Caricatura e moda: storia di una presa in giro

• From the Italian for ‘charge’ or ‘loaded’, the caricature print emerged in large numbers in the eighteenth century in industrialising western Europe. It was in the second half of this century that the caricature which concerned itself primarily with the subject of fashion and manners rather than political or portrait themes developed. The origins and conventions of the fashion caricature include overlapping literary, theatrical, popular-religious and artistic traditions. Greco-Roman theorisations, performances and artistic depictions of the comic world turned upside down, and late medieval woodcuts, in which memento mori  themes of the dance of death and the bonfire of the vanities established the tropes of the veneer of civilisation and the futility of dress and cosmetics in arresting earthly time. The European carnival tradition, commedia dell’arte and puppetry which highlight human foibles, and the figure of the hag who deploys fashion and make-up in an act of sartorial and spiritual delusion, provided subjects for major Romantic artists working in the etching media such as Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) and Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Not fashion caricatures as such, nor were these images widely available, but their themes recur in the eighteenth-century caricature print. Caricature fashion prints also exist in a relationship to respectful engravings of the cries or occupations of the town, plates depicting national dress, and ‘costume plates’ depicting courtier men and ‘women of quality’ by 17th century artists including Abraham Bosse and J. D. de Saint-Jean in France and the Bohemian Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) working in England. The work of Jacques Callot (1592-1635) in France crosses the boundary between observation and satire. Etched images take on new meanings when pointed  titles or moralising verse are appended; the caricature generally makes use of a combination of word and image.This essay examines the semantic and visual play of the caricature print and comments on contemporary applications.

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