IV. The Flourishing of Portraiture
Renaissance humanists fostered a new appreciation of the individual—the idea that each person possesses unique physical and psychological characteristics. This changing perspective on what defined an individual is clearly illustrated by the remarkable increase in biographies, memoirs, travelogues, and other writings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Portraiture truly flourished within that context. Portraits immortalize both the physical appearance and the character of a subject, whether through sculpture or painting, preserving their individuality for posterity. While portraiture was originally an artistic genre reserved for depictions of royalty, the aristocracy, high-ranking members of the clergy, and other members of the ruling classes, over time, its use spread to intellectuals, the wealthy, and other members of the emerging middle classes. Portraits of men, or of men with their wives and children, were frequently commissioned to commemorate the achievements and social standing of their subjects, and the garments, possessions, and surroundings depicted within would indicate their profession or social status. In contrast, portraits of women were often commissioned as gifts for fiancés or to commemorate a marriage. In addition, while children were initially painted only as members of a larger family, in time, they began to appear individually in portraits of their own.
This era was marked by major innovations in portraiture. Painters in the north, particularly those in the Netherlands, developed the three-quarter view, in which sitters were depicted at an angle rather than in strict profile. At first, backgrounds often consisted of plain fields of dark gray or black, but gradually, painters began to fill those spaces with landscapes that added a sense of depth to the paintings. This new style began to spread throughout Italy in the late fifteenth century, replacing the profile portraits that had been popular until then.
From the late fifteenth century into the sixteenth, artists placed an ever-increasing emphasis on capturing the inner thoughts and emotions of their subjects through depictions of facial expressions and gestures. Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and other artists who excelled in portraiture were adept at capturing the poses and gazes of their sitters in ways that breathed life into their painted likenesses.
