More on Late Medieval Underwear

It seems that a lot of people have been blogging and commenting about late medieval underwear lately, so a post collecting this information may be useful to those of my readers who are  interested in medieval costume.

One of my favorite costume scholars, pearl, recently posted a link to this short paper that she wrote about the photograph of a chemise that appears in Carl Köhler's classic work, A History of Costume. What she discovered is that the black-and-white photograph of a sleeveless "Chemise of the Fourteenth Century" that is now found in the Dover edition of Köhler was actually added by an editor during the late 1920s which, as pearl points out, explains why there is so little information about the garment in Köhler's book. Pearl traces the photograph back to Moriz Heyne, who says that the chemise in question, like the Lengberg undergarments, was found in a castle in Thuringia, Germany. Interesting reading!

Katrin Kania graciously responded to my questions about men's underwear in late medieval Germany in this recent post on her blog. It appears from Katrin's post that there are a small number of well-known pieces of late medieval German art that show some men in bikini-shaped garments like the Roman subligar. Some of these artworks plainly show men wearing a garment that closely resembles the Lengberg piece. not just in shape, but even with regard to the fact that it ties on only one side.

"The Men's Bath" (Wikimedia Commons)

After reading Katrin's post, I went digging for a bit more information.  I did not have any luck with searching the German-language art database she recommended, but I did find a number of underwear images in the costume guide of a well-known reenactment group, The Company of Saynt George. Pages 10 and 11 of the Company's costume guide for men (which can be downloaded for free here; the women's guide is presently being rewritten) includes about 12 different period images of men in underwear, with the sources identified. Most of the images show men in short underpants shaped not unlike modern "tighty-whitey" briefs, but there are at least two different images showing the bikini-like version. The Guide states:

"The Women's Bath" (Wikimedia Commons)

"Artworks of the period usually show two kinds with some subtle variations: A. Close fitting short like garments with a pleated "pouch" on the front. This style seems to be the most common type of braies. B. "Bikini" pants with ties appear in Swiss, German and Italian sources but not as frequently as the previous style."

So I was wrong to assume, as I did in this post, that the Lengberg "bikini" garment was female underwear. Moreover, as a commenter correctly advised me, there is no artistic evidence that women wore such bikini undergarments in medieval Europe. We see naked women in medieval German art from time to time, but not women in underpants. Here's an interesting example. A woodcut print and a pen-and-ink drawing by late 15th-early 16th century artist Albrecht Dürer highlights this interesting contrast. In the woodcut "The Men's Bath" (1507), Dürer clearly shows at least two men in bikini-like briefs; one standing on the left-hand side (he's lounging against a wooden pillar) and one in the middle of the picture (you can see the briefs, framed by the faces of the two men in the center foreground).  In contrast, in the drawing "The Women's Bath" (1496), we see women, most of whom are wearing headdresses, but are otherwise naked--they are wearing no briefs of any kind.

On the other hand, no one expected the bra-like garments found in Lengberg until 2008 when they were pulled from the walls of the castle. The blog Medieval Silkwork has recently featured two different posts about late medieval women's underwear. One shows period images of sleeveless shifts, with a high waistline, that are closely fitted through the bust, while the other discusses written sources that speak about breast binding and "breast bags." Both are well-written and illustrated, and very worthwhile reading, as is the essay showing the blogger's reconstruction of a fitted support garment similar to the Lengberg "long-line bra" garment, which can be found here. To me, the Medieval Silkwork essays suggest that the final chapter about women's underwear in 15th-16th Germany may not yet been written. The artwork shows sleeveless shifts, some of which likely were cut to provide breast support, but not garments that resemble the bra-like garments from Lengberg. Maybe the fact that the period art we have doesn't show women in briefs doesn't completely align with what women wore.

Now I'm looking forward even more eagerly to reading Professor Nutz's NESAT paper!