Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T05:47:30.422Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A “True Likeness”: The Renaissance City Portrait*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jessica Maier
Jessica Maier*
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Portraits of cities and of human beings shared a nomenclature and developed along parallel courses in the Renaissance. This article traces their common history, examining evolving notions of likeness and approaches to the visual fashioning of identity across both categories of imagery, then considers one urban subject, Rome, that embodied all the challenges of the genre. In representations of the Eternal City such as those by Leonardo Bufalini and Mario Cartaro, artists sought to convey the appearance of Rome in their own time along with that of its glorious past, and to balance what they could see with an imagined, timeless ideal. In this way, images of Rome offer new insight into early modern portraiture and representation in general.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , Fall 2012 , pp. 711 - 752
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Early versions of the ideas in this article were presented as talks at the annual conference of The Renaissance Society of America in Los Angeles in 2009, and at The Johns Hopkins University in February 2010. I am grateful to the audiences in both cases for their helpful feedback, as well as to Julia DeLancey, chair of my session at the RSA conference, and to Herica Valladares, who invited me to speak at Hopkins. Additionally, I wish to thank Chriscinda Henry and Richard Brilliant for their thoughtful comments on early drafts, as well as Evelyn Lincoln for her invaluable critique of a more recent iteration. Finally, my sincerest gratitude goes to the readers who reviewed the essay with such care and insight for this journal. The research for this article was generously funded by fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the Newberry Library, and the J. B. Harley Research Trust. Translations are the author’s except where otherwise noted.

References

Ackerman, James. “The Planning of Renaissance Rome 1450–1580.” In Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed., Ramsey, P. A., 3 – 17. Binghamton, 1982.Google Scholar
Ackerman, James. The Architecture of Michelangelo. 1961. Reprint, Chicago, 1986.Google Scholar
Alberti, Leon Batttista. On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of De Pictura and De Statua. Ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante. Purgatorio. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Berkeley, 1982.Google Scholar
Almeida, Emilio Rodríguez. Forma urbis marmorea: aggiornamento generale 1980. Rome, 1981.Google Scholar
Aretino, Pietro. Lettere sull’arte. Ed., Camesasca, E. and, Pertile, F.. 3 vols. Milan, 1957.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Lilian. “Benedetto Bordon, ‘Miniator,’ and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Imago Mundi 48 ( 1996 ): 65 – 92.10.1080/03085699608592833CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aujac, Germaine. “La peintre florentin Piero del Massaio et la Cosmographia de Ptolémée.” Geographia Antiqua 3–4 ( 1995 ): 187 – 204.Google Scholar
Ballino, Giulio. De’ Disegni delle piu illustri città, & fortezze del mondo. Venice, 1569.Google Scholar
Ballon, Hilary, and, Friedman, David H.. “Portraying the City in Early Modern Europe: Measurement, Representation, and Planning.” In The History of Cartography ( 2007 ), 680 – 704.Google Scholar
Berger, Harry. Fictions of the Pose: Rembrandt against the Italian Renaissance. Stanford, 2000.Google Scholar
Boffito, Giuseppe, and, Mori, Attilio. Piante e vedute di Firenze: studio storico topografico cartografico. Florence, 1926.Google Scholar
Borroni, Fabia. “Cartaro, Mario.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 20 : 796 – 99. Rome, 1977.Google Scholar
Braun, Georg, and, Franz, Hogenberg. Civitates urbis terrarum. 6 vols. Cologne, 1572 – 1612.Google Scholar
Brilliant, Richard. Portraiture. Cambridge, MA, 1991.Google Scholar
Brown, David Alan. “Leonardo and the Ladies with the Ermine and the Book.” Artibus et Historiae 11.22 ( 1990 ): 47 – 61.10.2307/1483398CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bufalini, Leonardo. Roma. Map, Rome, 1551.Google Scholar
Burns, Howard. “Pirro Ligorio’s Reconstruction of Ancient Rome: The Anteiquae Urbis Imago of 1561.” In Pirro Ligorio: Artist and Antiquarian, ed., Gaston, R., 19 – 92. Florence, 1988.Google Scholar
Campbell, Lorne. Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th, and 16th Centuries. New Haven, 1990.Google Scholar
Campi, Antonio. Cremona fedelissima città. Cremona, 1585.Google Scholar
Cartaro, Mario. Novissimae urbis Romae accuratissima descriptio. Map, Rome, 1576.Google Scholar
Cartaro, Mario. Celeberrimae urbis antiquae fidelissima topographia post omnes alias aeditiones accuratissime delineata. Map, Rome, 1579.Google Scholar
Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. Garden City, NY, 1959.Google Scholar
Cranston, Jodi. The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge, 2000.Google Scholar
Cropper, Elizabeth. “The Beauty of Women: Problems in the Rhetoric of Renaissance Portraiture.” In Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed., Ferguson, M. W., et al. ., 175 – 90. Chicago, 1986.Google Scholar
Didi-Huberman, Georges. “Ressemblance mythifiée et ressemblance oubliée chez Vasari: la légende du portrait ‘sur le vif.’” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 106.2 ( 1994 ): 383 – 432.10.3406/mefr.1994.4334CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Pinet, Antoine. Plantz, Pourtraitz, et Descriptions de Plusieurs Villes et Forteresses. Lyon, 1564.Google Scholar
Edwards, Catharine. Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City. New York, 1996.Google Scholar
Ehrle, Francesco. Roma al tempo di Giulio III. La pianta di Roma di Leonardo Bufalini del 1551 riprodotta dall’esemplare esistente nella Biblioteca Vaticana. Rome, 1911.Google Scholar
Elliot, James. The City in Maps: Urban Mapping to 1900. London, 1987.Google Scholar
Fletcher, J. M. “Isabella d’Este, Patron and Collector.” In Splendours of the Gonzaga, ed., Chambers, D. S. and, Martineau, J., 51 – 63. London, 1981.Google Scholar
Forlani, Paolo. Vero disegno e ritratto di Parma. Map, Venice, ca. 1567.Google Scholar
Frangenberg, Thomas. “Chorographies of Florence: The Use of City Views and City Plans in the Sixteenth Century.” Imago Mundi 46 ( 1994 ): 41 – 64.10.1080/03085699408592788CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, David. “‘Fiorenza’: Geography and Representation in a 15th-century City View.” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 64 ( 2001 ): 56 – 77.10.2307/3657221CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frommel, Christoph Luitpold. “St. Peter’s: The Early History.” In The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed., Millon, H. A. and, Lampugnani, V. M., 399 – 423. Milan, 1994.Google Scholar
Frutaz, Amato Pietro. Le piante di Roma. 3 vols. Rome, 1962.Google Scholar
Gautier Dalché, Patrick. “The Reception of Ptolemy’s Geography (End of the Fourteenth to Beginning of the Sixteenth Century).” In The History of Cartography ( 2007 ), 3 : 285 – 364.Google Scholar
Guéroult, Guillaume. Épitomé de la Corographie d’Europe illustré des pourtraitz des Villes plus renomées d’icelle. Lyon, 1553.Google Scholar
The History of Cartography . Vol. 3, Cartography in the European Renaissance. Ed. Woodward, David. Chicago, 2007.Google Scholar
Huelsen, Christian. Saggio di bibliografia ragionata delle piante icnografiche e prospettiche di Roma dal 1551 al 1748. Florence, 1933.Google Scholar
Huppert, Ann C. “Mapping Ancient Rome in Bufalini’s Plan and in Sixteenth-Century Drawings.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 53 ( 2008 ): 79 – 98.Google Scholar
Insolera, Italo. Roma. Immagini e realtà dal X al XX secolo. Bari, 1980.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Fredrika H. “Woman’s Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba Anguissola.” Renaissance Quarterly 47.1 ( 1994 ): 74 – 101.10.2307/2863112CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, Richard L. Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793. New Haven, 2000.Google Scholar
Kemp, Martin, ed. Leonardo on Painting. New Haven, 1989.Google Scholar
Koerner, Joseph Leo. “Rembrandt and the Epiphany of the Face.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 12 ( 1986 ): 5 – 32.Google Scholar
Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago, 1993.Google Scholar
Kostof, Spiro. “The Popes as Planners: Rome, 1450–1650.” In A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals, 485 – 509. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Land, Norman. The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art. University Park, 1994.Google Scholar
Lavedan, Pierre. La représentation des villes dans l’art aux moyen age. Paris, 1954.Google Scholar
Luzio, Alessandro. “Arte retrospettiva: I ritratti d’Isabella d’Este.” Emporium 11 ( 1900 ): 344 – 59, 427–42.Google Scholar
Madden, , Frederic, William,, Charles Roach, Smith, and, Stevenson, Seth William. A Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins: Republican and Imperial. London, 1889.Google Scholar
Maier, Jessica. “Imago Romae: Renaissance Visions of the Eternal City.” PhD diss ., Columbia University, 2006.Google Scholar
Maier, Jessica. “Mapping Past and Present: Leonardo Bufalini’s Plan of Rome (1551).” Imago Mundi 59 ( 2007 ): 1 – 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maier, Jessica. “Come se resuscitata dalla tomba: La pianta di Roma di Leonardo Bufalini, 1551.” In Rappresentare la città ( 2010 ), 158 – 78.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, Leatrice. Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi’s Due lezzioni and Cinquecento Art Theory. Ann Arbor, 1982.Google Scholar
Miller, Naomi. “Mapping the City: Ptolemy’s Geography in the Renaissance.” In Envisioning the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography, ed., Buisseret, D., 34 – 74. Chicago, 1998.Google Scholar
Miller, Naomi. Mapping the City: The Language and Culture of Cartography in the Renaissance. London, 2003.Google Scholar
Mommsen, Theodor E. “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages.’” Speculum 17 ( 1942 ): 226 – 42.10.2307/2856364CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morsolin, Bernardo. Giangiorgio Trissino: Monografia d’un gentiluomo letterato nel secolo XVI. 2nd ed. Florence, 1894.Google Scholar
Nuti, Lucia. “The Mapped Views by Georg Hoefnagel: The Merchant’s Eye, the Humanist’s Eye.” Word & Image 4 ( 1988 ): 545 – 69.10.1080/02666286.1988.10436199CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuti, Luci. “The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century: The Invention of a New Representational Language.” Art Bulletin 76 ( 1994 ): 105 – 28.10.2307/3046005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuti, Luci. Ritratti di città: visione e memoria tra medioevo e settecento. Venice, 1997.Google Scholar
Parshall, Peter. “Imago contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance.” Art History 16 ( 1993 ): 554 – 79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkinson, Stephen. “From an ‘Art de Memoire’ to the Art of Portraiture: Printed Effigy Books of the Sixteenth Century.” Sixteenth Century Studies 33 ( 2002 ): 687 – 723.10.2307/4144020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piccolpasso, Cipriano. Le piante et i ritratti delle città e terre dell’Umbria sottoposte al governo di Perugia. Ed., Cecchini, Giovanni. Rome, 1963.Google Scholar
Pinto, John. “Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 35 ( 1976 ): 33 – 50.10.2307/988969CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, John. “Forma Urbis Romae: Fragment and Fantasy.” In Architectural Studies in Memory of Richard Krautheimer, ed., Striker, Cecil L., 143 – 46. Mainz, 1996.Google Scholar
Pope-Hennessy, John. The Portrait in the Renaissance. New York, 1966.Google Scholar
Randolph, Adrian. “Introduction: The Authority of Likeness.” Word & Image 19 ( 2003 ): 1 – 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappresentare la città. Topografie urbane nell’Italia di antico regime. Ed. Marco, Folin. Reggio Emilia, 2010.Google Scholar
The Renaissance World. Ed. John Jeffries, Martin. New York, 2007.Google Scholar
Ribouillault, Denis. “Landscape all’antica and topographical anachronism in Roman fresco painting of the sixteenth century.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71 ( 2008 ): 211 – 37.Google Scholar
Ricci, Giovanni. “‘Verare la città’ (La città e il suo doppio).” In L’immagine delle città italiane dal XV al XIX secolo, ed., De Seta, Cesare, 67 – 71. Rome, 1998.Google Scholar
Richardson, Lawrence. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore, 1992.Google Scholar
Rocchi, Enrico. Le piante icnografiche e prospettiche di Roma del secolo XVI. Rome, 1902.Google Scholar
Rogers, Mary. “The Decorum of Women’s Beauty: Trissino, Firenzuola, Luigini and the Representation of Women in Sixteenth-Century Painting.” Renaissance Studies 2 ( 1988 ): 47 – 88.10.1111/j.1477-4658.1988.tb00137.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rombai, Leonardo. “Tolomeo e Toscanelli, fra medioevo ed età moderna: cosmografia e cartografia nella Firenze del XV secolo.” In Il mondo di Vespucci e Verrazzano: geografia e viaggi dalla terrasanta all’America, ed., Rombai, Leonardo, 29 – 69. Florence, 1993.Google Scholar
Rosand, David. “The Portrait, the Courtier, and Death.” In Castiglione: The Real and the Ideal in Renaissance Culture, 91 – 129. New Haven, 1983.Google Scholar
Rowland, Ingrid. “Rome at the Center of a Civilization.” In The Renaissance World ( 2007 ), 31 – 50.Google Scholar
San, Juan, Rose Marie. “The Court Lady’s Dilemma: Isabella d’Este and Art Collecting in the Renaissance.” Oxford Art Journal 14 ( 1991 ): 67 – 78.Google Scholar
Schlapobersky, Paul, and, Friedman, David. “Leonardo Bufalini’s orthogonal Roma (1551).” Thresholds 28 ( 2005 ): 10 – 16.Google Scholar
Schulz, Juergen. “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography Before the Year 1500.” Art Bulletin 60 ( 1978 ): 425 – 74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonetta, Marcello, and, Alexander, John J. G.. Federico da Montefeltro and His Library. Vatican City, 2007.Google Scholar
Steinby, Eva Margareta, ed. Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae. 6 vols. Rome, 1993–2000.Google Scholar
Stevenson, Edward L ., trans. The Geography of Claudius Ptolemy. Intro. Joseph Fischer. New York, 1932.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stinger, Charles. The Renaissance in Rome. Bloomington, 1985.Google Scholar
Stroffolino, Daniela. La città misurata: tecniche e strumenti di rilevamento nei trattati a stampa del Cinquecento. Rome, 1999.Google Scholar
Swan, Claudia. “Ad vivum, naer het leven, from the life: Considerations on a Mode of Representation.” Word & Image 11 ( 1995 ): 353 – 72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Syson, Luke. “Reading Faces: Gian Cristoforo Romano’s Medal of Isabella d’Este.” In La Corte di Mantova nell’età di Andrea Mantegna: 1450–1550 / The Court of the Gonzaga in the Age of Mantegna: 1450–1550, 281 – 94. Rome, 1997.Google Scholar
Thompson, David, ed. The Idea of Rome, from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Albuquerque, 1971.Google Scholar
Thomson de Grummond, Nancy. “VV and Related Inscriptions in Giorgione, Titian, and Durer.” Art Bulletin 57 ( 1975 ): 346 – 56.Google Scholar
Trissino, Giangiorgio. I Ritratti. Rome, 1524.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Artists. Trans. George Bull. 2 vols. London, 1965.Google Scholar
Veneziano, Agostino. Vero ritratto di Bologna in Francia. Map, Rome, 1542.Google Scholar
Visioli, Monica. “‘Quasi un vivo simulacro della Patria nostra’: La pianta di Cremona di Antonio Campi, 1582–1583.” In Rappresentare la città ( 2010 ), 261 – 83.Google Scholar
Weiss, Roberto. The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. Oxford, 1969.Google Scholar
Wilson, Bronwen. The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity. Toronto, 2005.Google Scholar
Wilson, Bronwen. “The Renaissance Portrait: From Resemblance to Representation.” In The Renaissance World ( 2007 ), 452 – 80.Google Scholar
Woodall, Joanna, ed. Portraiture: Facing the Subject. Manchester, 1997.Google Scholar
Woods-Marsden, Joanna. “‘Ritratto al Naturale’: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits.” Art Journal 46 ( 1987 ): 209 – 16.Google Scholar
Woods-Marsden, Joanna. “Theorizing Renaissance Portraiture.” In Renaissance Theory, ed., Elkins, James and, Williams, Robert, 360–66, 465–68. New York, 2008.Google Scholar
Woodward, David. Maps as Prints in the Italian Renaissance: Makers, Distributors & Consumers. London, 1996.Google Scholar