Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-Century French Manuscript Painting (Cité des Dames Master, Limbourg Brothers, Boucicaut Master, and Bedford Master)

A group of miniaturists working in or near Paris between 1400 and 1415 significantly expanded the existing pictorial repertoire of orientalizing costume. They depicted elements of the eastern fashions worn by peoples with whom the French aristocracy had had recent contact--in battle and through diplomatic embassies--including Central Asian tribes that had settled in Hungary, the predominantly Turkish armies of Islam, and members of the Byzantine court. While the miniaturists often mix together garments from a variety of different cultures into an eclectic costume, the individual elements of the clothing are authentic representations of foreign dress. This approach, which paradoxically allowed individual features of dress to be identified while, at the same time, obscuring cultural origins in an exotic, fantastical mix, merges easterners into an indistinct, entirely foreign other.