For quite a few years we have analysed the connection between fashion and religion, highlighting how designers still keep on borrowing elements often derived from the Catholic iconography.
Today the Catholic liturgical calendar celebrates the memory of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and there is a portrait of this saint that has some connections with a recent collection. The painting in question is a half-length figure from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) painted by Carlo Crivelli in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno, Italy.
The painting is part of what became known as the Demidoff Altarpiece (after a Russian aristocraft bought it in the 19th century) that incorporated various figures of saints arranged around a central portrait of the Virgin and Child.
Each painting looked different, with some of the saints portrayed like friars others like princesses, but all of them were made with different techniques - gilding, punching and incising - that made them look real. Specific details and elements like crowns, haloes and details of dresses were built up with pastiglia (pastework), a technique that allowed the artist to give these areas a three-dimensional consistency that helped him creating refined optical effects (these details would shine bright when hit by the lights of the candles).
Saint Stephen is represented with rocks - that remind of his martyrdom by stoning - balanced on his head and shoulders. He carries a palm in one hand and the book of the Gospels in another. He wears a pink vestment with a plastron-like element on the front decorated with long golden tassels.
In recent fashion collections, Alessandro Michele at Gucci often used this same shade of powdery pink, while the plastron-like element is evoked by the tasselled and embroidered decorations applied to coats and jackets in Gucci's Resort 19 collection. While these accessories are mainly inspired by the stole worn by priests during mass, the decorative effect is somehow also reminiscent of Saint Stephen's attire in Crivelli's painting.
Comments