fellow artists knew these
hats througheither material, visual, or descriptive sources. divided into front and back sections. It is similar to the pre-
Anotherunusualhat in the Princes of the East miniature, viously discussed hat and to others that appear in Persian,
worn by the figure on the extreme right, can be identified by Mongol, and Turkish art; its distinctive profile, however, is
comparisonwith images in the HungarianIlluminatedChron- most frequently encountered in Hungarian art, where it is
icle, paintedca. 1360 (Figs. 6, 7).38The hat has a tall, pointed used generically to designate the eastern foreigner and more
crown bent into a slight curve and a flat brim which has been specifically to representCumans. Their hats typically have a

166
 tr

a b c d

e f g h

i j k 1

m n o p

FIGURE5. Turkish,Mongol, and Persian Headgear: a. KhvajiifKirmdni,Khamsa,London,British Library,Add. MS 18113, fol. 12, ca. 1396; b. Demotte Shah-
namah,New York,MetropolitanMuseumofArt, 52.20.2, ca. 1330-1360; c. Demotte Shahnamah,Paris, VeverCollection,ca. 1330-1360; d. Demotte Shahnamah,
Dublin, ChesterBeattyLibrary,MSpers. 111, ca. 1330-1360; e. Khviiji Kirmani,Khamsa,London,British Library,Add. MS 18113,fol. 12, ca. 1396;f Demotte
Shahnamah,Boston, Museumof Fine Arts, 30.105, ca. 1330-1360; g. Demotte Shahnamah,Geneva, Muse'ed'art et d'histoire, 1971-107/2a, ca. 1330-1360;
h. KhvdjiiKirmdni,Khamsa,London,British Library,Add. MS 18113, fol. 12, ca. 1396; i. Demotte Shahnamah,Washington,DC, SmithsonianInstitute,Freer
Gallery of Art, 23.5, ca. 1330-1360; j. Demotte Shahnamah,Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS pers. 111, ca. 1330-1360; k. Shahnama,Leningrad,State
Library,MS Dorn 329, fol. 65v, ca. 1333; 1. Demotte Shahnama,Paris, private collection (Grabar and Blair, 1980, p. 144); m. Demotte Shahnamah,Geneva,
Musded'art et d'histoire, 1971-107/2a; n. Demotte Shahnamah,Iran,private collection (Grabarand Blair, 1980, p. 149); o. Shahnama,London,BritishLibrary,
detached miniature,1948-12-11-022, ca. 1340; p. Shahnama,Leningrad,State Library,MS Dorn 329, fol. 65v, ca. 1333 (drawings by Karen Bondarchuk).

167
 .;•-

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d
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ii

.
1iii-~~ii?'~'ii
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if:i

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FIGURE6. The Cumanking Ladislaus IV, HungarianIlluminatedChronicle,
Budapest,National SzdchenyiLibrary,cod. lat. 404, fol. 64v (photo:National
SzdchdnyiLibrary).

FIGURE 8. Wallachians hurl rocks at the army of King Charles Robert,

Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, Budapest, National SzdchdnyiLibrary,
cod. lat. 404, fol. 72 (photo: National SzdchdnyiLibrary).

i
i
3i!.
_... :: steeply pointed crown that is either straightor slightly curved;
i
the brim is bisected into two sections that can be flat or trian-
'i ...
ii
:l: gular in profile. Cumans are represented,too, as wearing nar-
. . row caftans,normallyclosed at the side, and soft leatherboots.
Cuman garments and hats were often decorated with large
silver or gold disks, and, as among Turkomanand Mongol
peoples, the men wore their hair in a single long braid.
PAW
Cumancostume was some of the first orientalizing dress
to appearin western art, which is not surprisingconsidering
A,-&
.A-
aAL-o the Cumans'longstanding presence as auxiliary forces in the
Hungarianarmy.39 A nomadictribe,possibly of Turkomanori-
gin, they dominatedthe CentralAsian Steppes until the com-
ing of the Mongols in the eleventh century.At thatpoint, they
began a slow migration westward, settling predominantlyin
Hungarianterritoryduring the thirteenthcentury.In the thir-
FIGURE7. The Cumans kill King Ladislaus IV, Hungarian Illuminated teenth and fourteenthcenturies, they participatedin military
Chronicle,Budapest,National SzdchdnyiLibrary,cod. lat. 404, fol. 65 (photo: campaigns in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Italy, where
National SzdchdnyiLibrary). their unusual costume was noted.40 In July of 1396, the cru-

168
saders heading for Nicopolis convened at Buda, where King
Sigismund of Hungaryjoined their ranks. Although the Cu-
mans were no longer a distinct auxiliary force under Sigis-
mund, they remained a part of his army. Since royal law
allowed them to retain their ethnic customs and dress, at least
until the late fourteenthcentury,it is probablethat the French
at Nicopolis saw their distinctive attire on the field.41It is
noteworthy,therefore,that French artistsnever reproducedan
entire Cuman costume but rather focused their attention on
the exotic hats. The Cite des Dames Master dressed his figure
with the Cuman hat in a short, generically styled tunic rather
than a caftan decorated with gold disks, although the figure
holds a small round shield, the most common shield type for
any of the equestrianarchersoriginating in the CentralAsian
Steppes, including Cumans.42Whetherthe miniaturistwas at-
tempting to create a Cumansartorialportraitbased upon accu-
rate, but limited, knowledge of Cuman dress, or if he wanted
to produce a more general orientalizing figure, is not easy to
determine.
Another unusual hat appears both in the Hungarian
Illuminated Chronicle and in the Princes of the East minia-
ture. Tall and bulbous, made of fur, with or without a small
brim, it is worn by the figure standing at the far left, next to
the man wearing the Byzantine skiadion. In the Hungarian
Illuminated Chronicle it is used exclusively to representRu-
thenians (Russians) and Wallachians (Fig. 8).43 Under King
Sigismund, the Wallachianshad become an auxiliary force in
the Hungarianarmy,and they fought alongside the Hungarian
king at the Battle of Nicopolis. Their unusualheadgearwould
have been a familiar sight to the crusading armies that con-
verged at Buda in 1396. The Wallachian hat does not appear
in Frenchart before the early fifteenth century,at which point
it shows up in many places. The Cite"des Dames Master uses
it again in Christinede Pisan'sLe livre de la mutacion de For-
tune, and the Limbourgbrothersgive it to a figure witnessing
St. Augustine'sbaptism in the TresRiches Heures.44
The Limbourg Brothers
The Limbourg brothers, because their commissions
focused on sacred texts, never had a similar opportunity to
represent contemporaryeasterners. However, they used ori-
entalizing dress to represent a wide array of historical for-
eigners, including ancient Romans, Old Testamentprophets,
and biblical Jews. A copy of the Bible moralisle, most cer-
tainly painted by the Limbourgs, has been identified as the
bible Philip the Bold paid Jean and Paul to decorate duringthe
years 1402 and 1403.45The manuscriptfollows the standard
format for a Moralized Bible, with two parallel columns of
images and accompanying texts juxtaposing an illustrated
biblical passage with illustrated commentaryon it. The Lim-
bourgs finished only the first three gatherings and the under-
drawingsfor a fourth;nevertheless,the twenty-fourcompleted
folios contain almost 400 individual scenes, and more than
half of these small scenes incorporateitems of eastern dress.
The Limbourg brothers approachedthe task of representing
eastern garb differentlyfrom the Cite des Dames Master, who
was working on his miniature of the Princes of the East at
about the time the Limbourgs stopped work on the Bible mo-
ralisde. The Limbourgs, at least in this early manuscript,fo-
cused on headgear.They dressed theirprotagonistsin standard
biblical robes, pseudo-Romanarmor,or contemporaryFrench
dress.
On the first folio, the artistspainted several hats of Cen-
tral Asian origin (Fig. 9). In the second scene of the first col-
umn, which offers moralizing comment on the Creation, the
figure on the far left wears what can only be a Turkishshar-
bush (Figs. 5j, k).46 This head covering was part of the mili-
tary uniform of a Turkishsoldier and could be seen anywhere
in the Asian Steppes or Near East where Turkishhegemony
had been established.It would have been long familiarto Euro-
pean crusaders, yet it does not appear in French art until the
fifteenth century. The crown was constructed of sections of
felt or more luxurious fabrics so as to produce a roundedpro-
file. A pronouncedupturnedbrim at the front was often cov-
ered with tooled and gilded leather or a metallic plate, and the
edge of the brim could be trimmed with fur. A silk button or
metal knob often decoratedthe top. The Limbourgs'sharbush
contains all the essential details of this distinctively Turkish
hat. Beneath the sharbushthis figure wears a face veil that has
slipped down below his chin. Male veiling was accomplished
by pulling the outer mantle upwardto cover the head and face
or, alternatively,by winding the free end of the turbancloth
around the face-as was done among the Berbers of North
Africa, so as to protect the face from the sun and sand. From
North Africa, the fashion traveled to Spain where the cloth
was typically slipped under the chin (Fig. 4e). Next to the
figure with the sharbush is one wearing a hat that appears in
Persian Ilkhanid art. It has a tall, rounded crown and a large
floppy brim that undulates around it in curves and counter-
curves. A similar hat, with a slightly shorter crown can be
found in the Demotte Shahnama(Fig. 5i). It resembles the hat
topped by a fleur-de-lys crown painted by the Citddes Dames
Master, which also finds a parallel in the Demotte Shahnama
(Fig. 51).
Otherprecisely renderedexamples of headgeararefound
in the Limbourg's Bible moralisle on folio 10, in the third
scene of the second column, where Jacob and his family meet
Esau for the first time in twenty years (Fig. 10). Members of
Esau's retinue wear a variety of exotic hats. While they un-
doubtedly are meant to designate the figures as Jews, they
also evoke the Jews' geographicalorigin in the East and call to
mind the Islamic other.One of the Old Testamentfigureswears
an unusual type of turban. Concentric rings of successively
smaller size are placed one on top of the other, much like a
child's stacking toy. Although I have not found an example of
this type of turbanin an eastern source, the design is not im-
probable and could have been constructed by twisting the
169
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FIGURES 9-11. Limbourg Brothers, Bible moralisee, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MSfr. 166, fol. 1, detail; MSfr. 166, fol. 10, detail; MS
fr. 166, fol.12, detail (photos: Bibliotheque nationale de France).

winding cloth of a turbaninto a thick cord and wrapping it West-to designate otherness in French art and to identify
arounda tall felt hat.47Another figure in this equestriangroup Greek personalities in Italian art-coincides so closely with
wears a tall hat with a crown resembling a truncated cone periods of western residence of the Byzantine courtin Europe
with a stiff, bisected brim. This hat, too, is one of the seem- that it must faithfully mirrorcontemporaryGreek dress.
ingly endless variety of headgear worn at the late medieval In the work the Limbourg brothersundertook for John,
Persian court: a similar hat without the bisected brim can be Duke of Berry, between 1405 and 1415-particularly the
found in the Demotte Shahnama (Fig. 5m). Another figure Belles Heures and the TrksRiches Heures-the artistsadopted
wears a helmet which traces its origins to CentralAsian mili- a different approachto representingthe exotic.50 Ratherthan
tarydress, specificallyto a Mongol helmet with a low, rounded move in the direction of the Cite'des Dames Master, toward
helm (or slightly pointed helm) and two circularplates hang- the depiction of a complete eastern costume, the Limbourg
ing from each side to protect the face and neck (Fig. 50).48 brothers intensifed their eclectic approachto wardrobecon-
After the Mongol invasions, this helmet type came to be used struction, mingling eastern details of dress with other signs
by many Islamic armies.The Limbourgs'example is decorated of alterity. In the miniatureof the Buffeting of Christ in the
with a turbanedbrim, a common practice among the Muslim Belles Heures, for example (Fig. 13), the artistsincluded mul-
forces. tiple eastern motifs: a variety of turban-wrappedheadgear,a
Yet anotheraccuratelyobserved exotic hat appearsin the Persian hat with a floppy brim, a face with distinct Mongol
miniatureof Jacob and Esau: a Greek hat is worn by the fore- features, a tunic girded in eastern fashion with a sash rather
most equestrianfigure (Fig. 10). It has a crown rising to a low than a belt, and a shield with a distinct Byzantine profile.51
point and an unusual bisected brim, in which the two halves Featuresof ancientRomanarmorare intertwinedwith some of
curl separatelyinto loose volutes. A hat with a similarscrolling the most extravagantfeatures of contemporaryFrench cloth-
brim but with a low rounded crown appears on anotherfolio ing, such as the dagged hemline on the soldier in the fore-
of the manuscript(Fig. 11). Both are similar to hats sketched ground.52 The Jewish high priest wears a bishop's miter.53
by Pisanelloin his preparatorydrawingsfor the medal of John Throughout, the Limbourg brothers draw upon already fa-
VIII Palaeologus.Pisanello actually drew several versions of miliar formulae for denigratingChrist'stormenters,including
the hat, with the curving sections of the brim shown rolling in indecently exposed body parts,exaggeratedgestures, and gro-
differentdirections(Fig. 12). AnotherItalianrenderingof this tesque expressions.Yet they were the firstto use such a profuse
hat can be found in a portraitof the Greek scholar Johannes and eclectic sign system to signify otherness.Prominentin this
Ar-gyropoulos,who taughtGreekat the Universityof Florence mix is the new, fifteenth-centuryvocabularyof easterndress.
in the 1450s.49 Although I have yet to find an example of this A comparison of the miniature from the Belles Heures
volute-shaped brim in Byzantine art, its appearance in the with a miniature in the TrksBelles Heures de Notre Dame,

170
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FIGURE 12. Pisanello, preparatory drawingfor the medallion of John VIIIPalaeologus, 1438, Paris, Musde du Louvre, MI 1062, verso (photo: Reunion
des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY).

paintedfor the Duke of Berry aboutfifteen years earlierby the is unknown if Jews ever wore such headgear. In form it is
Master of the Parementof Narbonne,illustrates the extent of related to the felt constructions of Central Asia that are de-
the Limbourgbrothers'innovations,54as well as the way they picted in Hungarian images of Cumans, as well in Persian,
have increasedthe quantityand varietyof signs of otherness.55 Mongol, and Turkishart. Although I have yet to find a pre-
For example, in the miniature of Christ before Caiaphas in cisely similar hat in any eastern source, it seems to combine
the earlier manuscript,the only orientalizing feature appears the tall curving crown of Cuman hats with the serratedbrim
in a bas-de-page image of Christ before Annas (Fig. 14). found in Persianmanuscripts(Figs. 7 and 5b, d, f). This may
Whereas the soldiers surroundingChrist are dressed for the suggest that artists in the fourteenth century were unclear
most partin contemporaryFrenchclothing, without the orien- about the exact details of easterndress. It is interestingto note
talizing accessories and fragments of Roman armorused by that these saw-toothed and scalloped brims appearmuch less
the Limbourg brothers,Annas wears a pointed hat bent into frequentlyin the fifteenth centurywhen eastern fashions were
a sweeping arabesque,surroundedby an upturnedbrim of a updated to reflect the new French experience of the East.
contrastingcolor. This hat is a typical example of the orien-
talizing fashions that appearin late fourteenth-centuryFrench The Boucicaut and Bedford Masters
art.The hats have crowns thatvary from the modestly rounded
to the extravagantlyelongated, encircled by upturnedbrims The eclecticism of the Limbourgbrothersfinds parallels
that were often cut into a hard-edged saw-toothed patternor in the workof otherfifteenth-centuryFrenchilluminators,who
a softer, inverted scallop. In this context, Annas' hat is cer- used dress to comment upon their protagonists in a wide va-
tainly intended to representa Jewish pointed hat, although it riety of situations. Prominentin the mix are eastern fashions

171
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FIGURE 13. Limbourg Brothers, Buffeting of Christ, Belles Heures, New York,Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, MS 54.1.1, fol. 131v (photo:
Metropolitan Museum of Art).

worn by respected biblical charactersas well as by the perse- Duke of Burgundyin 1404, the leader of the Frenchtroops at
cutorsof Christin religious texts; in seculartexts, foreignersof Nicopolis.56This compendiumcollects a numberof travel ac-
many differentcultures,ethnicities, and time periods were ori- counts writtenbetween the late thirteenthand mid-fourteenth
entalized. The artists used this costume symbolically, avoid- centuries, namely those of FriarOdoric, John Hayton, Marco
ing an authentic representationof the foreigner. Even when Polo, Ricold of Montecroce,John of Cori, William of Bolden-
French miniaturists were given an opportunity to illustrate sele, and JohnMandeville. The manuscriptis richly illustrated
eastern lands and peoples, none of them built upon the Cite' with 265 miniatures.Although completed by four individuals
des Dames Master'sincipient attemptsto representa complete or workshops, it is thought likely that the Boucicaut Master
eastern costume. The eclecticism is most obvious in illustra- was in charge of the project, dictating the design and iconog-
tions of travel literature,such as the Duke of Berry'scopy of raphy of the entire manuscript,since his workshopproduced
the Merveilles du monde, which he received as a New Year's most of the miniatures.57 The Bedford Master and his work-
gift in 1413 from his nephew, John the Fearless, installed as shop were also responsible for a large section.

172
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FIGURE 14. Master of the Parement of Narbonne, Christ before Caiaphas, Tres Belles Heures de Notre Dame, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France,
MS nouv. acq. lat. 3093, p. 189 (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France).
Among the miniatures demonstratingthe trend toward
an exotic mix of clothing is the miniature representing the
Festivities at the Court of the Grand Khan by the Bedford
workshop (Fig. 15). Two of the dancers wear tall hats with
wide brims; one of these is notched in the center front. These
hats were also used by the Cite des Dames Master and the
Limbourg brothers, and they find parallels in the Demotte
Shahnama.The turban'swinding cloth in one case is worn as
a headbandand, in another, as the base of a spectacular hat
with a large scalloped brim similar to one found in an early
Ilkhanid manuscript(Fig. 5p). The garments worn by these
figures are quite unusual, with elements of both eastern and
ii•
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i• ~ l i~i
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i
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western dress. Many are extravagantlydagged, a distinctly
Europeanfeature, not encounteredin the Islamic East.
Another miniaturein the Merveilles du monde, this one
painted by the Boucicaut workshop, shows how this oriental-
ization could work in concert with both text and extra-textual
elements to produce a strong message of eastern alterity.The
image of Muslims praying before idols shows a variety of
Mongol and Turkishdress, including a style of Mongol head-
gear not previously discussed (Fig. 16). Worn by three of the
protagonists in the miniature, the hat is similar to one still
worn in Mongolia today. It typically had a low roundedcrown
and was distinguished by a fur brim that could also function
173
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FIGURE 15. Bedford Workshop,Festivities at the court of the Grand Khan, Merveilles du monde, Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MSfr. 2810,
fol. 44 (photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France).

as earflaps.58These could be secured over the ears by a tie

under the chin, as demonstratedby the praying figure on the Conclusion
far right. When untied, the earflaps curled gently upward, as Many questions remainrelating to the sources of knowl-
seen in the case of the praying figure on the far left and one edge tapped by early fifteenth-centuryFrench illuminators
of the figures washing in the stream. In warmerweather, the when they depicted easterndress, as well as the possible func-
fur brim could be folded up and secured to the crown. There tions andmeaningsof exotic sartorialeclecticism. Certainlythe
is a curious relationship between the distinctly Mongol cos- miniaturistscould have drawnupon eastern pictorial sources
tume and the text by Ricold of Montecroce that it illustrates. as models for their orientalizingcostume. Manuscripts,in par-
Vicki Porter has observed that, while the text discusses the ticular, were a common vehicle for the transmissionof visual
Islamic traditionof washing before prayer,it does not suggest information in the Middle Ages, particularlyover long tem-
that Muslims worshipedidols.59The artist'sinsistence on this poral or geographicaldistances. While it is possible that Byz-
falsehood reflects medieval attitudes that associated all non- antine, Islamic, and Hungarianmanuscriptsprovided artists
Christianreligions with the practice of idolatry.The juxtapo- with sartorialmodels, on balance, this seems unlikely. In the
sition of Mongol costume with idol worship may also reflect first place, it is extremely rare for Byzantine courtly dress
contemporaryfears aboutMongol expansion. This was the age to appearin manuscripts:in sacred texts, biblical characters
of Timur(Tamerlane),the most aggressive and ruthless Mon- are consistentlydressed in traditionalrobes, not contemporary
gol ruler since Genghis Khan. Having replaced the previous clothing,and,in theirofficialportraits,membersof the imperial
Mongol Ilkhanidrulersof Persia,Timur'spower was felt from court always wear official attire. It is only through Pseudo-
China to Europe.He was known for his fervent adherenceto Kodinos's descriptions that we learn about the more casual
Islam and his equally fervent hatredof Christians.60This rep- dress of the Palaeologan court. In other words, it seems more
resentationof Muslimspraying,with its extra-textuallinkingof likely that clothing, not images of clothing, served as the illu-
Islam and idolatry and its emphasis on Mongol dress, in light minators'chief source of information. It is highly probable
of the currentFrench understandingof the Mongol problem, that both the Cite des Dames Master and the Limbourgbroth-
created a potent image of the eastern other. ers saw membersof the ByzantinecourtduringtheirParisresi-

174

..................
f..... : ..
- BID1
..
:--INN
::-i::i:::i:i~-_ nixi
_~-_gi~;~i_:-ii
~ MOEii"
..........
...........
FIGURE 16. Boucicaut Workshop,Muslims praying, Merveilles du monde, Paris, Biblioth que nationale de France, MSfr. 2810, fol. 292v (photo: Biblio-
theque nationale de France).
dence between June 3, 1399, and November 21, 1402. Most of
the Valois family was in Paris during these years, as both the
Dukes of Berry and Burgundy had set up households in the
capital; since the Cite'des Dames Master worked consistently
for the royal family, it is likely thathe was in Paris duringthis
time.61The accountsof the Duchy of Burgundyalso place Jean
and Herman Limbourg in Paris during these years.62Sig-
nificantly, the most accurate French representationsof Byz-
antine clothing and hats are found in the work of these artists.
The transmission of information about contemporary
Islamic dress is more complicated.The miniaturistslikely bor-
rowed from the repertoireof orientalizing costume depicted
by the previous generation of French artists; however, this
repertoire was limited to hats similar to the one worn by
Annas in the Duke of Berry's Tres Belles Heures de Notre
Dame (Fig. 14). While early fifteenth-centuryminiaturistsdid
include some of these hats in their illuminations, they in-
cluded elements of eastern costume never before represented
in Frenchart.While manuscriptsoriginatingin the East could
have provided a model for contemporary eastern dress, no
fourteenth-or fifteenth-centuryIslamic text is listed in Valois
inventories of the time. Actual items of clothing may have
inspired the artists, though we wonder what opportunities
they had to see Islamic dress. The odd merchantwould have
........... . ......... ..;
...
1--lot
?04-
passed through town, as well as ambassadorsand emissaries
visiting the French crown. The most significantencounterbe-
tween the West and Islam during these years took place be-
tween the artists'patronsand a Turkisharmyin the far off city
of Nicopolis, and in several other locations within the Otto-
man empire, where the capturedFrenchknights were impris-
oned. But surely, the elite of French aristocracy, although
defeated, came home with stories to tell. Indeed, the Duke of
Burgundyscheduleda succession of triumphalappearancesin
the major towns of Burgundy in the spring of 1398 for his
son, Count John of Nevers, commanderof the Frenchforces.
Doubtless the Nicopolis adventurewas told and retold during
these public appearances,and stories would have circulatedin
aristocraticcircles. OurFrenchilluminatorswould have heard
the tales either at first or second hand. But could these oral
histories have communicatedthe details of Islamic dress?
That question is impossible to answer, but it is worth
noting that written accounts of the battle and the imprison-
ment of knights do not in any case provide a comprehensive
description of dress. Nor do either the fictional or more fac-
tual accounts in the travel literatureso popular at the time. If
the artistswere made aware of Islamic dress throughdescrip-
tion, then oral accounts must have supplied more detail than
the textual tradition.There is some evidence in favor of the
175
idea that oral recountings, along with certain activities of lei-
sure time, transmittedculturalknowledge not recorded in the
chronicles.
Germaneto this studyis a storytold aboutJohnof Nevers,
whose wife gave birth to their son while the Turks held the
count ransom. Several years after his returnto France, when,
as John the "Fearless,"he became Duke of Burgundy, he is
said to have dressed his young son up as a Turkto play in the
Park at Hesdin.63What did this child's Turkishcostume look
like? Was it Turkish-madeand brought home by the Duke
after his captivity or was it purchased at a later time from a
traveling merchant? Was it a gift from the Ottoman court?
Did the Duke's tailors construct it at the Frenchcourt accord-
ing to the Duke's specifications? Or was it something more
casual: a dishtowel wrapped around his son's head in imita-
tion of a turban?Although we will never know for certain,
the story informs us that Turkishdress held a certain fascina-
tion in French popular culture-a fascination that was long
lasting. This son grew up to be Philip the Good, Duke of
Burgundy,and, like his father, he supporteda pan-European
crusade against the Turks. He also added to his father's and
grandfather'slibrary of travel literature by commissioning
memoirs from the various ambassadorshe sent eastward.One
of his emissaries, Bertrandonde la Broquibre,made his return
appearance at court in July of 1433 dressed in "Saracen"
clothes, which he then gave to the Duke.64If a major source
for the eastern fashions depicted by early fifteenth-century
French illuminators was the recollection of the Nicopolis
knights, or souvenirs they brought back with them, then the
artistshad to rely on partialinformation.This may accountfor
some of the eclecticism of French orientalizing dress. How-
ever, the incrediblevariety of costume depicted by some art-
ists-including Byzantine,Islamic,pseudo-Roman,andFrench
features-would indicate that this eclecticism was more pur-
poseful than accidental.
Perhapsone way to understandthe richmelange of eastern
dress that appears in early fifteenth-century French manu-
scripts, particularlythose illuminatedby the Limbourgbroth-
ers, is to place it within a modern discourse of otherness.65
More than twenty years ago, Edward Said proposed that one
way Muslims were indicated as "other"was by representing
them outside the confines of nature-by divorcing them from
recognizable humanexperience.66This, in some sense, is what
the miniaturistshave accomplished throughtheir eclectic use
of ethnic dress. The odd mixture of costume elements places
the protagonistsoutside of recognizable experience-even of
foreign experience. More recently, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen ad-
dressed the issue of alterity in the hybrid bodies of medieval
monsters.67The association of monsters and hybrid beasts
with the infidel was a commonplace in the travel literatureso
assiduously read by the patrons of our miniaturists.Building
on the suggestion of John Friedman that monsters, particu-
larly cynocephali, became a symbol for Muslims, Cohen uses
Lacanianpsychoanalytical theory to propose that the body of
176
this symbolic hybrid was both loathsome and alluring. He
suggests that, "Muslim monsterization . .. activates not only
anxiety (about one's own body, about one's own identity) but
also desire (to possess the foreign body, to tame and control
its monstrousness in order to hold it close)."68 The eclectic
costumes created by French miniaturistsmight be viewed as
sartorial parallels to the somatic hybrid. By creating these
"monstrous"assemblages, Frenchminiaturistsmet culturally
producedexpectations. The denaturedquality of western rep-
resentations of eastern dress, then, cannot be understood as
merely pejorative, even when the depictions appear in pejo-
rative contexts. Rather, like the liminal body of the medieval
hybrid, peoples representedin exotic dress inspired fear min-
gled with fascination, anxiety coupled with desire.
NOTES
* This researchwas supportedby a grant from the Faculty Research and
Creative Activities Support Fund at Western Michigan University. I
would like to acknowledge the generous advice on matters of dress
offered by Anne van Buren, AnnamairiaKovics, and Maria Parani,
who all read an earlier draftof this article. I am grateful to the anony-
mous readers of Gesta and its editor, Elizabeth Sears, who suggested
many needed improvementsto the text. Lastly, I would like to dedicate
this short study to Catherine Brandt Kubiski, whose eye for fashion
design and skill in its construction first piqued my interest in how the
body is clothed.
1. Although eastern costume was also depicted in French panel painting,
the scarcity of extant panels makes it impossible to trace the develop-
ment of an orientalizing trend in this medium. This study will focus on
eastern fashion as found in manuscriptillumination.
2. The term "orientalism,"popularizedby EdwardSaid (Orientalism[New
York, 1978]), is used throughoutthis study to refer to medieval Euro-
pean constructs of the East, despite the fact that Said applied it to the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when western attitudesto the East
were motivated by the politics of colonialism. For reevaluations of
Said'swork, see J. M. Mackenzie, Orientalism:History, Theory, and the
Arts (New York, 1995); and K. Windschuttle, "EdwardSaid's 'Orien-
talism'Revisited,"TheNew Criterion,XVII/5 (1999), 30-38. For recent
studies of medieval orientalism, see B. S. Turner,Orientalism: Early
Sources, 12 vols. (London, 1999); M. L. Farrell,ed., Early Orientalisms
(Baton Rouge, 1992), esp. "Introduction," 5-12, and K. Brownlee, "Cul-
tural Comparison:Crusade as Constructin Late Medieval France, 13-
24; J. J. Cohen, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York, 2000),
esp. S. ConklinAkbari,"Orientalismand Orientation,"19-34; K. Davis,
"Time Behind the Veil: The Media, the Middle Ages, and Orientalism
Now," 105-122; and J. M. Ganim, "Native Studies: Orientalism and
Medievalism," 123-134.
3. In his classic three-partmonograph,French Painting in the Timeof Jean
de Berry (London, 1967-68; New York, 1974), MillardMeiss rarelyre-
fers to the exotic and orientalizing motifs in French manuscriptillumi-
nation and never attempts to explain them. Nor does Erwin Panofsky
in his Early Netherlandish Painting, its Origin and Character (New
York, 1953). Ruth Mellinkoff ("Headgear:Holy and Unholy," in Out-
casts: Signs of Otherness in Northern EuropeanArt of the Late Middle
Ages [Berkeley, 1993], 57-94) suggests that these exotic hats are fan-
tastic variationson the Jewish pointed hat. See also G. Soulier, Les influ-
ences orientales dans la peinture toscane (Paris, 1924); and L. Olschki,
 "Asiatic Exoticism in Italian Art of the Early Renaissance,"AB, XXVI
(1944), 95-106.
4. Stella Mary Newton (Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince [Wood-
bridge, 1980], 92-94), suggests that Cuman fashions inspired an orien-
talizing trend in late fourteenth-centuryItalian art, and she stresses the
importance of Greek fashions on Italian pictures of the Adoration of
the Magi (Renaissance Theatre Costume and the Sense of the Historic
Past [New York, 1975], 64-76). Charles Sterling (La peinture midie-
vale a Paris, 1300-1500 [Paris, 1987], I, 291) notes that several French
miniaturists,including the Cite des Dames Master,the Masterof Flavius
Josephus, and the Limbourg brothers,may have derived their oriental-
izing costume from Arab and Turkish miniatures; he does not, how-
ever, discuss particularitems of costume nor their potential sources. For
use of the term "Saracen"in medieval French literature,see Brownlee,
"Crusadeas Construct,"13 n. 4.
5. On the sources and methods employed by historiansof medieval dress,
see E Piponnierand P Mane, Dress in the MiddleAges, trans.C. Beamish
(New Haven, 1997), 3-9; A. H. van Buren,"Le sens de l'histoiredans les
manuscrits du XVe sibcle," in Pratiques de la culture ecrite en France
au XVe siecle, ed. M. Pruato and N. Pons (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1995),
515-528.
6. On the eclectic natureof Islamic dress, see Y. K. Stillman,Arab Dress: A
ShortHistory From the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times(Leiden, 2000),
16 and passim.
7. J. Delaville Le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIVesiecle: Expeditions
du marechal Boucicaut, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886), I, 221-321; A. S. Atiya,
The Crusade of Nicopolis (London, 1934); D. Lalande,Jean II le Mein-
gre, dit Boucicaut, 1366-1421 (Geneva, 1988), 57-74; J. Paviot and
M. Chauney-Bouillot, eds., Nicopolis, 1396-1996 = Annales de Bour-
gogne, LXVIII/3 (1996 [1997]). For lists of fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century primary sources that describe the Battle of Nicopolis, see
D. Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, 198-201; Atiya, The Crusade of Nico-
polis, 212-219. The most complete contemporaryaccount is found in
the anonymous biography of John le Meingre II, better known as
Boucicaut, marshal of the French troops at Nicopolis, written in 1409.
See Lalande, ed., Le livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre,
dit Bouciquaut,mareschal de France et gouverneurde Jennes (Geneva,
1985). Further French documents include Chronique du religieux de
Saint-Denys contenant le regne de Charles VI de 1380 a' 1422, ed. and
trans.L. Bellaguet, 6 vols. (Paris, 1839-1852; rpt. Paris, 1994), II, 492-
515; John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain and Adjoin-
ing Countries, trans. T. Johnes, 2 vols. (London, 1862), II, 601-608,
622-633, 644-653; and a poem writtenin 1396 by Phillipe de M6zibres,
Epistre lamentableet consolatoire sur le fait de desconfiturelacrimable
du noble et vaillant roy de honguerie. The most engaging account is
the personal memoir of a German soldier, spared from execution by
Bayezid'sson because of his young age. See TheBondage and Travelsof
Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa,
1396-1427, trans. J. B. Telfer (London, 1879; rpt. New York, 1963).
8. Laland, Jean II le Meingre, 66; Atyia, The Crusade ofNicopolis, 20,
49, 56, 85. Cumans were a part of King Sigismund's army, but no
longer made up a separate auxiliary force.
9. Ibid., 97.
10. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Byzantine emper-
ors made extreme efforts to enlist western military aid in fighting the
Turks. They personally traveled to Europe with promises of a church
reconciliation. In 1366 Manuel's father, John V, visited Budapest and
Rome; between 1438 and 1440, Manuel's son, John VIII resided in Italy
(1338-1340). None of these efforts met with success. See J. W. Barker,
Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425): A Study in Late Byzantine States-
manship (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), 123-199. For the Council of Rec-
onciliation of Ferrara-Florence, see J. S. J. Gill, The Council ofFlorence
(Cambridge,1959); idem, Personalitiesof the Council of Florence (New
York, 1964).
11. Paris, Bibliothbquenationalede France,MS fr. 12559. The other known
copy of the Chevalier errant, Turin,Biblioteca Nazionale, MS L. v. 6,
was damaged in the fire of 1904: twenty-four of its original twenty-
five miniatures survive in poor condition. For a description of all the
miniaturesin the two manuscripts,see M. J. Ward,"A Critical Edition
of Thomas III of Saluzzo's 'Le Livre du Chevalier Errant'"(Disserta-
tion, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1984).
12. It was during his 1403/5 trip that Saluzzo secured a marriagecontract
with Margueritede Roucy, whose arms are also included in the manu-
script. Writing in 1430, della Chiesa reportsthat Saluzzo broughthome
from this trip a decoratedcopy of his own work. The book della Chiesa
describes has elementsnot presentin the Turincopy, which also includes
the arms of Philip the Bold, who died in 1404 (fol. 161v). See Ward,
"A Critical Edition," xiii-xxxvi.
13. M. Meiss, The Limbourg Brothers and Their Contemporaries(New
York, 1974), I, 14-16, 157, 159, 377, 381; II, Figs. 18, 47-49, 56.
14. The miniatureof the Princes of the West in the camp of Dame Fortune
appears on fol. 161v, opposite the Princes of the East on fol. 162. The
tents in both are decorated with coats-of-arms: those in the former
belong to some of the most importanthouses of Europe, those on the
latter cannot be identified, except for one that refers to the kingdom of
Jerusalem.See Ward,"A CriticalEdition,"cviii-cix, 939-940, 943-944;
Meiss, The LimbourgBrothers, 381.
15. Pseudo-Kodinos (Traite'des offices, ed. and trans. J. Verpeaux [Paris,
1966], 132, 141, 145, 147-140, 151, 153-166, 180, 195, 207-208, 227)
indicates that the hat was worn by all members of court, including the
emperor, but does not describe it. See I. Spatharakis, The Portrait in
Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts (Leiden, 1976), 53, 263. Similar
hats are found in the following manuscripts:Chronicle of Joannes Scy-
litzes, mid-twelfthcentury (Madrid,Biblioteca nacional, MS Vitr. 26-2,
fol. 10v; A. Grabar,L'illustrationdu manuscrit de Skylitzes de la Bib-
liothbque nationale de Madrid [Venice, 1979], P1. 1 and Fig. 1); Book
of Job, ca. 1362 (Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS gr. 135,
fol. 39; A. Grabar,Byzance et la France mddievale[Paris, 1958], P1.26);
Chronicle of Manasse, ca. 1345 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.
Slav., II, fols. 24, 117, 183v; I. Dujiev, TheMiniatures of the Chronicle
of Manasse [Sofia, 1963]); and Pseudo-Callisthenes,AlexanderRomance
(Venice, Hellenic Institute,cod. gr. 5, fol. 143, reproducedin N. S. Tra-
houlias, ed., The Greek Alexander Roman [Athens, 1997]). I want to
thankMariaParani,who sharedinformationabout Byzantine dress from
her dissertation while she was writing it. See her "Reconstructingthe
Reality of Images: Byzantine Material Culture and Religious Iconog-
raphy,I Ith -15th Centuries"(Dissertation,ExeterCollege, Universityof
Oxford, 1999).
16. A similarhat, withoutprojectingbrim, was worn in Trebizond,the Chris-
tian kingdom lying between Byzantium and the Mongol Empire. In his
early fourteenth-centurytravel account, Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, the
Spanish ambassador to the Mongol court of Timur, describes the hats
worn by the emperor of Trebizond, Manuel Comnenus III, and his son
as "tall hats surmounted with golden cords, on the top of which were
cranes' feathers; and the hats were bound with the skins of martens."
See Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court
ofTimour, at Samarcand, A.D. 1403-6, trans. C. R. Markham (London,
1859; rpt. New York, 1963), 61. Clavijo was also received at the court
of Manuel II in Constantinople, shortly after the emperor returned from
Paris. Surviving examples of Mongol hats of a similar design indicate
that the vertical sections were created by quilting the fabric. See H. H.
Hansen, Mongol Costumes (London, 1993), 167-208.
17. For the funeral portrait of Manuel Laskares Chatzikes painted in the
church of Pantanassa in Mistra shortly after his death in 1445, see
177
 R. Etzeoglou, "Quelques remarques sur les portraits figures dans les
eglises de Mistra,"JOB, XXII (1982), 513-521.
18. Note that on the reverse of this medal, there is an equestrianportraitof
the emperorwearing the older style skiadion without the bisected brim.
See L. Puppi, ed., Pisanello (Milan, 1996), 144-146; and M. Vickers,
"Some PreparatoryDrawings for Pisanello's Medallion of John Palaeo-
logus," AB, LX (1978), 417-425. For the Council of Ferrara-Florence,
see note 10.
19. Stillman,ArabDress, 63; Parani,"Reconstructingthe Realityof Images,"
66-68.
20. See, for long sleeves in Byzantine dress, ibid., 62-68; in Pisanello's
drawings,Vickers,"Some PreparatoryDrawings,"Fig. 5; in Islamicdress,
Stillman, Arab Dress, 65-66; and L. A. Mayer, Mamluk Costume
(Geneva, 1952), 22.
21. Chronique du religieux, XXI.1, ed. Bellaguet, II, 754-755; Barker,
Manuel II, 397.
22. Mayer, MamlukCostume, 13, 67. Sumptuarylaws regulated the length
of fabric that could be wound into a turbanand the length of the tur-
ban's trailing end-pieces based on social class and religious affiliation.
23. Ibid., 15-16; D. Nicolle, Medieval WarfareSource Book, II: Christian
Europe and its Neighbors (London, 1996), 20, 25, 33, 141, 161. The
baldric was rarely used in the West.
24. Mayer, Mamluk Costume, 50.
25. See a fourteenth-centuryEgyptiancopy of the Maqdmat(Vienna, Oster-
reichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. A. E 9, fol. 30v), reproduced in
Stillman, Arab Dress, Fig. 7.
26. For the baldric, see D. Nicolle, Armies of the Ottoman Turk(London,
1983), 35; for Byzantine short tunics, see Parani, "Reconstructingthe
Reality of Images," 62.
27. Hansen, Mongol Costumes, 32-88; Stillman, Arab Dress, 47; Parani,
"Reconstructingthe Reality of Images,"59, 65-68. Cursorydescriptions
of the caftans worn in CentralAsia are providedin two mid-fourteenth-
century travel accounts. Both authors describe them as side-wrapped
garments. John of Plano Carpini (History of the Mongols, trans. in
C. Dawson, Mission to Asia [London, 1955; rpt. Toronto, 1980], 7)
writes that Tartartunics of "buckram,velvet or brocade . . . open from
top to bottom and folded over the breast; they are fastened on the left
with one tie, on the right with three, on the left side also they are open
as far as the waist." William of Rubruck (The Journey of William of
Rubruk,in ibid., 102), notes that "the Turkstie their tunics on the left,
but the Tartarson the right."
28. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS turc. 309. See Inventaire
et description des miniatures des manuscrits orientaux conserves a la
Bibliotheque nationale, ed. E. Blochet (Paris, 1898).
29. Stillman, Arab Dress, 54. Clavijo (Narrative of the Embassy, 132, 152)
describes jewels on the hats of Timur and his grandson.
30. Carpini (ed. Dawson, Mission to Asia, 7) describes the Mongol braid.
See D. Nicolle, The Age of Tamerlane: Warfare in the Middle East,
c. 1350-1500 (London, 1990), 15; A. Pil6czi-Horvith, "Le costume Co-
man au moyen age," Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hun-
garicae, XXXII (1980), 408. Islamic Arabs preferred to shave their
heads. The braid was already used in mid- to late fourteenth-century
western art to represent "Saracens" and "Tartars." See, for example,
"Christ in the Temple" in the Trbs Belles Heures de Notre Dame, p. 62
(see n. 54), as well as the fresco of the Pentecost in the Spanish Chapel
at Santa Maria Novella (R. Offner and K. Steinweg, Andrea Bonaiuti. A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sect. IV, vol. VI
[New York, 1979], 58).
31. P A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1966-75), III,
535-536. For Pisanello, see n. 18.
178
32. Stillman,Arab Dress, 40-41, and chap. 6, "The OpulentWorldof Tiraz
and Precious Textiles," 120-133.
33. H. R. Robinson, Oriental Armour (New York, 1967), 68; M. Gorelik,
"OrientalArmourof the Near and Middle East from the Eighth to the
Fifteenth Centuries as shown in Works of Art," in Islamic Arms and
Armour,ed. R. Elgood (London, 1979), 30-63; Nicolle, Medieval War-
fare, 73, 161; idem,Hungaryand the Fall of EasternEurope, 1000-1568
(London, 1988), 34; and I. Heath,ByzantineArmies (London, 1995), 44.
34. For the Byzantine kite-shaped shield, see ibid., 23; Nicolle, Medieval
Warfare,76, 96, 112, 193, 250. For the roundshields used by armies of
the Asiatic Steppes, see Robinson, OrientalArmour,68; Gorelik,Orien-
tal Armour, 35-40, 53-63.
35. D. Nicolle, Saracen Faris, 1050-1250 (London, 1994), 57; Stillman,
Arab Dress, 67.
36. Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, 35-41.
37. The Demotte Shahnama is named after the notorious art dealer, De-
motte, who dismemberedthe manuscriptin the early twentieth century
for sale. Reproductionsof the dispersedfolios are gatheredin O. Grabar
and S. Blair, Epic Images and ContemporaryHistory: The Illustrations
of the Great Mongol Shahnama (Chicago, 1980). For hat count, ibid.,
41. Undoubtedlythe clothing is indicativeof fourteenth-centuryfashion;
however, there is currentlynot enough comparableevidence available
to make many accuratedistinctions between Mongol, Turkish,and Per-
sian ethnic features in the manuscript.Studies of OttomanTurkishcos-
tume books, which are dated between the late fifteenth and nineteenth
centuries,indicatethat details of costume, headgear,and militaryequip-
ment identify the wearer'soccupation and rank in a strict professional
and social hierarchy.Perhapssimilar observationswill someday be able
to be made about Persian Ilkhanid and Timurid costume. See M. Ser-
toglu, "Introduction,"in OttomanCostumeBook: A Facsimile Edition of
Osmanli Kiyafetleri,ed. E Mehmed (Istanbul, 1986), 13-14.
38. Budapest,National Szechenyi Library,cod. lat. 404. This richly illumi-
nated text records the history of Hungary from the tenth to the four-
teenth century. For a facsimile, see D. Dercsenyi, ed., The Hungarian
IlluminatedChronicle (New York, 1970). For dating of the manuscript,
see S. Magyarorszaigon,Image and Likeness: Art and Reality in Hun-
gary in the 14th-15th Centuries(Budapest,1995), English summary,249.
On Cumandress, see Pail6czi-Horvaith, "Le costume Coman,"403-427,
with a bibliographyof additional Hungariansources; and A. Kovics,
"CourtFashion and Representation:The HungarianIlluminatedChron-
icle Revisited" (Dissertation, Central European University, Budapest,
2000). I would like to thank Dr. Kovics for allowing me to read the
dissertationin progress,as well as for her guidance on numerouspoints.
There were significant ties between Hungaryand France, beginning in
1342 when Robertof Anjou, Frenchlord of the Kingdomof Naples, was
also made king of Hungary.Between 1374 and 1378, a royal wedding
was negotiated between the son of King Louis the Great of Hungary
(Angevin line) and the daughter of Louis d'Orleans, brother to King
Charles V of France. The untimely death of Louis' daughterended the
arrangement.
39. Cuman headgear appears occasionally in late fourteenth-century French
miniatures and then more frequently in fifteenth-century works. Cumans
are also represented in Italian art.
40. Pil6czi-Horvith, "Le costume Coman," 409.
41. A. Pil6czi Horvith, Petchenegs, Cumans, andlasians (Budapest, 1989);
idem, "Le costume Coman," 407-409.
42. Robinson, Oriental Armour, 68; Gorelik, Oriental Armour of the Near
and Middle East, 35-40, 53-63.
43. Dercs6nyi, Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, 48, 83 (fols. 72, 73v).
44. Livre de la mutacion, Bibliothbque nationale de France, MS fr. 603,
fol. 143v; Trbs Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Chantilly, Mus~e
Cond6, MS 65, fol. 37v.
45. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS fr. 166. See Meiss, The
Limbourg Brothers, 81-105, Figs. 278-325. See also J. Lowden, The
Making of the Bibles Moralisdes, 2 vols. (University Park, PA, 2000),
252-284.
46. Nicolle, Saracen Faris, 53, P1. E
47. The Limbourg brothers were not the first to represent this turbantype
in the West. It had appeared in late fourteenth-centuryFrench manu-
scripts, notably, the Tres Belles Heures de Notre Dame (p. 62), also
owned by the Duke of Berry, perhaps suggesting that the artists used
western models for some of their eastern dress. See below, n. 54.
48. Gorelik, OrientalArmour,40, Pls. 42, 43, Figs. 105, 110, 128, 138-140;
D. Nicolle, "Armsand Armorin the Album Paintings,"in Between China
and Iran: Painting from Four Istanbul Albums, ed. E. J. Grube and
E. Sims (New York, 1980), 145-149; Nicolle, Tamerlane,8.
49. The portraitof Argyropoulos was painted by Francesco di Antonio del
Chierico in a copy of Aristotle's De interpretatione, Florence, Biblio-
teca Laurenziana,cod. P1.71.18, fol. 1. See E Ames-Lewis, TheLibrary
and Manuscripts of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici (New York, 1984),
No. 70; and J. Kubiski, "'Uomini Illustri': The Revival of the Author
Portraitin Renaissance Florence"(Dissertation,University of Washing-
ton, Seattle, 1993), 189-199, 122-206.
50. New York, MetropolitanMuseum of Art, The Cloisters, MS 54.1.1,
fol. 131v. The Belles Heures was completed about 1408, the date at
which all three Limbourg brothersare first recorded as being in Berry's
service, but it was probably begun about 1405. See Meiss, The Lim-
bourg Brothers, 102-142; and M. Meiss and E. Beatson, The Belles
Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York, 1974). The Tres Riches
Heures was begun shortly after the completion of the Belles Heures,
but it was left unfinished due to the artists' deaths, most likely during
the plague of 1415. The Duke of Berry died in 1416. See Meiss, The
Limbourg Brothers, 143-224; M. Meiss, J. Longnon, and R. Cazelles,
The TresRiches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York, 1969); and,
for a complete facsimile, R. Cazelles, Les TrksRiches Heures of Jean
du Duc de Berry, with English trans. of commentary by T. S. Fauce
(Lucerne, 1984).
51. See for the sash, Stillman, Arab Dress, 64, 99, 164; for the shield,
Heath, Byzantine Armies, 23.
52. On dagging, see M. Scott, Late Gothic Europe, 1400-1500, The His-
tory of Dress Series (London, 1980), 70, 83, 104, 105.
53. This follows iconographic tradition. See R. Mellinkoff, "Christianand
Jewish Mitres: A Paradox,"in Florilegium in honorem Carl Norden-
falk octogenarii contextum (Stockholm, 1987), 145-158.
54. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 3093 (sur-
viving fragment with Hours of Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of
the Holy Spirit, and Office of the Dead). While it is generally agreed
that most of the miniatures in the TrksBelles Heures de Notre Dame
were executed by the artist who painted the Parement de Narbonne-a
grisaille painting on silk representing Passion scenes made for Charles V
ca. 1370-the dating of the manuscript is controversial. Millard Meiss
believes it was begun about 1382. Based on her analysis of French cos-
tume, Anne van Buren dates the manuscript 1390/92. My observations
on eastern costume also suggest that these miniatures were painted in
the last twenty years of the fourteenth century. Others, including Paul
Durrieu, Charles Sterling, and Eberhard Kinig, assign the beginning or
end date of a first painting campaign to 1404, because the last recorded
death date in the calendar, that of the Duke of Berry's brother, the Duke
of Burgundy, falls in that year. This assumes the calendar was integral
to the first painting campaign and posits for the Parement Master a very
long (thirty-year) painting career. See M. Meiss, The Late Fourteenth
Century and the Patronage of the Duke (London, 1967), 107-116;
A. H. van Buren, J. Marrow, and S. Pettenati, Heures de Turin-Milan:
Inv. No 47, Museo Civico d'Arte, Torino(Lucern, 1996), commentary,
265-268; C. Sterling,La peinturemdie'vale a'Paris, 1300-1500, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1987-90), 218-244; E. Kitnig, Les TresBelles Heures de Notre-
Dame du Duc Jean de Berry (Paris, 1992), commentary, 156-168,
216-217. Cf. A. Chatelet'scritique of Eberhard'sdating in BMon, CLI
(1993), 539-540.
Both books of hours use many of the signs of othernessnoted by Mel-
55.
linkoff (Outcasts,passim) to denigratethe other, including vulgar ges-
tures,indecentexposureof the body,physical distortionsanddeformities,
and aspects of some of the more extravagantfeaturesof Frenchfashion
such as particolored,striped, checked, or excessively dagged garments.
Mellinkoff has noted (ibid., 73) that medieval signs of alterity could be
used both benignly and malevolently depending on the context. When
the artists choose to denigrate their characters,they multiply not only
sartorial signs of alterity but also gestural and morphological ones.
56. Bibliothbque nationale de France, MS fr. 2810. John the Fearless had
commissioned two copies of this Merveilles, one for himself and one
for his uncle; only Berry'ssurvives. See J. Guiffrey,Inventairesde Jean
Duc de Berry (Paris, 1984), I, 262, No. 982, and 268, No. 1000; Meiss,
The Boucicaut Master, 43; V. Porter, "The West Looks at the East in
the Middle Ages: The Livre des Merveilles du Monde" (Dissertation,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1977); and M.-H. Tesnibre,
E Avril, and M.-T. Gousset, Le livre des merveilles: extrait du Livre
des merveilles du monde, Ms. fr. 2810 (Tournai, 1999). Berry's library
alreadycontained an unillustratedcopy of Marco Polo's account and an
illustratedmanuscriptof this and other travel narratives.Porter ("The
West Looks at the East,"10) suggests that in France, volumes of travel
literature were popular gifts, particularly at New Year celebrations;
perhaps this is why the most richly illuminated examples were pro-
duced in French courtly circles.
57. Ibid., 27. This miniaturist received his appellation from the book of
hours he created for the French crusader marshal, Jean le Meingre or
Boucicaut, about 1409. While the Boucicaut Hours contains many of
the elements of easterncostume discussed above, the artist'sorientalism
is more conspicuous in the Merveilles du monde. For the Boucicaut
Hours, see P Durrieu, Le Maitre des Heures du marechal Boucicaut
(Paris, 1906); M. Meiss, TheBoucicautMaster (New York, 1968), 7-22,
131-133, Figs. 1-44.
58. Hansen, Mongol Costume, 167, 183-186.
59. Porter,"The West Looks at the East," 104-108. The artistsof the Mer-
veilles du monde made use of such extra-textualpropagandaelsewhere
in the manuscript,including equally incorrectreferencesto Muslim can-
nibalism (ibid., 104). See also J. H. Moran Cruz, "PopularAttitudes
towardIslamin MedievalEurope,"in WesternViewsof Islam in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other, ed. D. R. Blanks and
M. Frassetto(New York, 1999), 55-81.
60. Timur was able to defeat the Ottoman Turkish leader who outwitted
the French, and Bayezid I died a prisonerof Timur in 1402. See Atiya,
The Crusade of Nicopolis, 120.
61. There are no documents related to the Citd des Dames Master. Manu-
scripts are attributed to his workshop on the basis of style alone. Dat-
ing is based on circumstantial information regarding the patrons and at
times date when an author completed a given text. It is believed the
workshop was operating in Paris as early as 1400. Meiss, The Limbourg
Brothers, 377-382.
62. Ibid., 343.
63. My appreciation to Anne van Buren for this information. See R.
Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London, 1970),
268.
64. Ibid., 270. Le Voyage d'Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquibre, ed.
C. Schaefer (Paris, 1892), 61-62, 261; M. W. Labarge, Medieval Trav-
ellers (New York, 1983), 184-193.
179
65. There is currentlya prodigious volume of literatureaddressingnotions 66. Said, Orientalism,passim.
of alterity in the Middle Ages. Pertinentto this study are: P. Freedman
67. J. J. Cohen, "Hybrids,Monsters, Borderlands:The Bodies of Geraldof
and G. Spiegel, "MedievalismsOld and New: The Rediscoveryof Alter-
Wales," in The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York, 2000), 85-104;
ity in North American Medieval Studies," The American Historical and idem, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Cohen (Minneapolis,
Review CIII (1998), 667-704; E R. P. Akehurst and S. C. Van D' El-
1996).
den, eds., The Stranger in Medieval Society (Minneapolis, 1997); and
M. Goodich, ed., Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of 68. Cohen, Monster Theory, 132.
Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1998).

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