The tradition of Italian Renaissance portraiture derived from numerous sources: formal Gothic tomb sculpture, the realism of Northern European painters, Roman sculptural portraits, and Humanist scholars' notions of the significance of portraiture in antiquity. As in most undertakings of an intellectual or artistic nature, the Italian Humanists searched for sanctions for portraiture in the literature and art of antiquity. A brief review of these influences on medallion and bust portraits provides an overview of the origins of 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 portraiture remained an occasional exception to the general rule of idealization. It was not until the mid-fifteenth century that antique Roman portraits and the general classicizing trend of fifteenth century culture directed the emerging portrait tradition along more naturalistic lines. It was only then that the likeness of the sitter became a primary goal of painters and sculptors.
Other factors also affected the development of portraiture. The tradition of fo...