During the period from the fall of the Roman Empire until
the rise of Gothic art in western Europe, the most striking difference
between the older classical clothing and the garments worn by the new
barbaric people (who eventually created the kingdoms of western Europe)
was the difference in draping. During the Greco-Roman periods, clothing
was based on simple tunics and the overdraping of square and semicircular
outer garments, whereas the new order of clothing was based on closer
fitting tunics and some form of trousers or leggings-a development (as
had been the case with the Persians) brought by migrating tribes from the
mountains of central Asia who settled northern and western Europe.
Although kneelength trousers (feminalia) had been introduced to the Roman
soldiers by the Gauls and were used for protection and comfort by the
military on their northern campaigns, they were always viewed as an
uncivilized garment by the true Roman. Even the sophisticated legcovering
adopted by the Byzantines, the tight, formfitting hosa, were related to
Persian trousers and barbaric legcoverings.
In Germany and France prior to the reign of Charlemagne, trousers, or
bracchae, were usually cross-laced with thongs and often covered with
knee-high leggings, obviously an inheritance from early barbaric love of
leathercraft work with thongs and the tense interwoven art of the animal
interlace. The body was usually covered by a coarsely woven T-shaped
tunic, often in a plaid or stripe, and the outer garment was a mantle of
skins or coarse wool fastened on the right shoulder with a large metal
brooch. Hair was usually long, faces bearded, and metal helmets set with
horns or wings often covered the head. Women also wore long hair that was
braided and long semifitted tunics with a mantle again pinned over the
shoulders. The emphasis in both cases was on a semifitted, semidraped
silhouette rather than on the draped lines of the Greeks or Romans.
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Summary
The period stretching from the decline of the Roman Empire to the rise of
Gothic art in western Europe was a fascinating saga of tense, geometric,
abstract, animal interlace imagery slowly merging with memories of late
Roman art. In clothing this manifested itself in bodies that were at first
heavily muffled in tight-fitting garments and skins often laced to the
body with thongs, through a period where some elements of Roman draping
were added so that one gains a sense of semifitted, semidraped garments
that muffled the “sinful” body in accordance with early Christian
principles. Finally during the culmination of this clothing style, in the
Romanesque Period, there was much greater sophistication and complexity in
the way semidraped garments are cut and fitted to gain a maximum contrast
between flat areas of tight fit and areas of tense, complex wrinkles and
stretched draping. The Romanesque sense of texture and design with fabric
was the end result of merging the early animal interlace style and the
tight animal skins thronged to the body with the uses of Roman drapery.
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