Woman's Cap, Venice, 1500–1525, linen, silk, metal thread, glass beads, 9 x 7 3/4 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1916
Selected Works
Celebrating
Betrothal, Marriage, and Childbirth
Woman's Cap
This cap is fashioned of white linen embroidered with multicolored metallic and silk thread and adorned with a smattering of glass beads. The exquisite ornamentation in precious materials and the fanciful forms—a phoenix, scrolls, putti heads—suggest it was meant to be worn by a woman on a special occasion, perhaps a wedding ceremony. A delicate casing can be found on the lower edge, which presumably once contained ties to secure the cap to the head. It was meant to fit snugly with the fringe of red silk and gold metallic thread framing the face. Caps or bonnets, called cuffie, are frequently mentioned in lists of bridal trousseaux in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Bona Sforza, who married Sigismund I of Poland in 1518, had sixty caps in her trousseau.
