Italian Renaissance Portraiture

Individualized Italian Renaissance portraiture began to develop as early as the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Portraits from that period are found mainly on tomb monuments and the portrayals were usually highly idealized, conforming to the stylistic dictates of the International Gothic style. White has noted a high degree of individualization in certain works from the early Renaissance. Portraits by sculptors such as Pietro Oderisi (1271-1274), Arnolfo di Cambio (c. 1282), Gano da Siena (c. 1315) and Tino di Camaino (completed 1321) are clearly representations of their particular subjects. But such works were unusual and a work such as the portrait of Ranieri del Porrina by Gano da Siena is almost unique in its clear individualization and the relative absence of Gothic elements in the "straightforward and entirely unmannered naturalism" of the sculpture.

Throughout the fourteenth century individualized portrait

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ion portraiture began. This work, which dates from the 1430s, was a landmark in that it was "the first monumental post-classical profile portrait and the first labeled self-portrait of an artist." The reference to classical precedent and the justification for depicting someone other than a ruler were necessary preliminaries to the creation of a portrait tradition. Portrait medallions soon became very popular objects and were cast with likenesses of rulers, military leaders and humanist scholars and writers. The idealization of the first two types was often dictated by the political nature of the act of portraiture and did not, therefore, lend itself to great psychological portraiture. It was, instead, with the depiction of scholars and writers that the tradition of truly individualized portraits began. "The claim of the humanist upon posterity rested on knowledge integrated in the character, and the duty of the medalist was to define its traces on his face." These requirements did not, of course, mean that an exact likeness was a prerequisite for such portraits. But, no matter how the particular subject was to be depicted, there had to be sufficient indication of the sitter's psychology to convince the viewer that he was
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1694
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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