The decorum of women's beauty: Trissino, Firenzuola, Luigini and the representation of women in sixteenth‐century painting

Rogers, Mary

doi:10.1111/j.1477-4658.1988.tb00137.x

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…123 Nor were such inventories always limited to works of fiction, however thinly veiled. Soon after Giovio wrote his dialogue on women, the Aristotelian philosopher 119 On this dialogue and the decorum of beauty, see Cropper, 1976;Rogers, 1998; and especially Eisenbichler and Murray's introduction in Firenzuola, 1992, xiii-xli. Miles, 8, notes that "while a modern viewer may associate an image of a woman with an exposed breast with the soft pornography that covers our newsstands, a medieval viewer was likely to associate the sight of an uncovered breast with an everyday scene in the home or marketplace in which a child was being nursed."…”

Section: Virtue and The Embodiment Of Beautymentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 119 On this dialogue and the decorum of beauty, see Cropper, 1976; Rogers, 1998; and especially Eisenbichler and Murray’s introduction in Firenzuola, 1992, xiii–xli. Miles, 8, notes that “while a modern viewer may associate an image of a woman with an exposed breast with the soft pornography that covers our newsstands, a medieval viewer was likely to associate the sight of an uncovered breast with an everyday scene in the home or marketplace in which a child was being nursed.” That said, in the context of these effictiones , straight male desire for an eroticized breast is surely the primary significance. …”

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Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women^*

Gouwens¹

2015

Renaiss. Q.

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In a dialogue drafted soon after the Sack of Rome (1527), Paolo Giovio details historical views of female dignity and assesses the beauty and talents of over 100 women in contemporary Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, and Rome. Unlike most such catalogues, Giovio’s seasons praise with explicit acknowledgment of physical, intellectual, and personal shortcomings. Yet it also celebrates Vittoria Colonna, who commissioned the work, as the ideal noblewoman. Giovio is unconventional in applying to this living woman a pattern of graphic physical description that Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bembo, and many others had followed in delineating fictional characters. This strategy exemplifies the latitude of representational possibilities that characterized Italian literature and art of the 1520s and 1530s. The dialogue also eloquently documents a crucial time in Colonna’s life when her verse commemoration of her husband coalesced with religious devotion, and when physical beauty could be seen to harmonize with other virtues to form a desirable and inspirational whole.

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Section: Virtue and The Embodiment Of Beautymentioning

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Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women^*

Gouwens¹

2015

Renaiss. Q.

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“…Mary Rogers has called attention to the ways in which aristocratic women might be presented by artists 'capable of controlling presentation and dress so that a spectator's indecorously erotic responses might be held in check'. 25 Castiglione's aspiring courtier was urged in Pietro Bembo's name to cultivate a disinterested love of beauty and virtue, beyond human passions. And Bartolomeo Maranta in writing of Titian's Annunciation in Naples around 1575 recalled that viewers are capable of imagining all that is hidden from their eyes, and that this binds them more closely to the object of their desire.…”

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Uncovering beauty: Titian's Triumph of Love in the Vendramin collection

Whistler¹

2011

Renaissance Studies

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An allegory of the power of love by Titian painted about 1543–46 was originally made as a cover for a female portrait in the collection of Gabriel Vendramin (1484–1552) in Venice. This is a rare instance of the survival of a documented canvas cover (timpano) linked to a specific image. My article considers the visual and literary contexts for such covers, and the cultural setting of the Vendramin collection, where sociable viewing involved shared aesthetic and haptic experiences. I suggest that the lost portrait depicted the Venetian patrician Elisabetta Querini Massola (d. 1559) whose virtue and beauty were celebrated in poems by Pietro Bembo, Pietro Aretino and Giovanni della Casa. I link the imagery of the cover to two sonnets by Della Casa in praise of Elisabetta. For reasons of decorum a timpano would have been appropriate for a noblewoman's portrait, but Titian's inventive allegory was designed both to evoke Vendramin's celebrated collection and to recall qualities associated with the image it concealed.

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“…For Renaissance portraits of women, see D. A. Brown; Simons, 1992 and 1995; Cropper, 1976 and 1987; Rogers, 1986 and 1987–88.…”

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Prophets, Saints, and Matriarchs: Portraits of Old Women in Early Modern Italy^*

Campbell

2010

Renaiss. Q.

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This essay examines portraits of old women that were produced for the households of the professional and elite classes in Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, and the Veneto during the second half of the sixteenth century, when, as a result of religious and social reform, women's lives came under increasing scrutiny. By interpreting the portraits within the context of prescriptive texts on the stages of women's lives, this study argues that the portraits provide evidence for the pivotal role of old women within the moral and symbolic order of the family, as well as in the wider community beyond the home.

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The decorum of women's beauty: Trissino, Firenzuola, Luigini and the representation of women in sixteenth‐century painting

Cited by 15 publications

References 5 publications

Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women^*

Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women^*

Uncovering beauty: Titian's Triumph of Love in the Vendramin collection

Prophets, Saints, and Matriarchs: Portraits of Old Women in Early Modern Italy^*

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The decorum of women's beauty: Trissino, Firenzuola, Luigini and the representation of women in sixteenth‐century painting

Cited by 15 publications

References 5 publications

Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women*

Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women*

Uncovering beauty: Titian's Triumph of Love in the Vendramin collection

Prophets, Saints, and Matriarchs: Portraits of Old Women in Early Modern Italy*

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women^*

Female Virtue and the Embodiment of Beauty: Vittoria Colonna in Paolo Giovio’sNotable Men and Women^*

Prophets, Saints, and Matriarchs: Portraits of Old Women in Early Modern Italy^*