Shirt
The male shirt was also called a camacia (or camasia/camisa). It was typically just long enough to cover the mutande/underwear with slits up the sides. either half way or all the way to the top of the hip bone.
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From Carpaccio's 1496 The Healing of the Madman. Its quite possible that one is a women's camacia and the other is a man's. The shorter of the two appears to have the hip slit typical of the man's camacia. As they both appear to have the box pleat, I am going to use the same pattern for the body of the men's camacia, as I did for the women's camacia. |
While reading over Elizabeth Jones' Farsetto Construction of the Italian Renaissance (1425-1470) I ran across her discussion on the male camacia. She mentions that there were two types of shirts being used. One was the split neckline with raised collar type and the other she describes as having a triangular gore inserted into the neck slit.
After looking at several pictures, and playing around with fabric, I have decided that this is not a gore. I believe this is a long slit in the top of the body that is then rolled to make a large round neckline. I was able to recreate this fold by gathering up the back of a 50" wide shirt with a 40" slit for a neckline and letting the front of the neckline fall naturally onto my chest. I need to play around with spare fabric to get the neckline to fall this way without me holding the gathered back.
| Bellini c. 1460 Presentation at the Temple. |
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Ghirlandaio c. 1482 |
| Cossa c. 1476 Allegory of April |  |
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Bellini c. 1500 The Drunkeness of Noah |
| Antonio Pollaiolo 1479 |
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March 30, 2003 - Dharma trading got in a new linen that I wanted to try so I bought 3 yards to make the man's camacia. Its 4.5 ounces and is proving harder to wash out all of the sizing, but it should be interesting.
April 11, 2003 - I added new pictures and organized the page a little better. I decided that the underwear needed its own page, as that may turn out to be quite an interesting project. Trying to figure out exactly how things were put together is an exciting AND frustrating fabric puzzle. Good thing I love puzzles.
I cut the fabric on Tuesday and pinned on Wednesday. Since my machine still doesn't work right, I decided that on Thursday I would work on this page, but I stopped off at Home Depot, and since no one would help me, I ended up getting back way too late to do anything but take a quick shower and gobble up some food. So now I am at Mother's, where a working machine sits in the next room over. But I got such a buzz in my head over reading about the triangular gore, that I decided more research was needed before sewing.
I had originally planned on gathering the 50" wide fabric into a standing collar, so I had cut a slit at the fold of the fabric that spanned everything but 4" on either side. After reading about the neck gore, I was upset at myself for cutting it like that, but after trying it on and having the triangular fold appear, I'm excited about the possibilities. Should prove very interesting. So this weekend I shall sew up the sides and arms, but I shall wait on the neckline until I have done some mockups on spare fabric.
November 9, 2003 - Finally was able to get back to sewing. The neckline works perfectly.
Mutande - Underwear
1488 Italian
Dress
Camicia -
Gamurra -
Maniche -
Fazzoletto -
Giornea -
Hair and Make-up -
Cuffia -
Stockings -
Scarpette -
Jewelry
Male
Shirt -
Underwear - Farsetto - Maniche - Calze - Giornea - Scarpette - Hat - Accessories
