The Art of Power Dressing in the 16th Century | Christie's

This portrait is of John Friedrich and it's painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the 1530s. John Friedrich is the elector of Saxony. He's the fourth and final elector in the Ernestine line. In the 16th century, men's fashion was actually as important, if not more so, than women's fashion. It was a way of showing what rank and position in society you are. I would say the top panel dressing points in this portrait are first of all that fabulous bonnet which is just laden with jewels and one thing that we might think now is that of course you know the jewels would be the most expensive. In fact, textiles themselves were tremendously costly. Around his neck he has these heavy gold chains and at the bottom he has a dolphin or at least sort of what 16th century people thought dolphins looked like. We're not quite sure if it's a pomander or if it's perhaps a toothpick but pomanders were used and they would be infused with spices and sweet smelling things and they would sort of sit on your front so that they would bounce as you wore, giving off a nice scent when people probably didn't smell that good. The way that Cranach has set up this portrait, it's cropped quite close in so his sleeves are very imposing and that's obviously a deliberate conceit but in reality he would have looked like that. The fashion at the time in the 1530s was to have very broad shoulders, very broad barrel chest so in sort of showing that physical imposing presence he's making a point about how powerful he is. This is a portrait of Alessandro Farnese. He is 16 years old just before he becomes Duke of Parma and he's painted by I might just take you through his power style points from head to toe. So just below his chin you have that ruffled collar and that's just to give you a nice clean crisp edge next to your face. It friends your face nicely. The armour itself is really interesting because he's dressed in the armour of Spain and that's because he was the nephew of the Spanish king. In the first half of the 16th century the silhouette that was ideal for gentlemen at this time really reflected what people were wearing on the battlefield and this very sort of macho sense of power that you're trying to display through what you're wearing and the advantage of being shown in your armour is that you're not wearing sort of up-to-date fashion that's likely to go out of fashion very soon. This means that you can hang your portrait in your home for generations to come and it's never going to look out of time. I suppose it's quite funny to the modern eye to think of someone like Alessandro here being macho when he essentially has the legs of a ballerina but that was in fact the height of fashion and it was actually really really masculine. During this period the idea was to show that you were always on your feet, you would be riding, you would be fencing, you'd be dancing at court and so it was important to show that you had really good legs. When I look at this picture the thing that immediately jumps out at me and that I can't not mention is his codpiece. That to the modern eye looks so jarring but in fact it was completely normal in in the 16th century for men, particularly noblemen, to walk around with a sword at their hip, a dagger. You're leaving yourself quite vulnerable whereas if you have a nice little padded cushion then really you're fine, you're not going to run into any embarrassing or quite frankly very painful difficulties. But it's also quite clearly a sign of fertility and masculinity and even at the age of 16 Alessandro looked very much a symbol of manliness and of adulthood.