Chapter 5 Portraiture and the rise of `Renaissance man'
Images of individuals
According to the influential mid-19th-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckbardt, whom we encountered briefly in the first chapter, the Renaissance was the moment when the modern notion of 'individuality' indeed, the very concept of the self as an autonomous entity, first fully manifested itself, eventually giving rise to an ideal, multi-talented 'Renaissance man' or uomo universale. Since the publication of Burckbardes The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in 1860, scholars have vigorously debated the merits of such broad and sweeping claims and have pointed out that well-rounded, self-aware individuals can be found in earlier periods as well.
Although it is notoriously difficult to prove or disprove theories about a paradigm shift in the Weltanshauung, or 'world view', of a particular age there is no doubt that the Renaissance did see an explosion in the production of painted and sculpted portraits of recognizable individuals. Of course, independent painted portraits of a very small number of kings and pontiffs had existed long before the Renaissance, with even some slightly lower-ranked members of the elite, such as bishops or high nobles portrayed in effigy on their tombs. Likewise, donor portraits in which the wealthy and powerful patron of a work such as an altarpiece would be depicted within or at the edge of a sacred scene, had also existed since the Middle Ages.
Similar portrayals of the sacred and secular elite certainly continued to be produced throughout the -15th and 16th centuries. But beginning in the early 1400s, other categories of sitters such as women, well-to-do merchants, and even artists, also began to be represented in ever-greater numbers in independent portraits. And even in portraits of the traditional elite, a growing interest in individual psychology and physiology is evident thereby reflecting the period's new approaches to depicting space nature, and human anatomy increasingly naturalistically. The very interest in individual portraiture also reflected the Renaissance revival of Classical antiquity, since ancient writers had focused on the biographies of famous individuals, while ancient coins and marble busts of Roman emperors and their less exalted citizen-subjects still existed to be studied, admired, and used as models for new commissions by Renaissance patrons, collectors, and artists.
We have already encountered several portraits in this book, suggesting just how varied this genre could be. As in centuries past a king is portrayed as a participant-donor in the Lamentation commissioned by Alfonso II for a Neapolitan church but may the patron is included as a fully three-dimensional and emotionally engaged being demonstrating the sculptor's sophisticated understanding of the human body (see Figure 11) an elite noble is shown on a page of an illuminated manuscript produced in the later -15th century but now the aristocrat is a woman. Duchess Mary of Burgundy and the objects, fabrics, and spaces that surround her exhibit an appreciation of the new taste for naturalistic depiction (see Figure 9). However, it is in the double portrait of an artist and his wife that we discussed at length in the previous chapter that we see just how far portraiture had expanded its reach by the later 15th century (see Figure 13). In this image, we see a well-to-do, but certainly not aristocratic, artist-craftsman and his wife portrayed with as much care as would have been demanded by a pope or prince in centuries past. Although poorer men and women were still resolutely excluded from the growing fascination with the individual that Burckhardt identified as a key characteristic of the Renaissance. there is no doubt that a focus on the self and on projecting one's own image to the wider world had begun to express itself across a much broader spectrum of society than had previously been the case.
When we look at a Renaissance portrait we often assume that the image is a straightforward depiction of what the person portrayed Wally' looked like, as though we were gazing upon a kind of painted or sculpted version of a photograph. However, as we well know, even photographs can be highly manipulated images rather than transparent representations that faithfully mirror reality. Just as a 21st-century photographic portrait can involve the use of flattering lighting, specially selected clothing, and a bit of make-up - not to mention the services of a programme such as PhotoShop to airbrush any unattractive wrinkles or blemishes from the digital image file before we hit the 'print' button - so too was a Renaissance portrait a very deliberately crafted and carefully constructed thing. In the portrait of the artist and his wile for instance we see the couple dressed in their best clothes, with the things that surround them from the stock-gillyflowers and cherries to the suggestive flies, all assiduously considered for their visual and symbolic significance.
In fact, it is helpful to assess Renaissance images of individuals in terms of their qualities as portraits versus their success as likenesses, with the two categories not necessarily always overlapping. So. for instance, we know that Leonardo used preparatory drawings he had made of living models faces and bodies as the basis for his very convincing likenesses in the Last Supper (see Figure 17), but we could not really, strictly speaking call these images 'portraits'. Similarly, we know from documents that, in her old age. Queen Elizabeth I of England allowed only a limited number of pre-approved templates to be used by artists when painting her image. These authorized models depicted the Queen as being still young and beautiful, with the resulting works clearly intended to be understood as portraits, but certainly not to be considered accurate likenesses of the ageing monarch (see Figure 24). Similarly, Titian painted a portrait of Isabella &Este a patron and collector we discussed briefly in the previous chapter at the age of 60 as though she were still little more than a teenager.
Even in portraits that seem to be less obviously Battering fictions, one needs to be wary of trying to separate reality from idealization. Indeed only in a very small number of cases where several portraits exist of the same sitter painted by different artists can we even begin to try to sill the one from the other. But 'flattery' was not just about making ladies of a certain age look young and perky: rather, it was also about putting the best possible «spin» on the social, economic, and political status and aspirations of the individuals portrayed.
Portraiture in Italy
For instance, Titian's later 1530s portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, shows him as a mature man, with a slightly receding hairline and some furrows lining his brow (Figure 18). But the Duke's steady, steely gaze peering out from a light-coloured face that stands out against a generally dark background is clearly meant to attest to his courage and determination, with his wrinkles simply confirming that he must be wise and experienced as well. Such attributes would, of course, have been exactly what a man who was a famous condottiere or professional army general, as well as a titled noble, would have wanted to project when commissioning this portrait. In fact, the writer Pietro Aretino assumed that the portrait as a whole and the various objects depicted within it were a kind of visual summary of the Duke's entire career as seen, for instance, in the deluxe imported German suit of armour he wears and the feather-topped helmet displayed on the nx1 velvet-covered shelf behind him, or in the various batons seen on this same ledge.