Portraits

Undergraduate / Graduate

In this course we will investigate the rising, diffusion, function, and theoretical complexity of portraiture in Italian art from the early Renaissance through the XVIII century. We will analyse the concepts of likeness in its multiple nuances, from physical resemblance to psychological interiority, to understand how identity was constructed, codified, and performed through the visual arts. Approaching painted and sculpted portraits as sophisticated rhetorical devices, we will examine the tension between idealization and realism, and the role of portraiture in courtly politics, gender relations, and memorialization. We will observe the meaning of clothing, the presence of jewels, weapons, tools and other objects, the use of light, and the characteristics of the background in order to understand intention and function of portraits. Our analysis will include artists' self-portraits: from the hidden portraits of the Quattrocento (where the artist appears as a bystander in religious narratives) to the psychological self-studies of the sixteenth century and beyond, we will consider how the status of the artist changed over time from mechanical craftsman to celebrated intellectual. Students will engage with primary sources (including Vasari, Castiglione, Aretino, as well as letters by artists such as Titian and Bernini) alongside modern critical theories regarding self-presentation. We will visit museums and the special collections at the Regenstein and the Newberry libraries.