Cloak

The cloak was a very popular type of men's and women's outer garment. Its cut varied greatly and the names of individual types of cuts considerably overlapped, making it quite difficult today to distinguish which specific type of garment was meant. We can encounter terms such as plášček, pláščík; in the Luxembourg period it began to be called klok, kloček, from the French form cloque, Latin clanis, further Latin pelicio, German tasselmantel, mantl and mantlík. Most commonly, we encounter cloaks of a semi-circular cut, but a three-quarter circle cut was also worn. The length of the cloak varied and it could come in a whole palette of colours, but blue, green, pink and grey clearly predominated.

The cloak was most often fastened at the chest under the chin. An ornamental brooch called an agrafa could serve this purpose; its shape, colour and decoration had religious significance, which is why we often encounter a lozenge-shaped agrafa decorated with precious stones arranged in the shape of a cross, or its vertices could be finished with pearls resembling a lily. A semi-circular cloak fastened with an agrafa is most frequently found in depictions of the Virgin Mary. Furthermore, cloaks were fastened with a cord or strap, or with a decorative band placed across, or also, especially for shorter cloaks, with three buttons under the chin or more often on the shoulder.

Another group of cloaks comprises cloaks that some scholars today refer to by the artificial term cloak-tunic. Two types of cloaks fall into this category: the first, which in its shape resembles the Italian garment giornea, and the second, which has slits for the hands and is closer to a gown or the Western European houppelande.

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