So. I’m not going to find The point of evidence I’d love to have to back up my research, but I think I have the pattern of evidence that only comes out of time (200 years) and across countries and across art forms and language and histories.
And yep this affects all my research branches which means I also still need to support my work with the work already done to find patterns I rely on for my patterns.
For example my timeline of depictions of women’s dress from the North Rhine builds on the work by Hindegarde Westhoff-Krummacher. I had spotted the evolution of the Cologne style but relied on her work and others to put the known dates on the images with known dates and then was able to get a closer year date for others that don’t. I’ve been able to work out some local sumptuary laws, but I need to go passage by passage with published laws that other people have worked to get transcribed, translated, and explained.
Everything I have considered is fully supported by art, and I could easily just do a long essay with that. But I need to explain why. Not to just trust my eye.
My health is doing something similar, I hope this helps explain why what seems simple isn’t.
After hurting my achilles tendon I offloaded to the muscles and tendons on the sides, so I rolled my feet in but also out- my hypermobility syndrome means I can not notice an injury like this until I can’t roll my heel any further.
So I’ve been taping along the achilles but also each side so the offloading changes and my calf muscles regain strength where they should. But I didn’t just offload below the knee, I’ve actually would up tightening tendons up the back or both legs and through hips to back. Right to my neck. My ribs also really hurt near my old break.
So this injury to a tiny distance of a tendon way down at my feet has negatively impacted my body all the way to my head (headaches from all this tension.)
So when I have a narrow window each day for research, for writing, for fixing my sewing machine (cries) and I prioritise my heel? It’s not just the stretching, massage of my heel. It’s floor work. It’s putting shoes on to walk around.
So when my research is seemingly just about a single portrait it’s actually about all the reasons that portrait exists.
