Clarice Orsini de Medici’s Extremely Illegal Hat

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Florence, History, Inventing the Renaissance
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Time to share my current historical obsession: Clarice Orsini de Medici’s EXTREMELY ILLEGAL HAT! A cool reflection on performing social class (and part of my release countdown to the release of Inventing the Renaissance.

Portrait of Clarice Orsini de Medici by Ghirlandaio (1490s). She sits in front of an arched window frame, wearing a costly red velvet fur-lined robe over a costly black gown. The picture is dominated by her tall V-shaped hat, patterned in costly brocades of black and gold, and edged and embroidered with many pearls. Her expression is calm and unsmiling as she sits shown at 3/4 view. She has the fashionably high forehead and barely-visible eyebrows of the period, and vivid dark eyes.
Portrait of Clarice Orsini de Medici by Ghirlandaio (1490s). Her face has the barely-visible eyebrows and very high forehead fashionable in the period.

Clarice Orsini, wife of Lorenzo de Medici “the Magnificent” came from the great Roman Orsini family, massively powerful nobles who traced their ancestry back through popes, knights and dukes to ancient Roman senators & peers the Caesars; one of her elder cousins was Queen of Naples.

The Orsini family coat of arms, with a heraldic red rose at the top on white, then a horizontal yellow stripe with a blue eel (probably representing speed/quickness/audacity) and the lower section has red and white diagonal stripes. One sees this crest all over the place in Rome, and much of Italy.
The Orsini family coat of arms, with a heraldic red rose at the top on white, then a horizontal yellow stripe with a blue eel (probably representing speed/quickness/audacity) above red and white diagonal stripes.
A battlemented tower, looking very imposing and Medieval, part of the Orsini castle at Odescalchi, one of many, many castles owned by Clarice's kin.
A battlemented tower, looking very imposing and Medieval, part of the Orsini castle at Odescalchi, one of many, many castles owned by Clarice’s kin.

Clarice’s hat is an escoffion, a type of hennin, tall, cone-like hats made from thick, starched cloth. Princess cone hats and Meleficent’s hat are forms of hennin. Clarice’s is covered with costly brocade, embroidery, and pearls.

Illumination showing Christine de Pisan before Queen Isabeau, all the ladies wearing hennin hats like Clarice's, with pearl-covered horn-like protuberances sticking up high above the head. Some have white veils over them, others just oodles of pearls sewn onto costly cloth.
Illumination showing Christine de Pisan before Queen Isabeau, all the ladies wearing hennin hats like Clarice’s, with pearl-covered horn-like protuberances sticking up high above the head. Some have white veils over them, others just oodles of pearls sewn onto costly cloth.
Photograph of a modern woman modeling such a hat. One can see the felt cap holds the head tightly covering the hair, but arching up high above the top of the forehead then low over the ears to make the face seem taller. A roll of black felt with a decorative wrapping of red striping it outlines a pair of horn-like curves that go symmetrically out left and right, creating almost a heart shape. Link to the maker included in the post, I love SPES Medieval Shop they've made some of my best costumes for demoing to students!
Photograph of a modern woman modeling such a hat. One can see the felt cap holds the head tightly covering the hair, but arching up high above the top of the forehead then low over the ears to make the face seem taller. The maker is SPES Medieval Market, a wonderful shop, they’ve made many of my best costumes for demoing to students! For this exact hat follow this link to their Etsy shop.
Cast member dressed as the Disney character Maleficent, wearing a horned headdress whose debt to the historical Hennin is more visible when it's rendered in real cloth.
Wicked cast member dressed as the Disney character Maleficent, wearing a horned headdress whose debt to the historical Hennin is more visible when it’s rendered in real cloth.

Okay. Lorenzo de Medici, Clarice’s husband, was merchant scum. All Florentines had to be merchant scum, it was mandatory. After many civil wars & watching neighbors fall to conquerors, the Florentine Republic decided to secure its liberties by *massacring all the nobles and putting their heads on pikes!*.

Lorenzo de Medici, dressed like merchant scum. He's wearing a very expensive red wool chaperon hat (whose dangling red tip drapes around his shoulders like a scarf). Under that you can see his shoulders have red sleeves, but the body of the garment covering his chest and back is black and pleated. These are very expensive clothes made of costly vividly bright fabrics, but they're what merchants wear, *not* what nobles wear.
Lorenzo de Medici, dressed like merchant scum. He’s wearing a very expensive red wool chaperon hat (whose dangling red tip drapes around his shoulders like a scarf). These are very expensive clothes made of costly vividly bright fabrics, but they’re what merchants wear, *not* what nobles wear.

A few peaceful/beloved nobles were spared on condition of effectively renouncing their nobility & being very, very careful to avoid any noble trappings; Lorenzo’s mom came from one of these, Lucrezia “we’re definitely not the noble Tornaquinti family anymore” Tornabuoni. Florence thus became a merchant republic. Normal republics at the time (Venice, Genoa, Siena, the Swiss) were *noble* republics, led by senates drawn from noble families, as Rome had been before the Caesars. Florence’s was wildly different, its ruling council selected by putting the names of the merchant guild members (business owners, the owner of the building full of looms, not the men who works them) in a bag and drawing names at random, and making them share power in a complex rotation. In the 1400s, to be fully part of Florence’s government you had to be merchant scum, especially if rich. All eyes watched top families for warning signs of “princely ambition” making it vital to performmerchant humility, in language, behavior, especially clothing. Florentines wore long wool robes (advertising Florence’s top industry Big Wool) especially in Lorenzo’s day the lucco or “Florentine toga” an open-front, open-sided sleeveless mantle whose looseness was less hot in summer and supposed to invoke the Roman republican toga. (On the lucco check out Elizabeth Curie’s wonderful little book, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence).

Detail from a Ghirlandaio fresco showing four of the famous scholars from the circle around Lorenzo in Florence wearing the typical Florentine garments of long red cloaks down past the knee (various shades of red) open down the front and at the sides, over sleeved under-robes. They also wear the acorn-shaped red felt caps common at the period, especially for a scholar (slightly less costly than Lorenzo's chaperon.)
Detail from a Ghirlandaio fresco showing four of the famous scholars from the circle around Lorenzo in Florence wearing the typical Florentine garments of long red cloaks down past the knee (various shades of red) open down the front and at the sides, over sleeved under-robes. They also wear the acorn-shaped red felt caps common at the period, especially for a scholar (slightly less costly than Lorenzo’s chaperon.)
Fresco from a cycle in a confraternity house in Florence, a club whose members were men of good families and did charitable deeds, in this case fiving drink to the thirsty, as poor people gather with jugs which the volunteers are filling with wine. The two members of the confraternity wear black and red outfits with a long lucco robe over an under-tunic, the man at the center wearing a black lucco over a red tunic, the one at the right wearing a red lucco over a black tunic. In the back left two more members wear black and red as well, their wealth conspicuous compared to the much less vivid dyes of the fabric worn by the poor people they are helping.
Fresco from a cycle in a confraternity house in Florence, a club whose members were men of good families and did charitable deeds, in this case fiving drink to the thirsty, as poor people gather with jugs which the volunteers are filling with wine. The wealthier men giving out the wine wear more intensely dyed fabrics, and the ones on the right and at center wear the lucco.
Another fresco showing four younger Florentine men wearing the long lucco over their light summer doublets (less warm than the long tunics). One can see the lucco goes a bit past the knee, and they wear ones with contrasting colored lining, blue against the red over green doublets.
Another fresco showing four younger Florentine men wearing the long lucco over their light summer doublets (less hot than tunics).

Now, young Lorenzo’s dad & grandpa had made the family *very* powerful, unofficially but-everyone-knew-it helming the state, and foreign contacts helped make that happen. Grandpa Cosimo was close with Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan, and when considering Lorenzo’s marriage.

Lorenzo's dad Piero de Medici wears a very expensive variant on this style of garment, with gold edging.
Lorenzo’s dad Piero de Medici wears a very expensive variant on this style of garment, with gold edging.
Francsco Sforza wearing a very very very expensive outfit, with pomegranate pattern gold on red brocade silk under an overlayer of a different brocaded silk in gold and green. His hat is also a different style, a cylindrical turret hat.
Francsco Sforza wearing a very very very expensive outfit, with gold brocaded silk,

His parents looked to forge a tie to the City-Where-it-Happens papal Rome. The Medici were as rich as dukes, and as powerful, but to bring a noble princess to the city as a bride was very risky in a city that feared nobility and anyone who seemed to want it. They chose carefully. The Orsini family weren’t monarchs of a region or city-state, they had scattered castles and land in Rome, republican nobility, heroes of the (gone but never forgotten!) Roman Republic and often leaders of the city’s resistance against unpopular or overstepping popes (SPQR!).

They were also heads of the mighty Guelph Party, one of the two great factions whose feud split the Italian peninsula in what Guido Ruggiero aptly calls Italy’s 300 Years’ War. The Guelphs were the papal, anti-imperial side (mnemonic: Pope & Guelph are 1 syllable, Emperor & Ghibelline 3). Florence was a passionately Guelph city. It had massacred its Ghibellines & put their heads on pikes not long after it did so to its nobles, and had the Guelph coat of arms & Guelph war flag on every civic building. The Orsini were the noble leaders of their party, a very strategic ally. Had Lorenzo married a Sforza princess from Milan there’d likely have been immediate riots. A Guelph Orsini republican noble was… *warily* accepted. (Machiavelli’s comment: “When you don’t feel you must marry your neighbors it means you think they’re your servants.”) In 1469 when Clarice married Lorenzo, every worried eye was on them seeking telltale signs of princely ambition (for those familiar with the Pazzi conspiracy assassination attempt against Lorenzo 9 years later, Clarice was one of the named motives!) Which brings us to…

Sumptuary Laws were normal in Renaissance Europe, clothing restrictions justified as preventing overspending on vanity. They restricted expense (gold, pearls, velvet) & enforced social status. People of X rank could only wear X amount of gold, Y fanciness of cloth, Z cut of garment. They also flagged identity. Florentine law required office-holders like Lorenzo to wear the lucco; non-Florentines couldn’t unless granted it as a privilege, a step toward citizenship. Foreigners & nobles were immune to these laws, so were recognizable at a glance, especially for their costly fashions.

Galeazzo Maria Sforza Duke of Milan, wearing a very expensive doublet with gold fleur-de-lis on blue. Lorenzo owned this portrait, but would never, ever have owned this outfit!
Galeazzo Maria Sforza Duke of Milan, wearing a very expensive doublet with gold fleur-de-lis on blue. Lorenzo owned this portrait, but would never, ever have owned this outfit!
Giulia Farnese, wearing what young Clarice Orsini would've worn in Rome, a costly rose-colored gown embroidered with tons of gold and pearls. Her hair is in a pearl-studded snood.
Giulia Farnese, wearing what young Clarice Orsini would’ve worn in Rome, a costly rose-colored gown embroidered with tons of gold and pearls. Her hair is in a pearl-studded snood.

Like most laws regulating the body, sumptuary laws focused their moralistic side more on women’s bodies than men’s, decrying the wasteful, vain expense of women’s clothes, and in Florence (among other things) banning gold & pearls on women’s hats…

Portrait of Mary Duchess of Burgundy, wearing a tall cone-shaped Hennin hat with a gold jewel on the side.
Portrait of Mary Duchess of Burgundy, wearing a tall cone-shaped Hennin hat with a gold jewel on the side.
Isabella d'Este wearing a large turban like hat covered with ribbons, gold, and pearls. This is when she is Marquess of Mantua, married to Francesco Gonzaga.
Isabella d’Este wearing a large turban like hat covered with ribbons, gold, and pearls. This is when she is Marquess of Mantua, married to Francesco Gonzaga.

…so naturally Florentine women stopped wearing hats to put the gold & pearls directly in their hair, which much of is why Renaissance paintings of women look so beautiful to us, the only Renaissance portraits who don’t have cone hats or look like their heads are jammed in a Monopoly hotel.

Botticelli portrait made for the Medici family, showing a woman in an elaborate hairstyle with her hair woven through with ribbons and strands of pearls.
Botticelli portrait made for the Medici family, with an elaborate hairstyle woven through with pearls.
Iconic Filippo Lippi painting of the Madonna, with her hair covered with a light veil and strands of pearls. This is one of the earliest paintings we look at and think "She looks beautiful!" in part because she finally doesn't have a hat or totally-covering veil!
Filippo Lippi Madonna, with her hair covered with a light veil and strands of pearls. This is one of the earliest paintings we look at and think “She looks beautiful!” in part because she finally doesn’t have a hat or totally-covering veil!
Portrait of Catherine de Medici, daughter of Ferdinand & Isabella of Spain and wife of Henry VIII, wearing a grand black gown edge with gold and pearls, pendants with a cross and black stones, and a hat that looks like her head was jammed inside a Monopoly hotel, then covered with gold.
Portrait of Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand & Isabella of Spain and wife of Henry VIII, with a hat that looks like her head was jammed inside a Monopoly hotel, then covered with gold.

Now you see it. This is a BANNED hat. Clarice’s Florentine neighbors COULD NOT wear it. But she noble. She was immune. She *could* wear it, but it would signal princeliness sparking outrage as she strode beside her husband who still dressed like merchant scum.

Clarice Orsini's Hennin hat again, covered with HIGHLY ILLEGAL gold and pearls.
Clarice Orsini’s Hennin hat again, covered with HIGHLY ILLEGAL gold and pearls.
Her husband Lorenzo dressed as merchant scum, in a red chaperon hat and black lucco over a red tunic.
Her husband Lorenzo dressed as merchant scum, in a red chaperon and black lucco over a red tunic.

Did she wear this hat? Likely not in public. The two other portraits of Clarice are in frescoes of Medici friends and associates, portraits in public places (churches) where Clarice carefully wears fashionable, expensive, but merchant class apparel, including a modest white veil.

Fresco detail showing two of whom the left is Clarice Orsini. She wears a pink overgown edged in gold over a green underdress. Her head is covered by a translucent veil, looking very modest and almost like the poor women in the image of the men doing charity except for the detail of gold edging on her gown.
Fresco detail showing two of whom the left is Clarice Orsini. Her head is covered by a translucent veil, looking very modest and almost like the poor women in the image of the men doing charity except for the detail of gold edging on her gown.
Similar fresco in which Clarice, on the right, is dressed much the same, in pink over pale lavender with her hair covered with a plain white veil.
Similar fresco in which Clarice, on the right, is dressed much the same, in pink over pale lavender with her hair covered with a plain white veil.

Her illegal hat portrait is posthumous, commissioned by widower Lorenzo to remember his late wife. It hung *inside* Palazzo Medici, in private view. This was Lorenzo’s choice, his memento, Clarice looking as royal & un-Florentine as her Orsini kin. Why?

Clarice in her hennin again.
Clarice in her hennin again.
Portrait by Botticelli thought to possibly be a Medici woman, perhaps Clarice's daughter Maddalena, dressed as she should in Florence, in a very modest brown gown with her hair up in a simple veil.
Portrait by Botticelli thought to possibly be a Medici woman, perhaps Clarice’s daughter Maddalena, dressed as she should in Florence, in a very modest brown gown with a simple veil.

Did Clarice own this hat? Had she worn it in Rome? Secretly at home? On trips? Had she hated the commoner clothes her marriage forced on her? She certainly grew up dressing like the princess she was. So much high-stakes politics & personal mystery behind one not-so-simple hat!

I hope you enjoyed joining me in my fascination with the complex meaning of Lorenzo’s choice to remember Clarice (and encourage their kids to remember their mom) wearing her extremely illegal hat. For more tales like this, of Clarice, Lorenzo, their kids etc. Inventing the Renaissance coming soon!

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Portrait of Clarice Orsini de Medici by Ghirlandaio (1490s). She sits in front of an arched window frame, wearing a costly red velvet fur-lined robe over a costly black gown. The picture is dominated by her tall V-shaped hat, patterned in costly brocades of black and gold, and edged and embroidered with many pearls. Her expression is calm and unsmiling as she sits shown at 3/4 view. She has the fashionably high forehead and barely-visible eyebrows of the period, and vivid dark eyes.

4 Responses to “Clarice Orsini de Medici’s Extremely Illegal Hat”

  1. Terry Hickman said:

    I am certain that I would have been a blue-collar baby (as I am in this life) back then, too, and it would have been a relief not to have to wear them fancy hats! But I deduce, cleverly, that my priorities are quite different than Clarice’s. Like, high on my list right now is GETTING THAT BOOK! (Already ordered!)

  2. Jeremy said:

    Absolutely fascinating, and thanks especially for the Guelph Ghibelline mnemonic.

  3. History’s Largest & Most Famous Disability Access Ramp – Ex Urbe said:

    […] talked in my earlier thread [add link here] about Clarice Orsini’s EXTREMELY ILLEGAL hat about how important it was for Medici men like her husband Lorenzo to perform humility. Florence […]

  4. rhonda said:

    So, maybe a weird question and tangential to the illegal hat, but do you know if there are any theories about why Florence killed its nobles (and enemy Ghibellines) then stopped (did they stop?), while France killed its nobles but didn’t stop? Different centuries and different cultures obviously, but I’m curious if there are any thoughts about the different paths they took with regards to killing off their nobility.

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