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MONNAS LisaMerchants, princes and painters : silk fabrics in Italian and Nothern paintings, 1300-1550New Haven : Yale university press, 2008, 1 vol. (XI-408 p.)ISBN 978-0-300-11117-0N 2540Résumé :Covering a period that witnessed the flowering of the Renaissance and the major expansion of the Italian silk industry, this volume examines the silks depicted in paintings from Italy, England and the Netherlands over the course of 250 years. Through a close study of the workshop practice and techniques of the artists who represented these fabrics, Lisa Monnas offers a masterly evaluation of the paintings as source material for classifying surviving textiles. Dealing with an exceptionally long period, she considers a great many examples in greater depth than has ever been attempted, and gives particular attention to the identification of historic textile types and their weave structure.Monnas examine a vast range of subjects, including silk as a marker of social status, the material possessions of artists and their ownership of textiles as props, the involvement of painters in silk design, and the repetition and transfer of patterns. She considers the evidence of paintings not only for the veracity with which the silks are depicted but also for its value as a period of two and a half centuries, tastes and patterns of consumption altered, and these changes, which can be traced through documentary sources, are also reflected in the paintings. The conclusion of this impressive analysis brings the discussion full circle by looking at the reincarnation, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of silk designs taken from late-medieval and renaissance paintings, reproduced as wallpapers or woven as new fabrics (some of which are still in production today).This important and desirable book - beautifully illustrated with several unfamiliar paintings and with surviving fabrics, some of which have never been reproduced before - not only re-evaluates the dating and identification of individual textiles, but also brings fresh insights into the material values of the artists and their clients. Its aithoritative and original approach to both fabrics and paintings makes it of inestimable value to historians of textiles, art and material culture alike.Table des matières :Introduction1. Who wore silk ? The price of silk fabrics, artists' clothing and studio props2. Painters and the design of woven silks3. Cloth of gold in fourteenth-century Sienese and Florentine paintings4. Painting velvet in Italy and the Netherlands during the first half of the fifteenth century5. The transmission of textile designs in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlands paintings6. Decorative silks in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italian paintings7. Textiles in portraits Venice, Florence and England, 1480-15508. Convetion or reality ? Reading textiles in paintings9. A life of their own : the longevity and changing use of silk fabricsEpilogue : Nineteenth-century english textiles and wallpapers designed after fabrics shown in medieval and renaissance paintingsAppendicesI. Looms, textile types and historic terminology (includes glossaries of weaving, dress and painting terms, measurements and money)II. Letter of William Makefyrr, 1506III. Vestments woven with Christ and St Thomas in Rome and FlorenceIV. Copes with named benefactors with dates attached, extracted from the ninety-one copes in the inventory of St Paul's Cathedral, London, 1295V. The terms paonazzo and morelloVI. Letter concerning an order of clothing for the contessa de Melzo, 1475VII. Carpets at the early Tudor courtVIII. Abridged genealogy of the Medici familyTables1. Selvedge colours on italian silk fabrics, 1376-14662. Loom widths of italian silks, thirteenth-sixteenth centuries3. Weaving prices specified by the Florentine silk guild, 14294. Prices of silk and wool from a wardrobe account of Edward IV, 14805. Prices of silk purchased for the great wardrobe of Henry VIII, 1533-15346. Textiles and clothing given to Dürer, purchased by Him or given Him, on his journey to the Netherlands, 1520-15217. Neri di Bicci's Ricordance : Purchases of cloth, december 1453-january 14618. Extracts from the coronation account of Edward VI, 1547Axe de recherches : Axe transversal : Cultures visuelles