(Greek, ρινάρικος, σάκκινος), is not mentioned in earlier medieval sources.61
Depictions of children as supplicants are limited to the two daughters at Vaste [157.A] and roughly contemporary mother-daughter pairs at Santa Maria del Casale [28.C, U]; in both cases the girls are dressed just like their mothers in long red garments. In narrative scenes, holy children—Christ, the Virgin, Nicholas at Muro Leccese—are almost always classically dressed in a long robe over a full-length tunic (χιτών). Only occasionally does this costume vary in a way that suggests youthful attire. In the Flight into Egypt at San Vito dei Normanni, Christ’s tunic is short enough to reveal his knee and lower leg, and in the Candelora crypt at Massafra, Christ, being taken to school by his mother, wears a knee-length tunic, a short-sleeved vest or doublet (dubblectus),62 and a short blue cape over one shoulder; on his feet are patterned socks or soft boots [63.A]. The children in the Entry to Jerusalem scene at San Vito dei Normanni wear a white knee-length undergarment, the camisia, or καμίσιον, beneath patterned tunics that have been removed for easy tree climbing.63 In general, juvenile clothing did not differ appreciably from that of adults of the same gender.64
Male Dress
While all of the male supplicants wore underclothes, none are visible. These would have included breeches (guttela, βρακιά) and a short linen chemise (camisia).65 Both are visible in the early fifteenth century at Soleto and Galatina, in narrative scenes that depict condemned persons, torturers, and lowly workers [113.sc.1; Plate 14].66 The chemise alone was worn by adult male laborers, including shepherds in Nativity scenes, Nicodemus in the Deposition at San Simeone in Famosa [70.sc], and agricultural workers and builders in the mosaic pavement at Otranto [86.A]. Until a half-century ago this was the typical dress of the Mediterranean peasant,67 and no supplicant in the Salento is shown in such penurious and practical attire.
If we review the surviving representations of laymen shown in the pose of a supplicant, we find a variety of costumes, not all of which correspond with terms recorded in documentary sources; perhaps their value was too low to figure in wills or donations. The majority of these depictions date to the end of the Middle Ages and are in contexts where Latin inscriptions predominate. Because the earliest dates to 1196, it is worth considering local examples of male lay dress in the preceding centuries in narrative contexts.
Whether they are intended to be real individuals or historical or imaginary ones, the eleventh-century males on a capital now in Brindisi from the Normanera Benedictine monastery of Sant’Andrea all’Isola seem to wear good Normanera garb [19]. They sport belted knee-length tunics (tunica) over high socks (calza) and ankle-high shoes (calces); some also wear a thick scapular-like garment, perhaps of fur, that falls almost to the hem in front.68 At least some of the garments resemble caftans, closed vertically rather than pulled over the head, a fashion derived from the Islamic world that was just emerging in Europe in the eleventh century.69 All are belted with a long, often elaborately knotted cord (cingulum).
In the twelfth century styles changed, for those who could afford to follow fashion, to a longer tunic with sleeves called the tunica, cotta, or gonnella.70 At San Vito dei Normanni one of the supplicant figures wears a calf-length green tunic, belted at the waist, over contrasting red hose and pointed black ankle-strap shoes trimmed with white dots [109.B]. In this he imitates not so much the adjacent saint whom he venerates, dressed in a green himation over a red tunic and with sandaled feet, as a shepherd in the Nativity scene on the opposite wall, who is even better dressed than he is with pearl trim on his hose, shoes, and the skirt of his short tunic. Moderately pointed shoes became fashionable early in the twelfth century.71 A second supplicant at San Vito is clad in a knee-length tunic, like the shepherds, this time yellow with a red fringed belt and red socks or stockings [109.C]. A surprising feature of both figures’ garments is how tightly they fit through the torso even though no lacing is visible. This style is documented elsewhere in Europe earlier in the century, generally in conjunction with a floor-length tunic.72
Later male figures in monuments with Greek inscriptions include the affectionate partner at Li Monaci (1314/15) [Plate 9] and figures at Vaste in 1379/80. The latter kneel in long red garments that are cinched at the waist even though the belts themselves are not visible; Antony, in the apse, has a white loop suspended from his, presumably a stylized handkerchief [157.A]. (Handkerchiefs are represented in late Byzantine art but not earlier.)73 Stephen has an identical red robe but with a row of white dots from neck to waist and from the wrists to the elbow [157.K–L]. The dots represent buttons (pumettus, άνάστολες), which began to appear in Byzantium by the eleventh century but were then used only to fasten the front of elite men’s garments.74 Flat and spherical buttons are known from excavations at Otranto and elsewhere.75
Very similar figures are associated with monuments containing Latin inscriptions. At least four of the fourteenth-century supplicants at Santa Maria del Casale are shown kneeling in plain, tight-sleeved red tunics [28; Plate 5], as is a single figure at Grottaglie’s Cripta delle Nicchie who also has something suspended from his belt [53.D]. Others at Santa Maria del Casale wear more elaborate clothing, with tight buttoned sleeves emerging from a red hooded mantle with elbow-length sleeves; both the sleeves and the hood are lined with fur, either white or the distinctive black-and-white vair [28.I, N, O; Plates 5–6].76 (A very similar figure, in red trimmed with vair, is poorly preserved at San Paolo in Brindisi [26.F].) Below a devotional text dated 1335, Nicholas de Marra adores the Virgin and Child in a red tight-sleeved tunic topped by a short cape trimmed with fur [Plate 7]. The four kneeling figures behind him wear two-toned garments of pink and green;77 one has a short red cape or hood. None of the kneeling males in this church wear the radically different fashions that would be introduced around mid-century, although the two grooms/standard-bearers here do have extraordinary tall hats [28.V].
At other sites with a preponderance of Latin texts, supplicants are dressed in garments of different colors. At the Candelora crypt in Massafra (thirteenth century), a male kneeling beside Saint Stephen is dressed in a tight-sleeved white tunic and red hose with soles attached [63.B].78 Nearby, the male half of the couple in the scene of Christ going to school wears a short blue-gray garment that opens in front over a darker-gray tunic [63.A; Plate 12]. At Masseria Lo Noce near Grottaglie (fourteenth century) the kneeling Daniel is dressed in dark blue; a bulge indicates a traveling hat perched on his back [54.A]. At San Giorgio di Rocca-pampina, the supplicant Calogerius sports a white tunic with red trim at the wrists under a long-sleeved light-blue garment, a iuppa (γιούππα) that has triangular gores inserted or is slashed at the front and sides to reveal both its red lining and the tunic underneath [92.B]. Red hose or shoes complete the outfit. And at Santa Maria di Cerrate, a kneeling fourteenth-century supplicant accompanied by the church’s sole Latin inscription witnesses the Koimesis in a blue-green tunic under a tight-sleeved white robe lined in red [114.F–G; Plate 15].
Dramatic changes in male attire attested elsewhere in Italy in the mid-fourteenth century penetrated the Salento some decades later. Inspired by French fashions introduced at the Angevin court in Naples during the 1330s and seen in the following years in Rome, Florence, and Milan, fashionable men began to eschew the long tunic in favor of a knee-length, belted woolen gonnella over a short padded jacket, the farsetto or jupparellu (so called in Naples in 1314); this was attached to stockings now visible to the upper thigh and attached by laces to the new shorter breeches.79 By midcentury the gonnella was so tight that laces and buttons were required to put it on, and in the 1360s–70s the gonnella was made to adhere not only to
