This beautifully illustrated and innovative book examines how artists have used clothing and drapery - real and imagined, sacred and secular - as elements in their paintings to give emphasis and emotional force to their figures.

All kinds of draped cloth, from austere dress to billowing draperies, become in the hands of a gifted artist a dramatic and exciting means to ennoble and sanctify painted figures, to create sensual or erotic effects, and to add drama to narrative. Such was the impact of the artists' particular vision, that life often followed art, and the fashions of a particular era often reflect the pictorial creations of its greatest painters. In his portraits, Van Dyck, for example, created the elegant and aristocratic style which we associate with the court of King Charles I. Depictions of clothed and nude women from different periods show how the aesthetic distortions which governed the representation of women's fashions extended to the unclothed figure, which is similarly distorted according to current notions of beauty.

To illustrate her theme, the author draws on works by artists over a span of six centuries - van der Weyden, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Delacroix, Friedrich, Tissot, Vuillard, and Picasso. Fashion plates, photographs, and even film stills are used to show how the issues raised by the depiction of drapery in paintings extend to other media in the modern period.

Anne Hollander is an independent art historian, critic, and historian of dress who is renowned for her bold studies of the evolution of costume. A fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and former president of PEN American Center, she is the author of two influential books on the subject of costume and fabric in art: Seeing through Clothes and Sex and Suits. She has also published Moving Pictures, about the influence of painting on the cinema, and Feeding the Eye, a selection of essays.