“Portrait of Alessandro Farnese,” by Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531). Antonis Mor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As an author of historical romance, I can assure you the devil is in the details. Readers are well educated and do not hesitate to call out an author when questioning the authenticity or accuracy of a story element, no matter how trivial.
That makes it even more important to do one’s research and do it well. It’s my experience that some aspects of history are more fun to dive into than others. I greatly enjoy studying architecture and music, but if fashion is your fancy, let me share a bit of trivia about the codpiece.
First, the origins of this fifteenth century wardrobe staple.
In the 15th century men’s dress comprised doublet or tunic (worn on the top half of the body), hose (bottom half) with a mantle or cloak (worn over the outfit). Hose were two separate wool or linen leggings that fastened into the doublet, rather in the style of fisherman’s waders. As doublets became shorter, and the length of mantles also decreased, the tell-tale bulge (or more) of gentlemen’s privy parts became evident beneath their under-shirts.
…evidence suggests that the early codpiece was constructed from a triangular shaped piece of cloth called a ‘braye’. The bottom tip of the triangle was stitched to the hose and the remaining corners fastened to the doublet to form a kind of gusset. This soft triangular flap was superseded by a stuffed and padded shape designed to hold what Montaigne coyly called “our secret parts” and John Florio’s Italian-English dictionary lists as “pillcocke or pricke”.
(Source: What goes up must come down: a brief history of the codpiece)
Other historians theorize that codpieces were a sort of protective device, used to contain the messy poultices and concoctions applied for treatment of syphilis and prevent staining of one’s garments. The soft cloth codpiece eventually evolved into a boxy, ostentatious accessory, some even embroidered and bejewelled.
(Source: A Brief History of the Codpiece, the Personal Protection for Renaissance Equipment)
By the sixteenth century, codpieces were no longer in vogue. Their quick rise and fall, so to speak, as fifteenth century high fashion has not diminished our fascination with a garment intended to preserve modesty, not provoke our curiosity about what lay beneath it.