RENAISSANCE PORTRAITS : Pairs in Art and Marriage

The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine portraits of married couples from the Italian Renaissance. It is a study of how, and why, men and women are portrayed differently even though they are married to each other and painted by the same artist.The chosen portraits that will be examined and analyzed are: Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza by Piero della Francesca, Francesco Maria della Rovere and Eleonora Gonzaga della Rovere by Titian, Febo da Brescia and Laura da Pola by Lotto,Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora Toledo Medici by Bronzino. A historical theoretical perspective is used throughout with focus on Michael Baxandall’s theories of how visual identity was shaped by the society they were created in. How did they experience the paintings and is it different from how we see them today?Previous research has shown that the significance of many details in Renaissance portraits have become unknown for the modern viewer. This master’s thesis expresses that to unlock the entire meaning of Renaissance portraits, the viewer needs to acquire a considerable amount of information regarding the context the paintings were created in since we do not have the same cultural references today as the viewers of the artwork did during the Renaissance. My analysis shows that when placing these portrait pairs in their socio-historical context it is possible to gather information hidden in the details and therefor understand the paintings more completely. The underlying meaning of fashion, jewelry, poses and gestures become evident when we study the portraits with the same perspective as during the Italian Renaissance. By visually reuniting these pairs in art and marriage, it is possible to see the similarities in how they chose to portray themselves. The historical perspective gives clues as to why they have chosen all the details.