Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cardinals and their Images
- Part I Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome
- Part II Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome
- Part III Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods
- Part IV Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal
- Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy
- Index
- Plate Section
3 - Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth-Century Florence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cardinals and their Images
- Part I Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome
- Part II Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome
- Part III Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods
- Part IV Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal
- Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
Abstract
Although the city of Florence lacked a cardinal for most of the fifteenth century, the city was not lacking in cardinal portraits during the same period. This chapter examines two visual portraits of cardinals by Bicci di Lorenzo and Francesco di Antonio del Chierico alongside written portraits found in a diary by Bartolommeo di Michele del Corazza and the Lives of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The chapter argues that specific contexts can help explain the choices made by artists and authors to provide or shun idiosyncratic details in their works.
Keywords: Florence; cardinal portraiture; Quattrocento; Bicci di Lorenzo; Francesco del Chierico; Vespasiano da Bisticci
The introduction and prominence of portraiture has long been associated with Italian Renaissance painting and the so-called ‘awakening’ of the individual. In the traditional narrative, the painter Masaccio played a prominent role through his portraits of men in his lost Sagra painting and his contributions to the Brancacci Chapel, both for the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Masaccio's approach contrasted with that of his contemporary Bicci di Lorenzo, active during the same years and in the decades following, who maintained the more traditional emphasis upon more generic types. Bicci's figures differ from each other, but the differences bore little relationship to the physical appearances of the individuals asthey were or had been. Instead, the emphasis was on group identity, and, for those inclined, the identification of specific individuals was possible from their garments, accessories, and placement in historical events, rather than their idiosyncratic physical characteristics.
The differing treatment of portraits of cardinals in both visual and literary sources from fifteenth-century Florence suggests that portraiture functioned differently depending on the contexts of the painter or writer. This chapter examines several visual and literary examples to highlight ways that portraiture, whether painted or written, served context-specific purposes. In one example, Bicci di Lorenzo's Confirmation of Santa Maria Nuova depicted the pope and cardinals as an ecclesiastical group without idiosyncratic individual characteristics (Fig. 3.1).
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- Information
- Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal , pp. 69 - 90Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021