The Medieval Salento. Linda Safran
yellow are occasionally worn, red (or reddish brown) is by far the color most commonly worn by a painted human figure in the Salento across the Middle Ages. This is the case in Santi Stefani at Vaste [157; Plate 18] and Santa Maria del Casale [28; Plates 5–7], two otherwise very different fourteenth-century monuments. At Vaste, nine different figures are shown in virtually identical red garments. Only the wealthiest patrons could afford richer, more costly dyestuffs like kermes and fine cloths like imported “scarlets,” printed silks, and furs. A few supplicants, mostly in fourteenth-century Roman-rite churches, are shown wearing such obvious luxuries; otherwise, only painted saints and ancillary figures in Christian narrative scenes are depicted in luxurious garments.
Certain special days were occasions for wearing garments of a particular color, which at times distinguished Christians and Jews. The Shibolei ha-Leqet treatise of practical halakha (Jewish law) illuminates this in its discussion of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year:
The custom in the world [ba’olam] is that when a man knows he will be judged he wears black and covers himself in black and grows his beard and does not cut his nails because he does not know what the judgment will be. Jews [Yisrael] do not do this: they wear white and cover themselves in white and shave their beards and cut their nails and eat and drink and are happy during Rosh Hashanah because they know that God is making miracles for them and is judging them favorably. These are the reasons why it is not allowed to fast on Rosh Hashanah.57
The supposed black clothing of Christians on Judgment Day is not supported by extant wall paintings, where the damned and the saved in those scenes at Santa Maria del Casale [28.sc.1] and Soleto [113.B] wear many colors, with the same preference for red that characterizes the depictions of supplicants. Perhaps real people did wear dark hues on penitential occasions, however. There are a few more differences in clothing and hairstyles with a religious rationale, but the vast majority of distinctions in clothing depend on gender, age, and social status rather than on faith.
Infants’ and Children’s Clothing
Infants are seldom depicted in extant Salentine wall paintings, except for the Christ child in the Nativity scene and the infant Virgin held by her mother or, in the form of a swaddled soul, by Christ at her dormition [Plate 15]. An infant is recognizable by its tight herringbone swaddling;58 regardless of season, strips of white linen were wrapped tightly around the body, mummylike, with only the face left free. Such swaddling was still done in the Salento a century ago59 and is an example of medieval realia when found in religious scenes. In nonnarrative images this realistic swaddling is uniformly suppressed, as when Anne holds the infant Mary [32.B] or in countless scenes of Christ in the lap of his mother; this indicates that Mary and Jesus were understood not as infants but as children. Corroboration that swaddling of newborns was also done in Jewish families is found in the fourteenth-century Maimonidean glossary from Rome, where anfasciatu, “bound in strips” (fascie), glosses the Hebrew equivalent.60 The same source gives the motive for such wrapping: “one wraps and ties so that the legs and arms are long and straight and not curved and distorted”; moreover, it is permitted to do so on the Sabbath because not doing so endangers the infant’s health. Infantile sabanon, referring to the linen cloth (Greek, ρινάρικος, σάκκινος), is not mentioned in earlier medieval sources.61
Depictions of children as supplicants are limited to the two daughters at Vaste [157.A] and roughly contemporary mother-daughter pairs at Santa Maria del Casale [28.C, U]; in both cases the girls are dressed just like their mothers in long red garments. In narrative scenes, holy children—Christ, the Virgin, Nicholas at Muro Leccese—are almost always classically dressed in a long robe over a full-length tunic (χιτών). Only occasionally does this costume vary in a way that suggests youthful attire. In the Flight into Egypt at San Vito dei Normanni, Christ’s tunic is short enough to reveal his knee and lower leg, and in the Candelora crypt at Massafra, Christ, being taken to school by his mother, wears a knee-length tunic, a short-sleeved vest or doublet (dubblectus),62 and a short blue cape over one shoulder; on his feet are patterned socks or soft boots [63.A]. The children in the Entry to Jerusalem scene at San Vito dei Normanni wear a white knee-length undergarment, the camisia, or καμίσιον, beneath patterned tunics that have been removed for easy tree climbing.63 In general, juvenile clothing did not differ appreciably from that of adults of the same gender.64
Male Dress
While all of the male supplicants wore underclothes, none are visible. These would have included breeches (guttela, βρακιά) and a short linen chemise (camisia).65 Both are visible in the early fifteenth century at Soleto and Galatina, in narrative scenes that depict condemned persons, torturers, and lowly workers [113.sc.1; Plate 14].66 The chemise alone was worn by adult male laborers, including shepherds in Nativity scenes, Nicodemus in the Deposition at San Simeone in Famosa [70.sc], and agricultural workers and builders in the mosaic pavement at Otranto [86.A]. Until a half-century ago this was the typical dress of the Mediterranean peasant,67 and no supplicant in the Salento is shown in such penurious and practical attire.
If we review the surviving representations of laymen shown in the pose of a supplicant, we find a variety of costumes, not all of which correspond with terms recorded in documentary sources; perhaps their value was too low to figure in wills or donations. The majority of these depictions date to the end of the Middle Ages and are in contexts where Latin inscriptions predominate. Because the earliest dates to 1196, it is worth considering local examples of male lay dress in the preceding centuries in narrative contexts.
Whether they are intended to be real individuals or historical or imaginary ones, the eleventh-century males on a capital now in Brindisi from the Normanera Benedictine monastery of Sant’Andrea all’Isola seem to wear good Normanera garb [19]. They sport belted knee-length tunics (tunica) over high socks (calza) and ankle-high shoes (calces); some also wear a thick scapular-like garment, perhaps of fur, that falls almost to the hem in front.68 At least some of the garments resemble caftans, closed vertically rather than pulled over the head, a fashion derived from the Islamic world that was just emerging in Europe in the eleventh century.69 All are belted with a long, often elaborately knotted cord (cingulum).
In the twelfth century styles changed, for those who could afford to follow fashion, to a longer tunic with sleeves called the tunica, cotta, or gonnella.70 At San Vito dei Normanni one of the supplicant figures wears a calf-length green tunic, belted at the waist, over contrasting red hose and pointed black ankle-strap shoes trimmed with white dots [109.B]. In this he imitates not so much the adjacent saint whom he venerates, dressed in a green himation over a red tunic and with sandaled feet, as a shepherd in the Nativity scene on the opposite wall, who is even better dressed than he is with pearl trim on his hose, shoes, and the skirt of his short tunic. Moderately pointed shoes became fashionable early in the twelfth century.71 A second supplicant at San Vito is clad in a knee-length tunic, like the shepherds, this time yellow with a red fringed belt and red socks or stockings [109.C]. A surprising feature of both figures’ garments is how tightly they fit through the torso even though no lacing is visible. This style is documented elsewhere in Europe earlier in the century, generally in conjunction with a floor-length tunic.72
Later male figures in monuments with Greek inscriptions include the affectionate partner at Li Monaci (1314/15) [Plate 9] and figures at Vaste in 1379/80. The latter kneel in long red garments that are cinched at the waist even though the belts themselves are not visible; Antony, in the apse, has a white loop suspended from his, presumably a stylized handkerchief [157.A]. (Handkerchiefs are represented in late Byzantine art but not earlier.)73 Stephen has an identical red robe but with a row of white dots from neck to waist and from the wrists to the elbow [157.K–L]. The dots represent buttons (pumettus, άνάστολες), which began to appear in Byzantium by the eleventh century but