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The subjects of Baroque (and later, Neoclassical) portraits did not often wear clothes they would typically wear in public, for two reasons. Firstly, fashion trends shifted so quickly that no one wanted to be painted in a style that would make them appear out of fashion. Subjects, and their painters, preferred that the work would be seen as “timeless” rather than confined to a specific decade or even year depending on the choice of clothing. Secondly, the elaborate clothing styles of the 17th and 18th centuries would be time-consuming to accurately paint because of the level of detail on both the clothing and the accessories. This limited the painter’s artistic output and negatively affected the painter from an economic standpoint. For these reasons, portraits often depicted the subject in simpler clothing that could not be pinned down to one time period.
Peter Lely, one of the foremost portrait painters in Restoration England, tended to paint his subject in varying forms of undress. Fashion was an important expression of one’s social standing, but undress was considered acceptable for portraits of aristocrats because wearing less formal clothing was a way to establish one’s superiority by proving they didn’t have to follow the rules of typical social decorum. Originally, portraits painted in less formal dress were kept in the court or in private only because they were seen as highly provocative, but this trend did catch on over the course of the late 17th and early 18th centuries as an acceptable fashion for portraiture.
In an attempt to create a sense of timelessness, men were often painted in Roman dress, such as by wearing Roman-style armor. Other popular men’s fashions were Arcadian vests (silk or velvet vests with a single row of fastenings down the front) or civic vests (similar, but with buttons down the front instead). Arcadian vests would be worn in real life on “pastoral excursions” but civic vests were worn only artificially, when sitting for portraits. An Indian gown was another popular fashion depicted in portraits, a long dressing gown made of silk or brocade that would be worn over a shirt and breeches when one was at home.
Women often wore more romantic attire in their portraits: softer garments that were more flowing and much less formal than their usual decorative fashions. Intricate details such as lace edging or fanciful cuffed sleeves were often left off in favor of a simpler depiction of the clothing. Women often wore nightgowns, any form of long, loose clothing worn indoors. Because women did not wear stays with their nightgowns, they were less rigid than formal attire and allowed women to be portrayed in a softer, more feminine light. The color palette of the clothing was often confined to a few major colors, usually some variation of blue and white. Again, because of this simplicity, their portraits seemed timeless; often, the only way to tell what year a woman’s portrait was painted would be to identify it by her hairstyle.
In general, the subjects’ states of undress presented men and women in a form of organized carelessness that was desirable at the time.
Visual Component
Sources:
De Marly, Diana. “Undress in the Oeuvre of Lely.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 120, no. 908, Nov. 1978, pp 749-751. http://www.jstor.org/stable/879393.
Ribeiro, Aileen. “Some Evidence of the Influence of the Dress of the Seventeenth Century on Costume in Eighteenth-Century Female Portraiture.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 119, no. 897, Dec. 1977, pp. 832-840. http://www.jstor.org/stable/879032.
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/4167/anne-hyde-duchess-york-1637-1671-first-wife-james-vii-and-ii
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/thomas-clifford-16301673-1st-lord-clifford-lord-high-treasurer-16721673-77573
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