1520s- Mary of Hungary
The gown has been dated to the 1520s based on the fabric weave, the style, and probable connection to Mary of Hungary and Louis II. This connection is not yet substantiated by physical, written, or visual evidence outside the aforementioned style and the potential for the garments to have been presented as gifts to the Mariazell shrine by the royal couple while on a pilgrimage around the time of their wedding.
Rough dimensions of the gown are given by J. Höllrigl and V. Ember Mária as follows:
Waist 73 cm
Skirt front is 107 cm
Skirt back 124 cm
Skirt hem 780 cm
Sleeve (inc. cuff) 71 cm
Neckline border 7cm
Cuff 19cm
Bodice length front 30cm (possibly to the join in the guarding rather than the shoulder?)
Bodice back length 36cm (possibly to the join in the guarding rather than the shoulder?)
Skirt hem strip 1.5cm
The gown is made of a green damask, the guarding a gold lampas.
The guarding is lined in a coarse linen canvas.
The skirt is approximately a circle made from four full widths of fabric (58cm) joined selvage to selvage, the sides extended by narrow matching pieces. It is lined from waist to nearly knee in white flannel wool, and lined fully in a coarse canvas with a woolen strip that protects the hem.
The bodice is not entirely symmetric according to K F Dózsa’s line art, with a strip of damask missing under the guarding on the left hand side. The bodice is lined in a green wool.
In total there are three pattern drafts of the gown.
The simplest was published by V. Ember Mária (1962, after Höllrigl?)
The most accurate appears to be K.F. Dózsa (1984.)
And a diagram that retains the principles of Dózsa while making them symmetric by N. Tarrant (1994.)
The chemise is made of 6 trapezoid panels 40cm at the tops, 60cm at the hem,
The first published work is Höllrigl József, Történelmi ruhák a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeumban, Magyar Művészet 5, 1929, pgs 205-216
Höllrigl apparently had fuller notes than this article had room for including a pattern draft. This pattern draft was included in a much later article published in Folia archeologica 14
Sources:
Written:
Magyar Művészet / Majovszky Pál szerk.: Magyar Művészet 5. évfolyam 1929 / TANULMÁNYOK / Höllrigl József: Történelmi ruhák a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeumban
József Höllrigl, Historical costumes in the Hungarian National Museum, Hungarian Art 5, 1929, pgs 205-216
I have translated bluntly the information as it relates directly to the items.
The shirt:
The women’s shirt has a curved, deep cut in the chest and back. . Where the very loose shirt is in contact with a strap wider than a fingertip lining the cut-out, the dense, tiny wrinkles on the front and back are equal to two fingers wide, embroidered with silver geometric embellishment, geometric embellished with a silver embroidery of semicircles embracing the wrinkles of the loose fingers at the wrist, converging into a narrow cuff.
The gown fabric:
The material of the women’s dress is Italian green silk damask, the width of which corresponds to the width of the fabric of the mantle[? i.e. the corresponding mantle of Louis] , i.e. 58 cm. Pomegranates, surrounded by fantastic flowers pattern, alternate in rows, framed from late Gothic roses and combined with floral tendrils. The crosses of tendrils and their motives are surrounded by small crowns.
I managed to find an almost identical replica of this fabric on two mass dresses at the Schnütgen-Museum in Cologne. 1 The only difference between the fabrics, which match exactly in the material, color and pattern, is that while in our case the floral tendrils connecting the pomegranates are simple, the Cologne fabrics are braided from two branches.
1 Franz Witte, Die lithurgisch Gewänder und kirchlichen Stickereien des Schniitgenmuseums Köln. Table 6. Kasel. Köln, zweite Hälfte des 15. Jahrh. and Table 29. Kasel, Suddeutschland, um 1500.
Gown cut and construction:
The women’s dress is tight, close-fitting, with a short waist and a very rich, bouncing, bell-shaped skirt falling down in large folds. The only ornament on the bodice is a strap made of 7 cm wide gold-fiber fabric, which borders the curved cut-out of the back and, running over the shoulders, runs slightly in front from the front to the belt of the skirt, leaving the chest wide at a good width; and the long sleeves are stretched so long at their ends by a funnel-shaped handle made of the same gold cloth that only the tips of the fingers of the hand could be seen. It is very interesting to design the inside of the dress, which is not visible from the outside, so that the skirt can wrinkle as heavily as possible, it is lined with a fairly thick, strong fabric, for the same purpose the upper third of which is very thick white flannel. The base of the waist is a green cloth, a sleeve stripe made of the same material protects and borders the skirt. The dimensions of the dress, supplemented by the dimensions of the baby made for it, give an idea of its proportions, these are: 30 cm from front to neck to the belt, 36 cm at the back, ie the belt slopes backwards, its abundance is 73 cm, the length of the skirt is 107 cm, 124 cm, the lower circumference of the skirt is 780 cm, the length of the sleeves is 71 cm.
Library / Advanced search / Hits / Folia Archaeologica / Folia archeologica 14 ./ V. Ember Mária: II. Lajos magyar király és felesége ruhája, 1962
Katalin F Dózsa; Mária királyné menyegzői öltözéke, Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest : Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum : Múzsák Közművelődési Kiadó, 1984
This site includes a rare photo of the pattern included from this restoration attempt. https://www.antikvarium.hu/konyv/f-dozsa-katalin-maria-kiralyne-menyegzoi-oltozeke-435817
Könyvtár / Összetett keresés / Találatok / Folia Historica / Folia historica 13F. Dózsa Katalin: Mária királyné esküvői öltözéke az újabb kutatások tükrében, 1987
https://www.worldcat.org/title/development-of-costume/oclc/27265442
Tarrant, Naomi E A: The development of costume, Edinborough : National Museums of Scotland in conjunction with Routledge, 1994.
Museum:
https://www.hegyvidekujsag.hu/archivum-2008-xxxviii/regi-textilek-mestere Restoration notes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030305135735/http://origo.hnm.hu/english/valuj16.html Updated website: https://mnm.hu/hu/gyujtemenyek/historical-repository/textilgyujtemeny Textile collection, image in the gallery near the bottom of the page.
Unofficial:
Taryn East’s photos, October 7, 2011 Very clear photos that show how much restoration was required.
http://pruszlikosvarju.blogspot.com/2014/09/habsburg-maria-inge.html Judit Szőcs: (I cannot tell if these photos were taken by the blog owner, a search for credit cycles back to this site.)
Predominantly about the shirt, but two clear images.
https://www.virtue.to/guest_authors/hungarian.html
Cynthia Virtue hosted much of the very earliest information available to the general public, and thankfully maintains the site to this day.