Sir John Soane's Museum -

This museum was formally the home of architect Sir John Soane. It still houses his extensive collection of architectural drawings, paintings, books, plaster casts and sculptures

In 1805 Mrs Soane bought James Durno's 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', from the sale of Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.

In this 1788 oil painting you can tell that the Elizabethan clothes are represented very differently to the Neoclassical style. In this painting you can see that the women's clothing consists of bright bold colours, where as the neoclassical style has a more neutral colour palette which mainly consisted of white and pale pastels. However the clothing isn't fitted as in periods like the Renaissance and Baroque, making it closer to Neoclassical but the material differs as the Neoclassical dresses were made of thin cotton that were able to flow and corsets were no longer worn.

The men and women in the painting were still wearing big collars, where as in the Neoclassical period they had become very discrete or even non-existent.


From this painting you are able to see how clothing has changed and evolved through time.

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