Portrait of a Woman with a Dog, 1560-1570

I absolutely love paintings by Veronese. This one is no exception. I knew I wanted to make it, but being only second attempt at making a late Italian Renaissance gown, I wasn’t sure if I could. I’m pleased to say it came out better than I could have imagined. Someday I will write a full explanation of my process. But for now, consider these pics instead.

And just recently, years later, I realized this gown no longer fit me, so I made alterations, and learned something really interesting about who did alterations in the Italian Renaissance. I found a deep connection with my own Jewishness and the Jews of the Renaissance, who are often not talked about, to the point where it didn’t even occur to me that they lived there, but they surely did. Escaping the horrors of the inquisition and forced conversions, the lives of Jews in history has been hard, frought with laws to make them pay, explusions, and overall people deciding if they “deserved” to be there. I felt this deeply. Here is my video about it: