A
yellow satin jacket or woman's suit with white fur edges 'Een
geele zatyne mantel met witte bonte kanten', in the Great Hall,
room I. This jacket was worn above a layer of linen clothes (as linen
could be washed and fur couldn't), The furry edge is probably made of
white squirrel or cat skin.
Stays 'lijfjes' which were tightly tied with laces, were worn under the jacket. They were often red in colour, with some lace work on the front. The term used in Amsterdam was "rijglijven" and in Delft "keurslijven" (Marieke de Winkel, 1998, p. 329).
See the discussion of the term Turkish Mantle.
To
the left a yellow woman's suit with black ribbon. We find this one on
five paintings, of which one is The Music lesson (Buckingham
Palace). The suit was usually worn over a skirt. It was pulled up and
attached to both sides and was therefore called 'schort'.
(Marieke de Winkel, 1998, p. 329-330)
The b/w illustration below shows a jacket with lace holes, an garment for a 2 year old girl which was to be worn over a skirt. This dress was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth century for adult women in the southern Dutch province of Noordbrabant. Coll. Het Markiezenhof, Bergen op Zoom.
Marieke de Winkel* noted that this garment was called 'jak' in Amsterdam and 'manteltje' in Delft, Dordrecht and Rotterdam. Both terms were translated as"jacket" in a 1691 dictionary. The term "jak" refers to a woman's garment ; it was also used as a garment for working women and maids. It was popular for maids to dress fashionably, which resulted in criticism in society.
Note : This object was part of the Vermeer-inventory as listed by the clerk working for Delft notary public J. van Veen. He made this list on February 29, 1676, in the Thins/Vermeer home located on Oude Langendijk on the corner of Molenpoort. The painter Johannes Vermeer had died there at the end of December 1675. His widow Catherina and their eleven children still lived there with her mother Maria Thins.
The transcription of the 1676 inventory, now in the Delft archives, is based upon its first full publication by A.J.J.M. van Peer, "Drie collecties..." in Oud Holland 1957, pp. 98-103. My additions and explanations are added within square brackets [__]. Dutch terms have been checked against the world's largest language dictionary, the Dictionary of the Dutch Language (Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal , or WNT), which was begun by De Vries en Te Winkel in 1882. In 2001 many textile terms have been kindly explained by art historian Marieke de Winkel.
B/w
illustration from Kinderen van alle tijden, exh. cat .
Noordbrabants Museum, published by Waanders Zwolle/ Noordbrabants
Museum, Den Bosch 1997, ill. 121.
*Marieke de Winkel, 'The Interpretation of Dress in Vermeer's Paintings' in Vermeer Studies, edited by Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1998,327-339.
This page forms part of a large encyclopedic site on Vermeer and Delft. Research by Drs. Kees Kaldenbach (email). A full presentation is on view at johannesvermeer.info.
Launched December, 2002; Last update March 2, 2017.
Back to the Welcome page: click Welcome.