A Palace of Dress
who have visited the Cluny Museum: it is a Century at a visit of some noble ladies and seignors
representation of the Frigidarium of the Emperor to an exhibition of the shields and helmets of the
Julian, the ruins of which still exist on the knights entered for the tournament—Before the
Boulevard Saint Germain. Tournament it is called,—and at another scene
And so we proceed down the centuries. Here when the prizes are distributed. It is one long
a masterly attempt to give us an idea of Ste. Clo- procession of courtly ladies is this admirable
tilde, of whom no authentic portrait exists ; there a Palace of Dress. Marie of Bourgogne, daughter
feudal interior and a group composed of Blanche of Charles the Timid, richest heiress of her time,
of Castille, Louis IX. and Marguerite of Provence, and famed in history for her modesty; Patrician
A little farther on look down upon us from a ladies of Venice in fine silks and jewels descending
balcony of the time of Charles VII. a number of the steps of their palace towards the gondola in
gentle dames wearing that curiosity of fashion the waiting, one of the best pictures in the building;
" steeple" headdress, which, strange to say, lasted English dames dressed in rich French stuffs
half-a-century—fifty years of torture to the elderly heavily decorated with jewels and gold, as was
ladies who adopted it, for the " Hennins," as the fashion in the time of Henry VIII., looking
Viollet-le-Duc tells us, used to draw up the skin out on to the " Field of the Cloth of Gold" ;
under the headdress in order to hide their wrinkles. Catherine of Medicis consulting the Italian as-
Again, we are present at the end of the Fourteenth trologer Ruggieri whom she brought from Italy
"THE EVE OF THE CORONATION"
FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING BY T. THOMAS
233
who have visited the Cluny Museum: it is a Century at a visit of some noble ladies and seignors
representation of the Frigidarium of the Emperor to an exhibition of the shields and helmets of the
Julian, the ruins of which still exist on the knights entered for the tournament—Before the
Boulevard Saint Germain. Tournament it is called,—and at another scene
And so we proceed down the centuries. Here when the prizes are distributed. It is one long
a masterly attempt to give us an idea of Ste. Clo- procession of courtly ladies is this admirable
tilde, of whom no authentic portrait exists ; there a Palace of Dress. Marie of Bourgogne, daughter
feudal interior and a group composed of Blanche of Charles the Timid, richest heiress of her time,
of Castille, Louis IX. and Marguerite of Provence, and famed in history for her modesty; Patrician
A little farther on look down upon us from a ladies of Venice in fine silks and jewels descending
balcony of the time of Charles VII. a number of the steps of their palace towards the gondola in
gentle dames wearing that curiosity of fashion the waiting, one of the best pictures in the building;
" steeple" headdress, which, strange to say, lasted English dames dressed in rich French stuffs
half-a-century—fifty years of torture to the elderly heavily decorated with jewels and gold, as was
ladies who adopted it, for the " Hennins," as the fashion in the time of Henry VIII., looking
Viollet-le-Duc tells us, used to draw up the skin out on to the " Field of the Cloth of Gold" ;
under the headdress in order to hide their wrinkles. Catherine of Medicis consulting the Italian as-
Again, we are present at the end of the Fourteenth trologer Ruggieri whom she brought from Italy
"THE EVE OF THE CORONATION"
FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING BY T. THOMAS
233