About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of BDD in Action is captioned “A Medieval Knight.” The illustration by Paolo Mercuri (1804–1884)is taken from “Costumes Historiques,” a multivolume compendium of historical costumes from the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries assembled and edited by Camille Bonnard and published in Paris in the 1850s or 1860s. The nineteenth century saw an increased interest in exotic locales and in times gone by, and people were drawn to collections such as this one to explore the world they lived in—as well as the world of the distant past.

The colorful variety of Mercuri’s illustrations in this historical collection reminds us vividly of how culturally apart the world’s towns and regions were a few hundred years ago. In the streets or in the countryside people were easy to place—sometimes with an error of no more than a dozen miles—just by their dress. Their station in life, as well as their trade or profession, could be easily identified. Dress codes have changed over the centuries, and the diversity by region, so rich at one time, has faded away. Today, it is hard to tell apart the inhabitants of one continent from another, let alone the towns or countries they come from, or their social status or profession. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly a more varied and faster-paced technological life.