Petrarch and sixteenth-century Italian portraiture

Abstract

"The volume presents a wide-ranging investigation of the ways in which Petrarch's legacy informed the relationship between visual and literary portraits in sixteenth-century Italy. Petrarch's vast literary production influenced the intellectual framework in which new models of representation and self-representation developed during the Renaissance. His two sonnets on Laura's portrait by Simone Martini and his ambivalent fascination with the illusionary power of portraiture in his Latin texts - such as the Secretum, the "Familiares and De remediis utriusque fortune" - constituted the theoretical reference for artists and writers alike. In a century dominated by the rhetorical comparison between art and literature "ut pictura poësis" and by the "paragone" debate, the interplay between Petrarch's oeuvre, Petrarchism and portraiture shaped the discourse on the relationship between the sitters' physical image and their inner life. The volume brings together diverse interdisciplinary contributions that explore the subject through a rich body of literary and visual sources."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction / Ilaria Bernocchi, Nicolò Morelli, Federica Pich -- Widows, poetry, and portraits: Livia Spinola and Francesca Turina on the portraits of their dead husbands / Simone Monti -- In Medusa's eyes: petrification and marble portraits in late sixteenth-century poetry / Martina Dal Cengio -- The portrait of the ideal woman: Petrarch in conduct literature texts for and about women / Francesco Lucioli -- Anti-Petrarchist portraiture or a different Petrarchist portraiture? A literary outlook on some non-idealised female sitters in Renaissance art / Diletta Gamberini -- The shadow of Petrarch: Benedetto Varchi and Agnolo Bronzino on portraiture / Antonio Geremicca -- Double portraits of Petrarch and Laura in print (c. 1544-1600) / Gemma Cornetti -- Sonnet 'diptychs' and double portraits: figurative allusions in sixteenth-century encomiastic poetry / Muriel M.S. Barbero) -- Images of women from subject to frame in printed portrait books / Susan Gaylard.