Bavarian National Museum: Lauinger Fürstengruft

We had a delightful guided tour of the Renaissance textiles found in the Lauinger Fürstengruft on Saturday. The textiles are held at the Bavarian National Museum and the tour was organised by ArtTextil. Although the textiles were of course held in a pretty dark and cool room, I was able to take a few pictures (with flash disabled!). Let me show you what we saw and learned.

Centrepiece forms the costume of Dorothea Sabina von Pfalz-Neuburg (1576-1598). She was laid to rest in the Launinger Fürstengruft (tomb of the Wittelsbach family in Lauingen) which was opened in 1877 and her costume given to the Museum. Dorothea Sabina went with the Spanish court fashion of her time. She wore a sumptuous taffeta skirt covered by an olive green silk velvet dress. The bodice and dress are richly covered in silver and gold lace.

The sleeves of her dress are slashed to show the yellow silk lining. This lining is also visible on the inside of her very long over sleeves. To optimize their dazzling effect in candle light, the silk is punched with a geometric pattern.

Dorothea Sabina's costume was not particularly made for comfort. It was solely worn to convey authority and to elevate her from the lower class. She could not dress herself into this costume. She needed assistance; something the lower class could not afford. The silhouette of her torso does not show her breasts. She didn't need them as she could also afford a wet nurse to feed her baby. The dark colours of her costume were perfect to show off the rich silver and gold lace as well as her jewels. The stiff crinoline made it impossible to not walk with grace. And the stiffness of the whole costume assisted in standing straight during an audience.

As Dorothea's costume was made long before the invention of elastic bands. This meant that her skirt consumed a huge amount of fabric and was bound together at the waist with straps. Easy for people with fluctuating weight :). And yes, the invention of under pants for women was a long way off too...

Apart from Dorothea's costume, there is another female dress, two men's costumes and a children's costume on display at the museum. Unfortunately, the light was not sufficient to photograph them. But there were other embroidered treasures in the room well worth a look.

A purple velvet mantle decorated richly with goldwork once belonged to William V Duke of Bavaria (1548-1626). The metal thread embroidery consists of couching and guimped couching of silver and gold threads (couching thread, smooth purl, check purl and broad plate). They used hemp threads for the padding. The gold embroidery covers all seams.

And last but not least, a pair of beautifully embroidered gloves, pin case and bible cover. With regard to the style and the fact that a similar pair of gloves is held at the Dutch Costume Museum in The Hague, the work was probably executed in the Netherlands and dates around 1630. These sumptuous accessories were probably a royal gift and were used by a woman of high status. Due to the E Monogram on the gloves, they might have belonged to Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (1596-1662) who spent 40 years of her live in Dutch exile.

The flowers on the gloves are stitched in exquisite silk shading surrounded by goldwork embroidery, pearls and gold lace with spangles. The flaming heart shows some or nue with red silk. Other goldwork techniques used in the piece consist of couching and couching over string padding. Apart from couching thread, spangles and purls can be identified.

I'll leave you with a detailed picture of one of the gloves. As these were not the only embroidered textiles on display at the Bavarian National Museum, I will write two more blog posts in the future. One will be dealing with embroidered costumes from the Baroque period and one will consider the ecclesiastical embroideries. Please leave a comment below if you liked this historical post!