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).