Romanino Doublet: Planning

I have been wanting to make a doublet from the 1510-20ish range for a while now, but I hadn’t quite gotten started on it. I’ve been collecting images, and I built the hose I’ll need when I made my Veronese suit. I was still waffling on how to begin when Countess Gwen issued her Little Black Dress Challenge. Apparently that was the kick I needed to actually get serious about this thing.

First, as usual, I needed to find some reference images. I’ve been wanting to make the doublet in this 1516 Romanino portrait for ages:

Unfortunately, there’s some important information missing. How does it close, exactly? Is there a skirt? Does it come in black? Let’s look at some others. Here’s another Romanino portrait:

Okay, now we have black with gold trim, plus a pretty awesome hat. So far, so good. Still nothing below the waist, though. We also have the funny mid-chest bib thing over the open center front closure. Interesting, but still hard to work out the mechanics of it.

Okay, Franciabigio (1522) gives us some more here. Basic black (dark blue? let’s call it black), no trim, fancy hat, so I can dress it down a bit if I want. The half-bib thing again, still no skirt.

And here we have Bronzino (1527-28) for the win! It’s a touch later, but still with many of the same elements. Here we can see a skirt, pleated on somehow and open in the front. Again there’s the center front opening covered by a bib, except now we see that it’s held on at the corners with points, and it seems to be an entirely separate piece that goes down just below (and under) the belt. There’s a sash at the waist plus a (sword?) belt that hangs down across the skirt. The upper sleeves are a different color from the lower sleeves, but I think I can get away with the whole sleeve one color, based on the 1516 Romanino and the Franciabigio. I also think I’ll go with the more voluminous sleeves of the earlier portraits, as well as the enormous beret style hats. All of this in black velvet that I’ve been hoarding for several years now. Next, figuring out the pattern!

Updated: April 24, 2013 — 9:02 am