Saturday, October 19, 2013

Silly hats in the Renaissance (or: What were they thinking?)

 

Your blogger is feeling whimsical today.  Having recently perused quite a lot of Renaissance portraits for another project, I find that I'm struck by how utterly ridiculous a lot of the headgear is.  Now, I realize that fashions change (some of them not nearly fast enough), but really, is there any excuse for some of these hats?   Take a look, and see what you think.

They divide nicely into categories, I find, categories which might be expressed by the thoughts of the wearer:


I'm wearing a silly hat, and it's very embarrassing.



I'm wearing a silly hat, and I think it's pretty funny.
 


He's wearing an even sillier hat than mine.  Heh! 



We are wearing the sofa cushions - it's the latest rage.





Except for me .  I'm wearing the whole sofa. 



You think you've got problems - I'm wearing a large vegetable.
 


The shape is what it's all about, wouldn't you say?





And size definitely matters.




We women are particularly vulnerable to the "Help!  It's eating my face!" look.





We, on the other hand, believe it's all about tasteful ornamentation.



Maybe I should have bought false hair that matched my real hair.



Hah!  My hat is even sillier than your hat!





And that is our art history blog post for today.  With any luck, history will return next week.

Images in this post are in the public domain by virtue of antiquity.


6 comments:

Prue Batten said...

Better hats than the twelfth century!

Kate Louise Wood said...

Ha! Hats off to you, my dear, for sharing these with us. @<{:>D

Judith Starkston said...

I do love the historical laughter you send my way. Thanks again, Tinney.

Anonymous said...

The hats were funny, but you were even funnier. I loved your captions. Thanks for the laugh.

Tinney Heath said...

Thanks, all - glad you enjoyed them! Now that I've posted this, I keep seeing silly hats everywhere I look. Maybe I'll run a sequel someday.

DLM said...

That was so much fun! Thank you for bringing some new and some familiar images together with such effective commentary ... :)