Pretty sure that I’ve lost most of my intended audience with what began as a simple paper comparing written and visual evidence of just What The Frock in on Anne of Cleves’ head. But it really is both extremely simple and incredibly complex. I did work out what one major barrier is for those of us who speak/write English as a first language. So once I got that sorted, I also went through as many works I had previously used visually. And oh boy, wow. No wonder there is so much misinformation.

I’ve had to read a lot of academic publishing, as well as informal blog posting, obviously. So I kind of forgot that rules like citations for a statement aren’t required in these works. I have to figure out the specific source from pecking through text and figure captions and bibliographies.

But in doing so it really drove home how important it is for me to not make the same mistake.

So Cologne was doing interesting things before other cities? I might be able to get the date for those things but it then means I have to go look what is written from local sources everywhere else too in case the same biases exist.

But that has also lead to gaps in our understanding too.

I found one of the earliest biographies about Anne of Cleves written in German at a time when local archives were available to the author. But he rejected using them in favour of English sources. Why? He thought local sources would be biased, but not the English.

And a lot of those 19thC authors simply were not interested in the 16thC but rather up to 1500 and after 1600.

When I find biographies or exhibitions of artists depictions of women are simply not in focus. My timeline of depictions of women and girls has got to be properly expanded to include art forms I’ve mostly kept out. Why? Totally different art forms have different aims. And then you have completely different restoration efforts. And then what to do with the trachtenbucher? These are what artists from outside the region interpret. And that is very important as obviously we’re now all on the outside looking in thanks to time.

Anyway. Yes. Simple and complex at the same time.