Medats has received a request for help from Paul Chandler in Australia. Can anyone help with this question? Relies to newsletter@medats.org.uk will be forwarded.
It’s well known that the Carmelite Friars exchanged their controversial striped cloak in 1287 for a more demure and “appropriate” white one. Pastoureau made (perhaps too) much of this in The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes. Recent restoration of an icon in Cyprus reveals that it originally contained the only surviving contemporary representation of this pre-1287 striped cloak (later overpainted to white, now removed to show the original). A black and white picture is Figure 2 on p. 57 in this article by Ioannis A. Eliades, “Enthroned Virgin Mary and Child with Carmelite monks” at https://www.academia.edu/37443095
However, these pre-1287 Carmelites are not wearing the expected Dominican-style cloak open at the front, which was the later form, but what seems to be a closed garment with sleeves. The wearer’s arms, insofar as they can be seen, are not emerging from the end of the sleeves, but perhaps from a slit in them, or perhaps the garment is not closed at the front after all. It seems to me something like a tabard or surcoat.
Does anyone more expert have a comment? Does this dress correspond to some known form? Or perhaps there is a theory on why a sleeved garment might have been changed to an open cloak? Or perhaps an opinion that the artist may have got it wrong?
It’s well known that the Carmelite Friars exchanged their controversial striped cloak in 1287 for a more demure and “appropriate” white one. Pastoureau made (perhaps too) much of this in The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes. Recent restoration of an icon in Cyprus reveals that it originally contained the only surviving contemporary representation of this pre-1287 striped cloak (later overpainted to white, now removed to show the original). A black and white picture is Figure 2 on p. 57 in this article by Ioannis A. Eliades, “Enthroned Virgin Mary and Child with Carmelite monks” at https://www.academia.edu/37443095
However, these pre-1287 Carmelites are not wearing the expected Dominican-style cloak open at the front, which was the later form, but what seems to be a closed garment with sleeves. The wearer’s arms, insofar as they can be seen, are not emerging from the end of the sleeves, but perhaps from a slit in them, or perhaps the garment is not closed at the front after all. It seems to me something like a tabard or surcoat.
Does anyone more expert have a comment? Does this dress correspond to some known form? Or perhaps there is a theory on why a sleeved garment might have been changed to an open cloak? Or perhaps an opinion that the artist may have got it wrong?
