Doublet-Coats
Mac’s favourite drawing in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest shows a doublet which is quilted around the skirt, but has a smooth bodice gathered into the skirt.
The painted MS of Gaston Phoebus in the Met (Metropolisan Museum of Art, New York, MS. 1044 Livre de la Chasse https://www.themorgan.org/manuscript/77121 painted in Paris circa 1406) shows some garments with the same characteristics. They have quilted skirts, but bodices which are smooth and have loose or baggy sleeves.
A miniature in John Arderne’s “Liber Medicinarum,” British Library MS Sloane 56 f. 86v, shows the same. All three manuscripts date around 1400 to 1425.
Has anyone else seen garments like this in art? I think they tell us something about how they went from pourpoints built like a quilt in the 14th century to doublets built like a modern suit in the 16th century.
Updates
2021-07-02: Bertus Brocamp suggests a mourner on the tomb of Gunter XXV von Honstein (d. 1368) and Elisabeth von Honstein (d. 1381) at the Liebfrauenkirche, Arnstadt, Thuringia, Germany and the doublet / farsetto of Diego Cavaniglia (Montella, Campagnia, Italy, d. 1481) which has a quilted skirt which is laced shut and an unquilted bodice which is buttoned shut.
2021-07-03: Ian Laspina suggets some overdoublets in a German translation of Jacobus de Cessolis' chess book from c. 1317-1322 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 49 dating around 1407). Note the red sleeves of the doublet which is hidden beneath the white overgarment in https://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0008/bsb00088331/images/index.html?seite=16 and the green overgarment in https://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0008/bsb00088331/images/index.html?seite=77)
2021-07-04: There is a jacket with a quilted skirt and smooth bodice in a Büchsenmeisterbuch from 1411 (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex 3069 p. 18 of 347. There is a curious doublet on p. 63 of 347
2022-07-26: Added image from the Büchsenmeisterbuch from 1411 rather than just linking to it
2022-08-01: two loose leaves from the Toggenburg Bible / Weltchronik of Rudolf von Ems in the Staatliche Museum zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (painted in Switzerland in 1411) show doublet coats: https://id.smb.museum/object/952549/ and https://id.smb.museum/object/2019844/
2023-11-08: Ambrogio Lorenzetti showed the reverse where the bodice is structured but the skirt loose (both parts are smooth)
2024-03-22: See also Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms. 5193 Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes fol. 102r (doublet coat), 349v (doublet coat with grande assiette), 380v, 401r
2024-05-22: The man with a club attacking an idol in the tapestry of SS. Piat and Eleutherius, Tournai, Mus. de la Tapisserie, from Aras, c. 1400 wears a doublet coat (van-buren-illuminating-fashion plate 22)
2025-08-11: Bodley 264 Alexander and Dindimus (England, c. 1400) fol. 236r has jacks or jackets as doublet coats
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created and copyrighted on 2021-07-01 by S. Manning ~ last updated 2025-08-11