Sabina Savage The Medici Cheetah Silk Slipover Top



Sabina Savage The Medici Cheetah Silk Slipover Top
The Silk Slipover Top is made in London from our luxurious silk twill, displaying the exquisitely detailed placement print which has been carefully positioned to show beautiful detailing from every angle. One size fits all in this elegant, draped garment, the asymmetric design creating a cascade of silk for showstopping effect, finished with French seams and a delicate pin hem.
The Medici Cheetah was inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings and cultural events alongside beliefs and attitudes of the era; the dichotomy of idealism versus naturalism opening a portal to landscapes of fantasy, a ‘New World’. Within a scene largely inspired by The Arrival in Bethlehem by Master LC, we find mythological or fantasy buildings juxtaposed with real architecture from Medici Florence and its surroundings, such as the Basilica di Santa Croce, and the Battistero di San Giovanni. Our feline protagonist lounges in the foreground, reclining like Titian’s Venus D’Urbino, the languid, skyward gaze a common feature of Renaissance portraiture. Late in 1487, the sultan of Egypt presented a female giraffe to Lorenzo de' Medici, which appears within the landscape of this design preparing for the carnival, with several other impressive but nonindigenous creatures. Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights also contained a giraffe, an elephant and a leopard, alongside anachronous plants, red fruits, and flowers, here in the form of white tulips, cherries and pomegranate, symbolising the blood and flesh of Christ and illustrated in the fashion of Schreiber’s illuminated manuscripts. During the Renaissance, the columbine was primarily a Christian symbol, particularly associated with the Holy Spirit due to its dove-like appearance.