The National Library of Spain counts among its funds one of the most important european manuscripts on clothing of the sixteenth century: the Codex of Costumes. It was acquired in December of 2010 by Ministry of Culture from a private collection and it contains a repertoire of watering illustrations about costume of Spain and various countries of the empire of Carlos V (1500-1557), including Africa and America. Of anonymous origin with epigraphs in German, it is the work of a workshop, but its great rarity, its importance as a source for knowledge of the customs and fashion of the time, and the enchanting beauty of its images, make it an exceptional work.

The Codex could be dated around 1546 of 1547, according to the paper filigree, and the relationship with Alberto Durero works (for example his costumes drawings of Núremberg, Livonia or the Turks) can be traced, as well as others like Altdorfer or Burkmair, who served the emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), in whose enviroment was fashion developed as we understand it nowadays. But above all, it is obvious the relationship with contemporary artists that the author, or authors, knew perfectly, like Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), partially copied in the illustration of the emperor and the seven electors princes and imited on other pages, or Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (1500-1559), copied with extreme fidelity in the illustration of the dance of the peasants and imitated on other pages. Likewise, the Codex could be known by Lucas de Heere (1534-1584), whose lancer on horseback, drawn around 1570 in a famous manuscript of the University of Gante, Théâtre de tous les peuples, looks like an exact copy of the one showed in the first sheet of the Codex of Costumes, or perhaps both are copies of the same prototype, despite Heere drawn it a few decades later?.

Later, Georg Hoefnagel added very similar horse riders in front of Jerez de la Frontera in the engraving corresponding to that city in one of the most famous atlas in sixteenth century, Civitates Orbis Terrarum. Finally, various printed repertoires of costumes, which partly copied previous drawings and manuscripts, were massively disseminated through successive editions. Prominent among them are those of Jost Amman, Habitus praecipuorum populorum ..., 1577, or Cesare Vecellio, nephew of Titian, antichi et moderni Degli habiti parti del mondo di diverse, published in Venice in 1590. Costumes books (both manuscript and printed) were mostly "to look", and the texts used to be minimal or non-existent, so they were useful for different purposes and very accessible for anyone who, regardless of their cultural level, could afford their acquisition.

With Carlos V, who assembled the largest known empire and in whose second half of the reign the Codex of Costumes is located, fashion was already solidly established, dragging some to excessive passion or mania, and even to economic ruin, and provoking great misgivings among the rulers and religious bodies of Europe, which issued an abundant legal regulation, pretending, among other things, to reserve the use of luxurious fabrics to the nobles, although without much success, because, naturally, others tried to imitate them.

In the imperial cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg, where the codex seems to have been created, worked the artists who drew the most beautiful costumes of all time. Sometimes, they were “travelling works” (perhaps, the Codex of Costumes was like that as well), because they were made while their authors accompanied the emperor in his multiple displacements, forming part of his entourage or that of princes and wealthy merchants. Spain, Flanders and Germany maintained a close connection in fashion through great fluidity in the exchange of images. Another important transmitting link was the constant roaming of the regiments of Landsknechts, dressed in their iconic slashed costumes that parade through Maximilian s Triumph. The miniatures, made between 1513 and 1515, as well as the well-known woodcuts, made from them, in 1526, by Altdorfer, Burgkmair, and Durero can be found in the Grafische Sammlung Albertina in Vienna, but, the BNE also has an excellent copy of around 1606, with 87 sheets on parchment (Res/ 254): Triunfo del Emperador Maximiliano I, Rey de Hungría, Dalmacia y Croacia, Archiduque de Austria, of whom are described and placed in this collection the glorious actions the emperor during his life.

The sequence of costumes of countries and regions represented in the Codex of Costumes is wide, although some of them have as a sample a single illustration, parading through its pages among others, Portuguese, Berbers, Indians, French, English, Turks, Tatars, Irish , Croats, or Hungarians, and corresponding the greater number of suits as well as the best knowledge and detail of the same to Germany, followed by Spain and the Netherlands.

Source: Teresa Mezquita Mesa*

*Director of Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rares Department of BNE between 2004 and 2016, and Member of the Board of Qualification, Valuation and Exportation of Spanish Historical Heritage, between 2005 and 2014.

In this video, Teresa Mezquita Mesa explains and contextualizes the Codex of Costumes, during her time as Director of Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rares Department of BNE

The facsimile edition of the Codex of Costumes is complemented by a case for its conservation and a complementary study book made by the experts Clara Sánchez Quirino and Sergio Ballester Redondo.