The Sture costumes

The Sture costumes

I showed you this photo already in my entry about the Sture murders, but they are just so awsome that they deserve to be talked about on their own.

What is the Sture costumes? They are the clothes that were worn by Svante Sture and his two sons Nils and Erik on 24 May 1567. They are said to be the only completely preserved male costumes from the renaissance. I am not sure if this is true, but it is certainly rare to have clothes in general left from that time and even more rare to have them come complete with stabbing wounds and blood stains.

The chest Märta put the clothes in
Photo: Lennart Engström, Upplandsmuseet

After the murder Svante's widow and Nils and Erik's mother Märta Leijonhufvud took care of their clothes and put them in a chest that was placed on top of their grave in the Sture choir in Uppsala cathedral. The chest and some of the clothes can be seen at the exhibition in the Uppsala cathedral's museum in Uppsala. It once contained, among other things the clothes of Svante, Nils and Erik that is now in the museum and a hat that belonged to Svante's and Märta's son Sten who died in a sea battle two years prior to the murders. Two years after the murder, Märta also put down the release protocol for Svante, Nils and Erik.

Svante Sture

The clothes are influenced by Spanish as well as German contemporary fashion.

Svante's costume (the one to the left in the photo above) is of a little older model than the ones belonging to his sons. Based on the form of the clothes, he also seems to have been shorter and a bit more robust than both of his sons who, based on their clothes must have been quite tall and slender.

Svante's jacket is made of black velvet with greyish green decorations and the pluderhosen is of taffeta. Mainly on the right side of the jacket, you can see blood stains.

Nils Sture

Nils Sture's costume (in the middle in the photo above) is a  typical travelling outfit for noble men of the time. The jacket is made in chamois leather and traces show it was originally painted black. In a list of inventory from the Uppsala cathedral from 1780 it is noted that the jacket had 19 silver buttons. Of those, only one is still there today. The stab wounds are evident.

The pluderhosen he wore is of black woollen. The fact that Nils wears a travel costume is not really strange. He was emprisoned as soon as he returned from a trip to Alsace-Lorraine where he proposed to a princess on the Erik XIV's behalf. It is said that the king wanted him to fail so he would get a reason to affront him. In the portrait to the right, Nils wears an earring in his left ear. This might be something he picked up on his trip to England where he also was ordered by Erik XIV to propose to queen Elizabeth I.

Erik Sture

Erik Sture's costume (to the right in the photo above) seems to be the one he is wearing in the portrait to the left. The jacket is made of black velvet with thin yellow braids as ornament. The pluderhosen is in taffeta like his father's and they might have once been purple in colour and not brown like today. Purple was a colour only the royals and higher nobility were allowed to wear at the time. (Disney seems to taken this to their heart in Frozen. They let Elsa throw away her purple cloak in the Let it go sequence after all.)

I do love the Sture costumes. They are prof of what I discussed a little in my entry about the exhibition Göteborgs födelse at Göteborg City Museum. Materialities tend to overbridge time gap and make history and historical people get closer. They also evoke thoughts and feelings inside of us. Märta also seems to have understood how they could be used in general memory. She saved the clothes just to have people remember her husband and sons. Unfortunately, most Swedes have today.

The Sture costume is particularly thought provoking since they actually show you real physical evidence on what seem to be quite gruesome murders. Reconstructions have been made comparing the clothes's stab wounds to the account of the murders from the written sources and they seem to match up quite well. What got me to react the most in this case is that the blood stains have actually rusted. I knew very well that there is iron in blood, but I have never thought that blood stains could rust before.

References:
Rangström, Lena (ed) 2002. Modelejon. Manligt mode, 1500-tal, 1600-tal, 1700-tal