Last week’s Rate the Dress was an 1880s maybe-Western dress in ochre and blue.  It evoked a lively discussion, and a mostly extremely positive reaction – minus a points or two from most of you for the bead trim.  Just a couple people really didn’t like it (Daniel called it a digestive biscuit of a dress), though no-one could dispute the skill of the dressmaker. Overall, the dress came in at a rather nice, if not astonishingly fabulous, 8.4 out of 10. I’m not sure if I loved the dress, and while I didn’t like the beads aesthetically, I liked them intellectually, as a representation of mica, and the bobble trim on sombrero and other Southwestern wear. This week lets go all the way back to the 1670s, and look at Anna Caffarelli Minuttiba. We actually have two slightly different views of the painting to consider, one, a little warmer and more muted: And another with higher contrasts, possibly after conservation, possibly just with the photo temperature adjusted significantly: I haven’t been able to track …