‘Master of blue jeans’ holds key to fashion riddle FEATURE 09/21/2010

‘Master of blue jeans’ holds key to fashion riddle

FEATURE

09/21/2010
PARIS — Workaday staple and fashion favorite, blue jeans have conquered the planet. But were they born in the textile mills of New Hampshire, on France’s southern coast or the looms of north Italy?

Art historians believe they have found a piece of the centuries-old puzzle in the work of a newly discovered 17th-century north Italian artist, dubbed the “Master of the Blue Jeans,” whose paintings went on show in Paris this week.

Running through his works like a leitmotif is an indigo blue fabric threaded with white, with rips revealing its structure, in the skirts of a peasant woman or the jacket of a beggar boy.

“The works are very attached to the detail of clothing — it was very rare for a painter to characterize the poor with such detail,” said curator Gerlinde Gruber, who helped to identify the anonymous artist’s works.

“And there is blue jean in every painting except one,” she said.

Other details in his work, such as a knotted white kerchief in a painting entitled Mother Sewing, enabled curators to locate the scenes in northern Italy, in the region of Venice.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100921com3.html