© COPYRIGHT

by

Amanda Chadbourne

2018

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

LORENZO LOTTO’S PORTRAITS OF WOMEN: A CASE STUDY OF INNOVATIONS IN

CINQUECENTO FEMALE PORTRAITURE

BY

Amanda Chadbourne

ABSTRACT

This thesis argues that the Cinquecento Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto, inspired by the innovations in female portraiture of and , sought to imbue single- sitter portraits of women with a higher level of individualism and personality, resulting in a sense of agency and autonomy not typical of other portraits of women in the period. Through a case study of Lotto’s Portrait of a Lady as , with additional analysis of his Lucina Brembati and Laura da Pola portraits, I explore the ambiguity tied to gender and sexuality often present after the rise of new categories of female portraits, especially the new genre depicting mistresses and courtesans in sixteenth century . Further, I propose an alternative identity for the sitter in the Lucretia portrait than the conventional one, which identifies her as a noblewoman named

Lucrezia Pesaro. I argue rather that she is a cortigiana onesta, or honest courtesan, who adopted the pseudonym Lucrezia (the vernacular version of Lucretia) in order to convey humanistic learning and ironic wit concerning the theme of chastity in relation to her profession. Courtesans occupied an ambiguous place in Renaissance society; this could at times threaten to upset conventional gender roles in society. Part of my argument is that the artistic traditions of and Northern Italy, along with the unique culture of courtesans in Venice, spurred Lotto’s ingenuity in crafting an ambivalent and multi-dimensional portrait that showcased his sitter’s identity in a novel way. I will also argue that this ambiguity was not limited to portraits of

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courtesans, and with the additional interpretive layers of various paragone, extended to other portraits of women. This thesis asserts that Lotto should be considered among the most innovative artists of the sixteenth century in the genre of female portraiture.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people I would like to acknowledge who have helped me throughout this degree. First and foremost I want to thank my mom, dad, and sister, who were incredibly supportive and encouraging when I decided to get a second Master’s degree. They were always available with a cup of tea and to listen to my ideas, and did not mind me basically ignoring everyone this past Christmas break as I studied for comprehensive exams and worked on PhD applications. (I also want to thank my dogs, Mr. Darcy and Gus, for trying to “help” me study and write – a lot of puppy eyes and games of fetch were involved).

I want to thank my advisor Dr. Butler, for encouraging me to pursue a class paper on

Lotto’s Lucretia and turn it in to this thesis, and for helping me develop the skills to be a professional scholar, (and for being very patient with me as I figured out exactly what shape my thesis would take). Dr. Allen, who is the reason I am going on to get my PhD at the University of

Warwick, has been an amazing mentor, both with my academic work and when I worked as her

TA. I am grateful for all of her help with my application to the University of Warwick, and for suggesting it in the first place.

Last (but definitely not least) I want to thank my cohort. It always felt like we were all in this together, and even though there was a lot of hard work, it was fun doing it with all of you.

Thank you for all the cookies and doughnuts, for the coffee runs, and for the encouragement.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iv List of Illustrations ...... vi Chapter One: Conventions of Female Portraiture in the Renaissance and the Innovations of Lorenzo Lotto…………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter Two: Vice or Virtue?: Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia ...... 16 Chapter Three: Paragone and Lotto’s Female Portraits..……………...………………………………………………………………….34 Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………………....46 Bibliography………………………………………..……………………………………………48

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Fra Filippo Lippi, Portrait of a Woman at a Casement, 1440, tempera on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

2. Alesso Baldovinetti, Portrait of a Lady, 1465, tempera and oil on wood, National Gallery, London

3. Antonio Pollaiuolo, Portrait of a Lady, 1460-1465, tempera and oil on wood, ,

4. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’Benci, 1474/1478, oil on panel, , Washington, DC

5. Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1506 (finished 1517?), oil on wood, , Paris

6. Leonardo da Vinci, The (Cecilia Gallerani), 1489, oil on wood, , Kraków, Poland

7. , , 1515, oil on canvas, Gallery, Florence

8. Palma il Vecchio, Young Woman as Flora (A Blonde Woman), 1520, oil on wood, National Gallery, London

9. Giorgione, Portrait of a Woman (Laura), 1506, oil on canvas (transferred from panel), , Vienna

10. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman as Lucretia, 1533, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

11. Marcantonio Raimondi, The Death of Lucretia (After ), 1511-1512, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

12. , Death of Lucretia, 1540, Trust, London

13. , Lucretia, 1530, oil on canvas, Royal Trust Collection, London

14. Titian, , 1510, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

15. Titian, , 1536, oil on canvas, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

16. Parmigianino, Portrait of a Man, 1523, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

17. Portrait of a Man (possibly Girolamo Rosati), 1533-34, oil on canvas, Cleveland Museum of Art vi

18. (Figure a and b) Unattributed. A Courtesan Exposed/Unexposed, 16th century, Print Collection, New York Public Library

19. Parmigianino, , ca. 1524-1527, oil on canvas, ,

20. Titian, , 1538, oil on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

21. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Lucina Brembati, 1518-23, oil on canvas, ,

22. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, 1488, tempera on wood, Museo Thyssen-Bornemiszo,

23. Palma il Vecchio, Portrait of a Young Woman (La Bella), 1518-1520, oil on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemiszo, Madrid

24. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Laura da Pola, 1543-1544, oil on canvas, , Milan

25. Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, 1510, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

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CHAPTER ONE

CONVENTIONS OF FEMALE PORTRAITURE IN THE RENAISSANCE AND THE INNOVATIONS OF LORENZO LOTTO

The nature of in the Renaissance was very structured and – for the most part – unchallenged by artists of the time. The tradition of portraiture in Italy derives from ancient Greece and , primarily with portrait busts and coins, as few paintings from that time have survived.1 Throughout the Renaissance there were socially acceptable parameters in which an artist could portray a sitter, and there was an enduring tradition of conventions for female portraiture that supported the patriarchal structure of society. Portraits of women became increasingly conceived of in terms of a competition, or paragone, about female beauty and supremacy in its depiction – by artists or poets. Consequently, the genre became less about the actual appearance and nature of the woman being portrayed, and more about abstract ideas of representation. Scholars such as Patricia Simons and Elizabeth Cropper have analyzed the different conventions, whether poetic or societal, that informed female portraits in society.2 This first chapter considers how Lotto complicated the established conventions in female portraiture, and engaged with the new genre of courtesan/mistress portraits in Northern Italy with distinctive and innovative results.3

1 Patricia Simons, "Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture," History Workshop 25 (1988), 5.

2 I will discuss this later in this chapter.

3 It would be interesting, and I believe worthy of deeper study, to look at how Lotto portrayed women in other genres of painting including religious and historical figures, as well as other portraits of contemporary women.

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Of the one hundred and fifty surviving works by Lorenzo Lotto, fifty are portraits, only eight of which feature likenesses of women.4 Since the ‘rediscovery’ of Lotto by Bernard

Berenson, several scholars have investigated Lotto’s life and works. However, his portraits, especially his portraits of women, have been largely ignored by mainstream scholarship.

Relegated to short entries in exhibition catalogues and brief analyses when discussed in relation to his other works, these paintings have not received the considerable attention that many of

Lotto’s other works have, with one exception. Lotto’s Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia, perhaps one of his most well-known works, has been discussed at great length. Historically, there has been much debate over the identity of the sitter. Is she a noblewoman? A courtesan or prostitute?

Or is she more of an allegorical figure and less of a portrait? More recently, the sitter has been identified as a noblewoman named Lucrezia who married into the Pesaro family (from Venice) in the 1500s.5 This identification was based on documents that list the painting as part of the

Pesaro family collection a century after its creation. By looking at Lotto’s portraits of women and analyzing them within the context of contemporary portraiture, another identification of the sitter in the Lucretia portrait becomes more compelling, as will be explored in Chapter Two.

Lorenzo Lotto was influenced by different regional painting traditions, including those of his native city, Venice. He lived and worked in Venice as well as several places on the terra

4 Jozef Grabski and Joanna Wolanska proposed a ninth possible female portrait by Lotto in their essay "The Portrait of Caterina Cornaro in Lorenzo Lotto's "Adoration of the Christ Child" in the National Museum in Cracow." Artibus Et Historiae 31, no. 61 (2010): 191-208. While I find many of their arguments convincing, given that not much other scholarship has been written regarding the identification of the figure as a portrait, I will not be including it in my list of portraits of women by Lotto.

5 Michael Jaffé, “Pesaro Family Portraits: Pordenone, Lotto, and Titian.” Burlington Magazine, 113 (1971), 696-702.

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ferma, or Veneto6, including , Bergamo, and the .7 He is also known to have gone to Rome to work alongside Raphael in the Vatican.8 He was familiar with Northern

Renaissance art by artists such as Hans Holbein and Dürer, even corresponding with Dürer for a short time.9 He was also conversant with the works of several of his leading contemporaries, including Palma il Vecchio and Titian.10 Because of his connections to Northern European

Renaissance art, he brought a few innovations over to Italy, including the marriage portrait.11

The idea of competing with different artists and painting traditions from other areas of Europe will be addressed further in Chapter Two.

The conventions for female portraiture were heavily influenced by the poetry of Petrarch, specifically his Canzoniere, as well as debates about who could better portray beauty: poets or painters.12 Female portraiture became a rhetorical exercise for the representation of ideal beauty.

While other poets and writers also contributed to the debate about what constituted this ideal,

6 The part of mainland Italy under the control of the .

7 David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey, and Mauro Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 5.

8 Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto, 6.

9 Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto, 15.

10 Peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, 4.

11 While marriage portraits were not unknown in Venice, their format was very different. Prior to the Northern European tradition, Italian marriage portraits were done as pendant portraits; two separate portraits that were then hung together. The innovation that Lotto brought over from the Northern European tradition was to have the husband and wife portrayed together on the same picture plane. They were sometimes called a double portrait as not all were done on the occasion of a marriage, but usually showed a married couple. Andrea Zaharia-Roth, Lorenzo Lotto’s Marriage Portraits: Visions of Matriarchal Authority within Conjugal Ideals. Master’s thesis, (University of Southern California, 1995. Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services), 1.

12 Elizabeth Cropper, "The Beauty of Woman: Problems in the Rhetoric of Renaissance Portraiture." In Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 176.

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Petrarch developed the formal archetype of very pale skin, blonde hair, and dark eyes.13

Petrarch’s Canzoniere is about a woman named Laura, and the love he felt for her, which the author claimed was platonic. It was first published in 1336, and the Trionfi was first published in

1351.14 In the Canzoniere, Petrarch often makes references to Laura’s gold or blond hair and pale skin, sometimes also mentioning a laurel bush in place of her name.15 Verse 30 of the

Canzoniere is a good example of the conventional descriptions that became normative for

Renaissance artists:

I saw a girl under green laurel colder and whiter than the snow untouched by the sun for many years: and her speech, her lovely face, her hair so please me that she’s before my eyes, and will be always, wherever on sea or shore…

Such lovely eyes were never seen in our age or in earlier years, that melt me as sun melts the snow: from which proceeds a tear-drenched shore a stream that Love leads under harsh laurel that has branches of steel, and golden hair.16

13 Elizabeth Cropper, "On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style," The Art Bulletin 58, no. 3 (1976), 385-386.

14 The Canzoniere, also known as the Rima Sparse was first published in 1336. the focus of these poems varies and includes some about his friends and patrons, although the overarching theme is love (specifically his for Laura). This collection of poetry is also important as it was written not in Latin, but in the vernacular. It would have a major impact on literature being written in Italian instead of Latin, especially the genre of lyric poetry. The Trionfi, or Triumphs, is an allegory in which Love and other virtues are triumphant over death, and Laura plays a role in Petrarch’s salvation. Petrarch, The Complete Canzoniere, trans. A.S. Kline (Middletown, DE: Poetry in Translation, 2017).

15 Beyond these basic descriptors, there are no details about her appearance. This allowed artists some flexibility in their representations of the Petrarchan beloved, as long as they still referenced blond hair, pale skin and (if the sitter’s name was also Laura) a laurel bush. Renaissance writers, such as Pietro Bembo and Firenzuola, read Petrarch and came up with more structured ways of representing the Petrarchan beloved. See Cropper, “On Beautiful Women,” 374-394.

16 Petrarch. Canzoniere, 63.

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This verse also conveys the idea of the paragone between poetry and painting noted above.

Ancient philosophy and rhetoric held that a literary or written “portrait” was superior to one that was painted or sculpted, since words were understood to more fully describe both inner and outer beauty.17 Lucian, the ancient Greek writer to whom Alberti would look when writing his On

Painting, introduced the idea of a competition between the descriptive abilities of poetry and painting.18 The first part of Petrarch’s Verse 30 represents the strength of a literary “portrait” having the ability to call to mind an image of the beloved by description alone. The lines “…so please me that she’s before my eyes / and will be always wherever on sea or shore…” follow his description of the girl under the laurel bush. He is saying that her image will stay with him always, and that he can call it to his mind’s eye by describing her, making it seem as if she is actually in front of him, no matter where he happens to be. In the Renaissance, there was now the idea that a painting (specifically a portrait) was a visual description of the beloved and did not require the beholder to conjure up an image in his mind’s eye, as he now could more directly enjoy a painted similitude.19 This paragone, like Petrarch’s descriptions of Laura, would have a major impact on cultural standards of beauty in the Renaissance. It also led to the idea that, as

Cropper notes, “the portrayal of a beautiful woman also came to function as a synecdoche for the beauty of painting itself.”20 The paragone between painting and poetry, and its relevance to

Lotto’s innovations in female portraiture is more fully analyzed in Chapter Three.

17 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 175.

18 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 392.

19 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 181.

20 Cropper. “The Beauty of Woman,” 176.

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Cultural norms for portraits in Renaissance Italy are important to consider before analyzing Lotto’s innovations. Portraiture in Italy began with portraits of men, shown in a profile view.21 This gradually evolved into a three-quarter view, but, as Patricia Simons observed, portraits of women continued to be shown in profile for another seventy years. Women were portrayed in profile for much longer, Simons argues, due to different gender norms, in this case a way to perpetuate the idea that women were property, to be sold on the marriage market.22

Profile view portraits showed off their features, alluded to their lineage, and were also a way of showing off the wealth of their family through the clothing and jewels the sitter wore. Some examples are Fra Filippo Lippi’s Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement (Figure 1),

Alesso Baldovinetti’s Portrait of a Lady (Figure 2), and Pollaiuolo’s Portrait of a Lady (Figure

3). In each of these paintings, the decorative sleeve of the woman’s dress bore some symbol of her natal or marital family.23 The profile pose makes the jewels and elaborate hairstyles (also often adorned with expensive materials) each woman wears more visible and suppresses any evidence of female subjectivity. By denying the female sitter an autonomous gaze in the portrait, her gaze is successfully controlled – a key strategy for conveying her highly desirable chastity24.

As Simons noted, Leonardo da Vinci was the first artist in Italy to introduce the three- quarter view to female portraiture with his portrait of Ginevra de’Benci begun in 1474.25 Once

21 Simons, “Women in Frames,” 7.

22 Simons, “Women in Frames,” 9.

23 Simons, “Women in Frames,” 10.

24 Simons, “Women in Frames,” 20-23.

25 Mary Garrard, “Who Was Ginevra de’Benci? Leonardo’s Portrait and Its Sitter Recontextualized,” Artibus et Historiae 27, no. 53, (2006), 25.

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the practice of female portraiture started showing women in three-quarter view, artists were working within a new framework.26 Portraits of women now became increasingly about the artist’s ability rather than about the wealth of the woman’s family or her marriageability. Still, as

Elizabeth Cropper states, “distinctions between the representation of beauty and the beauty represented are often elided, and, as a result, peculiar problems of identity and efficacy are attached to the interpretations of female portraiture.”27 The actual identity of the woman, and her subjectivity, typically remained of little interest to artists or patrons. What was more important was that the woman was identified as an example of ideal beauty by the, presumably male, viewer. Cropper discusses the example of a portrait by Parmigianino, now titled Antea (but still not firmly identified as any particular woman) and the closely contemporary Titian portrait of

Isabella d’Este. The sitters are dressed according to the fashions of the day, although d’Este is shown to be of greater wealth.28 As Cropper points out, there is an underlying formal and conceptual similarity between the two portraits. Neither figure looks out fully at the viewer; both are young, and both have idealized features. This similarity, Cropper explains, demonstrates that

“both portraits represent the same ideal beauty as if it were nature…the women’s beauty is clearly synchronic, aspiring to the same idea; it establishes a similarity that outweighs difference,

26 Garrard, “Who Was Ginevra de’Benci?” 25.

27 Cropper. “The Beauty of Woman,” 176.

28 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 176.

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and only chance survival of the historic record points to Isabella as the subject of Titian’s image.”29

Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’Benci (Figure 4) marked the start of artists creating innovative portraiture as a means of competing with each other.30 What is interesting about all of

Leonardo da Vinci’s portraits of women, and therefore relevant to this paper, is that he also sought to imbue his female sitters with a sense of life.31 To do this, he showed their hands, thus showing more of their bodies, and even implying movement in their poses, which makes the three-quarter view seem more dynamic.32 Two good examples of this are the Mona Lisa (Figure

5) and Cecilia Gallerani (Figure 6). However, their movements were still contained enough to satisfy Renaissance decorum in terms of how women carried themselves.33

As Cropper and Simons both stress, a concern with virtue remained paramount in female portraiture. Lotto arguably subverted this concern, both by rejecting Petrarchan ideals and giving a sense of liveliness to his sitters that might be considered to impart movements that were conventionally gendered masculine. Given Lotto’s knowledge of the works of some contemporary artists such as Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael, it can be assumed he was

29 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 176. Isabella d’Este was about sixty years old when Titian painted this portrait, and yet she looks about the same age as the woman in the Antea portrait, showing that the image was more about idealized beauty and the artist’s ability than an accurate recording of a person’s likeness.

30 This also plays into the idea of paragone, different competitions in the arts that started happening at the end of the Early Renaissance and would gain momentum in the High and Late Renaissance. These themes will be explored further in Chapter Two.

31 Garrard, “Who was Ginevra de’Benci?” 25.

32 Garrard, “Who was Ginevra de’Benci?” 26.

33 Both the Ginevra de’Benci and Cecilia Gallerani will be discussed later throughout the thesis, as will Renaissance ideas of decorum.

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familiar, whether directly or indirectly, with the innovations of Leonardo da Vinci. It is possible

Lotto was familiar with Leonardo’s paintings in Milan, where Lotto also worked for a short time.

As such, Lotto would have been familiar with the conventions for female portraiture from the leading artists at the time, including the conventions for decorum (such as movement).

Scholars have explored gendered concepts of movement in the period, including those that were gendered female: leggiadria, and grazia. It is important to understand not just the physical characteristics that were expected in ideally beautiful women, but also the indefinable, not so easily seen attributes that poets claimed they were better able to describe than painters. By placing portraits of women in the context of these terms, the representation of women in

Renaissance portraiture in the sixteenth century and the problems that go with it can be better understood. Leggiadria was a way for women to move and carry themselves that demonstrated grace, modesty, and elegance without seeming like it was contrived.34 Grazia, which translates most closely to ‘grace’ was understood to be difficult to fully articulate what its specific characteristics were, even during the Renaissance. As many writers remarked, grazia was an inherent sense of judgement that allowed the bearer of it to have a sense of grace and splendor that allowed “a woman who may even lack the accepted proportions of beauty the benefits of grace and render her desirable.”35 However, this definition did not provide women with specific patterns of behavior, attitudes, or movements they could practice to gain grazia. These intangible elements necessary for a woman’s social identity in the Renaissance are important to

34 Sharon Fermor, “Poetry in Motion: beauty in movement and the Renaissance concept of leggiadria,” In Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art, eds. Francis Ames-Lewis and Mary Rogers, (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1998), 124-133.

35 Cropper, “On Beautiful Women,” 380.

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understanding the ideas of outer beauty and inner virtue that were essential to Renaissance portraits of women. According to Lucian, a full picture of beauty must have two parts: effictio and notatio.36 Effictio is the idea of a person’s outer beauty, and notatio refers to their inner beauty or virtue. In literary descriptions, both are needed to accurately portray a beautiful woman.37 Lucian was also the first to suggest the paragone between painting and poetry, arguing that a painter’s portrayal of a beautiful woman could stand up to the descriptive power of words.38 The problem facing artists in the Renaissance was how to portray the inner virtue of a woman – something that was supposed to be intangible, difficult to see without descriptive words. A good example of one of the ways artists resolved this issue is Leonardo’s Ginevra de’Benci. Her outer beauty is paired with a painted inscription on the reverse side of the canvas that reads, “VIRTVTEM FOR/MA DECORAT” (She adorns her virtue with beauty).39 Joining this inscription are a laurel branch and palm frond, representing literary and moral virtue respectively.40 The outer beauty of a woman was becoming representative of her intangible, inner virtue. It was this tradition that Lotto subverted, building upon the fact that Venetian and

Northern Italian artists, such as Parmigianino, Titian, Bernardino Luini, and others, were creating female portraits that moved away from strict notions of virtue. This further relates to the idea of a paragone, or competition, between poetry and paintings that was happening at the time. This

36 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 175.

37 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 175-176.

38 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 175-176.

39 Garrard, “Who was Ginevra de’Benci?” 26.

40 Garrard, “Who was Ginevra de’Benci?” 28-29.

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paragone, along with others that impacted Lotto’s female portraits, will be discusses in Chapter

Three.41

Cropper identified several types or models of female portraiture during the Renaissance.

Portraits of women followed the conventions for Petrarchan beloveds, a marriage portrait, an allegorical representation of beauty (not necessarily the beloved of Petrarch’s poems, but a mythological figure like Flora), or a portrait of a courtesan.42 Regardless of portrait type, as discussed above with the examples of Titian and Giorgione, many of these portraits shared similarities, all of which were related to the idea of portraying in visual images that which poets tried to do with words. Sometimes an object would be included in the portrait that referred to the woman’s first name, such as a laurel bush for Laura or a juniper bush for Ginevra.43 There was a level of metaphor included in every portrait; through the idealized features of the sitter and emblems or signifiers of her more intangible attributes that were thought to be more easily described through words or actions and not as easily conveyed in painted images. In the case of

Lotto’s Lucretia portrait, the slip of paper with an inscription referring to the life of the Roman matron Lucretia invokes a reference to her name (or, more accurately, pseudonym). In the

Lucina portrait, likewise the crescent moon (luna) is inscribed with the letters C I in the center to form LU(CI)NA.

41 There were many paragone, or competitions, between opposing elements during the Renaissance. Many of these directly involved the practice of different arts. Some of the ones I will look at in Chapter Three include: masculine vs. feminine, colore (color) vs. disegno (design), painting vs. sculpture, and painting vs. print.

42 Cropper, “The Beauty of Women,” 175-190.

43 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 183.

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The Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia should be understood in relation to the rise of mistress and courtesan portraits in the previous generation. As with many Renaissance painting traditions, courtesan portraits also developed from a humanistic tradition, based on examples from ancient

Greece and Rome.44 In antiquity, courtesans were associated with Venus, and therefore worshipped alongside the goddess herself. As Lynne Lawner notes, there “seem to have been two types [of courtesan portraits] – civic examples, in which the courtesan appears as herself or as a symbol to illustrate a virtue or good deed, and religious examples, in which the courtesan represents a goddess, most often Venus.”45 Courtesans in the ancient world were often mistresses of famous men – leaders, philosophers, and even artists – or they were renowned due to their beauty.46 Many famous courtesans from the past became inspiration for both Renaissance artists and cortigiane oneste. Flora is an excellent example of this – the name of both the Roman goddess of spring and the real-life mistress of the Roman general and consul Pompey, she would have a major impact on Renaissance art. Flora the goddess and Flora the mistress were known to

Renaissance artists through an abundance of ancient literary sources, although no visual images of

Flora, in either guise, was known to have survived.47 The rediscovery of humanist texts, including those that discussed Flora, coincided with the rise of courtesan culture in Italy.48 This then may have coincided with women who were in the business of selling their bodies recognizing an opportunity to market themselves to a higher class and more learned clientele by familiarizing

44 Lynne Lawner. Lives of the Courtesans. (New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1987), 83.

45 Lawner. Lives of the Courtesans, 83.

46 Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans, 87-89.

47 Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans, 97.

48 Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans, 87-89.

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themselves with these texts and ideas. It allowed for a degree of social mobility and financial independence, in a culture that was otherwise very rigid in its social structure, especially for women. This in turn led to the development of the courtesan portrait as a major genre of painting, starting at the end of the fifteenth century and reaching its peak in the sixteenth century. The representations of courtesans in the guise of ancient figures and heroines was yet again about the artist’s ability to portray ideal beauty, but it also engendered the possibility of courtesans fashioning an identity for themselves. Both artists and courtesans were interested in presenting an ideal that was made to seem real. It is also important to note that, even though honest courtesans would emulate the dress and manner of noblewomen, their treatment in portraiture was different, in key respects.

For example, several portraits of women in the guise of the Roman goddess Flora, or holding flowers, have now been identified as portraits of courtesans. These include Titian’s Flora

(Figure 7) and Palma il Vecchio’s Young Woman as Flora (Figure 8). As Brian Steele discusses, such portraits raise questions of identity and meaning. Steele asks the question, “does the artist commemorate a specific individual or does he idealize beauty without regard for the ’s identity?”49 These portraits will be an important precedent for Lotto as they stage identities in ambiguous terms, with multiple layers of meaning, and no necessarily one “right” answer (identity or allegorical meaning). Many of them were also by Venetian or Northern Italian artists, whose works he could have known.

Another important precedent is Giorgione’s Portrait of a Woman (Laura) (Figure 9).

Giorgione, another Venetian artist, painted a woman in a similar manner to the Flora portraits,

49 Brian Steele, ““In the Flower of Their Youth: “Portraits” of Venetian Beauties ca.1520” The Sixteenth Century Journal 28, no.2, (1997), 491.

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with one breast exposed. However, he placed a wreath of laurel leaves behind her head, and although she is in three-quarter view, she is looking away from the viewer. Scholarship seems to be equally split between those who agree this is a marriage portrait of a new bride, and those who argue this portrait is of a courtesan.50 Of importance to this thesis is the idea, represented by this painting, that a portrait can contain ambiguous symbols, and that in and of itself is one of the points of the portrait – as a way of engaging with the multiple paragone debates happening during the

Renaissance.51 Also of importance is the fact that, even though she has the Petrarchan laurel wreath behind her head indicating her name might be Laura, Giorgione has not shown her in the typical fashion of the Petrarchan beloved. She does not have blonde hair; in fact it is very dark. This, and the particularity of her facial features, suggests that the portrait is of a historical person, but the references to Petrarch and the (possibly?) mythical guise she wears give the portrait additional meaning. The ambiguous nature of this painting – is she an allegorical figure? is she chaste or unchaste? – is an important precedent for portraits of women in the sixteenth century.

A noblewoman’s chastity and virtue were her most important assets, and it was important to convey these attributes in portraiture.52 As Rudolph Schier argues, with the destabilization of

Italian Renaissance conventions of female portraiture at the beginning of the sixteenth century, questions of the sitters’ chastity, virtue, and social status become more difficult to answer.53 As

50 I agree with scholars who identify the sitter as a courtesan. See Anne Christine Junkerman, “The Lady and the Laurel: Gender and Meaning in Giorgione’s “Laura”” Oxford Art Journal, 16, no.1 (1993), 49-58.

51 These debates and their significance to Lotto’s portraits are discussed in greater detail in Chapter Three.

52 One of the few similarities portraits of courtesans and portraits of noblewomen shared was the desire to emulate the Petrarchan beloved.

53 Rudolph Schier, “Identifying Giorgione’s Laura” Italian Studies, 69, no.1 (2014). 24-25.

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Anne Christine Junkerman notes, perhaps the best way forward with paintings like this, and Lotto’s

Lucretia, is not to examine the sitters’ moral place in society, but how the artist chose to present them. As she explains, this approach is important because the question of morality, “was not the immediate issue for painters….[p]ast approaches have tended to overlook both the complexity of this image and its innovative place in the development of Renaissance pictures that display women’s bodies.”54 This critical framework is important to my discussion of Lotto’s three portraits

– Lucina Brembati, Portrait of a Lady Inspired by Lucretia, and Laura da Pola in the next two chapters. Even though I am arguing that the sitter in the Lucretia portrait was an honest courtesan, and both Lucina Brembati and Laura da Pola were part of (minor) noble families, the nexus of distinctions and similarities I discuss will support my overarching argument that Lotto was innovating the genre of female portraiture. Lotto’s innovations will be explored in the next chapter through a case study of his Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia.

54 Junkerman, “The Lady and the Laurel,” 51.

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CHAPTER TWO

VICE OR VIRTUE?: LORENZO LOTTO’S PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS LUCRETIA

In this chapter, I build on the scholarship of Hans Ost and Jacques Bonnet by arguing that the sitter of Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia (Figure 10) was likely to have been a cortigiana onesta, or honest courtesan, who assumed the name Lucretia or Lucrezia. I will also argue that, in this context, Lotto exploited the ambivalence inherent in the Roman heroine’s story, depicting the sitter as both a Lucretia type and anti-type – invoking ideas of both chastity and unchastity. He thereby destabilized conventional norms for female portraiture, which had traditionally insisted on the correlation between outer beauty and inner virtue, and, in so doing, ultimately imbued the sitter with a sense of agency and autonomy.

The woman in the center of the portrait is standing, facing the viewer, but her body is twisting to the side as one arm holds a piece of paper with an image on it, away from her body, while her other hand points toward the paper and the table to her left. A necklace is precariously tucked into the front of her dress, a headpiece sits atop her hair, and the table holds a sprig of wildflowers and a piece of paper that reads “NEC VLLA IMPVDICA LVCRETIAE EXEMPLO VIVET / Nor shall any unchaste woman live through the example of Lucretia.”55 This inscription has been interpreted to mean that now any woman who has lost her honor will not be able to look to

Lucretia’s precedent as a viable option, not that women should follow Lucretia’s choice if they find themselves in a similar situation.56 The text is paired with a bunch of wildflowers, which bears a resemblance to those in Titian’s Flora (1520). The inclusion of flowers in a portrait of a

55 Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto, 185.

56 Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto, 185.

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woman could have many meanings. Flowers were usually associated with the goddess Flora, who was not only the goddess of spring, but also the patron of prostitutes.57 Flowers also had reference to beauty, the fleeting nature of beauty and time, or a poetic references to love. 58 The inclusion of the flowers on the table, placed next to the quote about Lucretia add another layer of ambiguity to this portrait. Given the emergence of courtesan portraits with flowers earlier in the century, they could also be a reference to Flora or help identify the sitter as a courtesan.

There is disagreement concerning the best way to interpret the intention behind the phrase in the painting. For this chapter I will be considering the phrase at face value; it was meant to suggest the sitter’s familiarity with authors such as Livy and act as an attribute of both the print and the sitter in the painting – I will return to this below. The print the figure holds in her hand portrays a semi-nude woman about to stab herself in the chest with a knife. This iconography, well-known at the time due to the widely circulated Marcantonio print after

Raphael (Figure 11), paired with the inscription, indicates that the woman in the drawing is

Lucretia – the ancient Roman matron who committed suicide after being raped so that she might preserve her purity and her family’s honor.

No documents or archival evidence regarding the creation and commission of Lotto’s

Lucretia have thus far been found. The provenance of Lotto’s Lucretia can only be traced as far back as the 18th century, to the Pesaro family in Italy. This led some scholars to identify the sitter as Lucrezia Valier, who had married into the patrician Pesaro family around 1530 at a time when

57 Steele, “Venetian Beauties” 491.

58 Steele, “Venetian Beauties” 491-495.

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Lorenzo Lotto was present in Venice.59 However, there is no secure evidence that the sitter is

Lucrezia Valier; indeed, the sitter may not have even been a noblewoman. Further, there is no documentation to indicate when the painting entered the Pesaro family collection. In 1981, Ost, followed more recently by Bonnet, proposed a more persuasive identification; that the woman portrayed was a courtesan. Ost and Bonnet came to this conclusion based on the suggestive placement of the necklace and veil, as well as the titles by which the painting had previously been known – The Courtesan and Portrait of a Great Venetian Prostitute. However, Ost and

Bonnet suggested that the sitter is an anonymous courtesan, who functions in the painting to allow Lotto to paint an allegorical figure. Rona Goffen addressed the ambiguity present in the painting, arguing Lotto combined masculine and feminine traits, in particular gagliardia – the idea of a bold, assertive movement, traditionally gendered male– as a “way of saying that virtue has no gender, or that it belongs to both genders.”60 Goffen further speculates that perhaps

Lotto’s Lucretia “contains the germs of destruction of oppressive patriarchal definitions of woman, female chastity and female sexuality, that Lucretia herself had come to embody.”61

However, her analysis ultimately places this painting in the category of allegory, and she concludes the sitter is not meant to be identified with an actual person. Many portraits of courtesans from this time are assumed to be anonymous – they are in the guise of Flora or some other mythological, allegorical, or historical figure. Rarely are they portrayed as themselves, and even then it is usually in the role as mistress of the artist.62

59 Jaffé. “Pesaro Family Portraits,” 696-702.

60 Rona Goffen. "Lotto's Lucretia." Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 3 (1999), 777.

61 Goffen. “Lotto’s Lucretia,” 777.

62 See Chapter One for a longer discussion of courtesan culture in the Renaissance.

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Before proceeding to the analysis of the Lucretia portrait, let us consider in more detail

Leonardo da Vinci’s portraits of women, specifically his court portraiture in Milan, as well as

Giorgione’s Laura crucial precedents for Lotto’s portraiture. As is well known, Leonardo worked and traveled through Milan, Venice, and elsewhere in Northern Italy. Whether or not

Lotto and Leonardo’s paths met might not ever be known, but it is possible that Lotto was familiar with the older artist’s paintings in some way, either through prints or seeing them in person. As discussed in previous chapters, Leonardo’s portrait, Ginevra de’Benci, had a ripple effect on the creation of portraits of women in the Renaissance. His innovations of women in portraiture – placing them outdoors, in three-quarter view, and emphasizing more of their individual personality while finding a balance with more idealized features and notions of virtue

– became increasingly important to artists throughout the sixteenth century, in part as a way of engaging with the idea of artistic paragone. By equaling and surpassing those that came before them, artists continued to build on the innovations of their predecessors, changing how art and its subjects were conceptualized. Of interest to this thesis is Leonardo da Vinci’s Portrait of Cecilia

Gallerani (Figure 17) as a possible source of inspiration for Lotto. This portrait features many witty jokes and play-on-words that those at court would have appreciated and can be seen as more of an equivalent to the types of witty references that can be read in Lotto’s Lucretia portrait. Cecilia Gallerani was the favorite mistress of Duke .63 It is not certain which of them commissioned the painting, but many elements of the painting have double

63 Frank Zöllner, Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings, Volume I, (Köln, Germany: TASCHEN GmbH, 2016), 94.

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meanings that refer to both the Duke and Cecilia. Her pose is much more dynamic, it is closer to a figura serpentinata pose, with her arm being drawn almost all the way across her body.

However, Leonardo counters the potential moral ambiguity of her pose by placing an ermine in her arms, making her pose seem more natural and graceful through the placement of her hands.

The ermine itself is also an interesting choice. It can be a reference to Cecilia’s last name, the

Greek for ermine being close to Gallerani.64 Ludovico Sforza also took the ermine as his symbol, which is again interesting when considering that Cecilia is holding it and caressing it.65 Cecilia is turning away from the viewer, but there is a hint of a smile on her face, which was still unusual in female portraiture, and could be there to give her more individual personality. As Leonardo was known for giving psychology to the faces of his figures, this is a distinct probability. The ambiguous, double meaning behind the choices for this portrait, combined with her pose and the suggestion of individualism make this an interesting precedent for Lotto’s Lucretia portrait.

Giorgione’s Laura, as discussed in Chapter One, also sets a precedent for Lotto’s Lucretia, with the ambiguous, multiple interpretations behind the iconography.

To further analyze the layers of ambiguity in the Lucretia portrait, I will now discuss the ambivalence at the heart of the story of Lucretia and its relevance to the founding myth of the

Roman republic, which was popular during the Renaissance. Lucretia was the wife of Collatinus.

One day he boasted of the chastity and beauty of Lucretia to Sextus Tarquinius, Etruscan prince of Rome, and Tarquinius (Tarquin) fell in love with Lucretia and decided he must have her for himself. When she refused to give in to him, he threatened to kill her and a servant, to make it

64 Zöllner. Leonardo da Vinci, 94.

65 Zöllner, Leonardo da Vinci, 94.

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appear as if she willingly slept with one of the servants of the house, an act that would have been considered beyond shameful in ancient Rome, and so she unwillingly submitted to Tarquinius.

Since this was seen as an act of adultery, even though it was not consensual, her father, husband and brothers would have had the right to kill her.

She anticipates them, killing herself instead so that she cannot be accused of being complicit in adultery. Before she does so, she calls upon her father, husband and brothers to avenge her, ending with the appeal for women who find themselves in a similar situation to follow her example. Her male kinsman answer her call to revenge, killing the Tarquinius line of kings and establishing the .66

One patriarchal tradition lauded Lucretia as an example of chastity and virtue, while another condemned her for committing the Catholic sin of suicide. In his History of Rome, Livy extolled the virtue of her decision to kill herself after being sexually violated rather than live with the shame that risked her family honor.67 Whereas, according to Saint Augustine, if she were completely non-complicit in her rape, she would not have seen the need to kill herself; and regardless of her sexual innocence committed a cardinal sin by committing suicide.68 Even though the question of her moral virtue remained unresolved, her story was still considered a didactic tale for new brides. Indeed, it was fashionable to have a cassone, or wedding chest,

66 Livy. Ab Urbe Condita (The History of Rome), Trans. B.O. Foster. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 57-59.

67 Livy. History of Rome, 57-59.

68 Saint Augustine. The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. R.W. Dyson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89.

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painted with moralizing scenes from her story. The masculinist context for this choice is underscored by the popularity of eroticized scenes featuring Lucretia. This can be seen, for instance, in Parmigianino’s drawing Death of Lucretia (Figure 12), Francesco Vecellio’s

Lucretia (Figure 13), and Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia (Figure 14).

Along with the aforementioned print by Marcantonio, these paintings and drawings all feature Lucretia in various states of undress, about to or in the act of stabbing herself with a knife

– presented for the delectation of the male viewers.

The question of Lucretia’s chastity had the potential to be particularly problematic in

Venice, due to the unique courtesan culture present in that city. Though other cities such as

Rome also had a prominent courtesan culture, Venice was renowned for its cortigiana onesta.69

However, this caused even more emphasis to be placed on the virtue and chastity of women of the patrician class. The use of Lucretia and her suicide in domestic paintings, such as the cassone, which would have been available to female viewers, also has gendered connotations, as discussed by Cristelle Baskins. In the story, Lucretia recounts to her husband, father, and other male relatives what has happened to her and calls them to avenge her before plunging the knife into her chest. As Baskins notes, in most cassone paintings, the narrative shows Lucretia’s dead body and a representation of her male relatives vowing to seek revenge and destroy the

Tarquinian line. Lucretia is no longer the one speaking, which takes away the agency of the original Lucretia. Baskins notes that this most likely stemmed from Renaissance notions of

69 There is no definitive record of how many courtesans lived in Venice during the 1500s. According to Marin Sanudo (a diarist) and Fra Bernardino da anywhere between 10,000 to 12,000 courtesans were operating in the Venetian Republic at the beginning of the century. However, another writer visited in 1580, and reported that 150 courtesans were living there in the most luxurious style. Lynne Lawner. Lives of the Courtesans, 14.

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female virtue, male dominance, and speech prevalent in the Renaissance. These ideas held that a woman’s virtue was evident in her paucity of speech.70 As Baskins argues, by containing

Lucretia’s speech and instead emphasizing her body, these paintings achieved “a stable gender hierarchy ordering male speech over female chatter.”71 Therefore, in both domestic paintings

(meant for female viewers) and eroticized images (presumably for male viewers) of Lucretia and her story, an attempt at containing the ambiguity of Lucretia’s story within the confines of a patriarchal society that favors chastity is being made.

To return to Goffen’s proposal regarding the sitter’s gagliardezza, we might consider the possibility that Lotto is overtly signaling a social status distinct from patriarchal conventions. In her discussion of movement in the Renaissance, Sharon Fermor explains the importance of gagliardia’s opposite, leggiadria, for noblewomen:

…an upright carriage was taken as a sign of chastity. Indeed, uprightness and an appearance of containment arising from control of the limbs were almost emblematic of the physical and mental purity deemed essential in well-born women. In descriptions of dancing, it is made clear that bending of the body and extension of the limbs were considered highly seductive…72

Even though a woman’s gaze was no longer contained through the profile portrait, artists could achieve a similar effect through the posture and comportment of the sitter. However, this also

70 Many humanists, philosophers, and writers had much to say on the topic of women’s speech and how little or much they should talk. These ideas were present in Venice as well, with the publication of Francesco Barbaro’s De re uxoria in 1416.

71 Cristelle Baskins. “Corporeal Authority in the Speaking Picture: The Representation of Lucretia in Tuscan Domestic Painting,” in Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, ed. Richard C. Trexler (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994), 199.

72 Sharon Fermor. "Movement and Gender in Sixteenth-century Italian Painting." In The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture since the Renaissance, eds. Kathleen Adler and Marcia Pointon (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 143.

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opened up the potential for more morally ambiguous portraits of women. When compared with

Titian’s La Bella (Figure 15), which demonstrates the sweet, restrained, leggiadria poses typical of portraits of women, it is easy to see how the pose of the sitter in Lotto’s Lucretia displays more gagliardia than leggiadria. The figure in Titian’s La Bella is standing upright with her arms kept close to her body, giving off the appearance of containment typical of leggiadria. The sitter in Lotto’s portrait is leaning to her right while twisting her body to her left as her arms are outstretched and held away from her body, in a manner more typical of gagliardia poses. This can be seen upon comparison with Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Collector (Figure 16), and

Lotto’s Portrait of a Man, (possibly Girolamo Rosati) (Figure 17) which demonstrate the overly energetic, twisting poses with extended arms typical of Renaissance portraits of men. By placing the sitter of the Lucretia portrait in a more active pose, Lotto removed her from the role of passive female object. Now it is both the male viewer/artist and the female sitter who are participating in active roles within this portrait.

Not likely a betrothed woman, a wife or a mother, because the normative presentation of clearly expressed outer beauty and inner virtue is lacking, the hypothesis that the sitter of the

Lucretia portrait is a cortigiana onesta is most persuasive. Colin James Wealleans argued a cortigiana onesta had a “unique emancipatory potential within her contemporary socio-political context: managing her own capital, building her own household, and contributing to the literary and artistic worlds.”73

73 Colin James Wealleans. The "Honest Courtesan", Free Woman of the Renaissance. An Exploration of the Sociocultural Construction of La Cortigiana (PhD diss., The Manchester Metropolitan University, 2015), 7.

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These pursuits were generally reserved for the realm of men, and Italian noblewomen were expected to have no part in these activities.Yet, honest courtesans not only enjoyed more mobility in public life, they also had more agency in fashioning their own identities – and the terms according to which their bodies were consumed. Since courtesans were responsible for their own capital, they also would have owned the objects in their homes, unlike Italian noblewomen who did not themselves own even their clothes, which remained property of the patrilineal line.

The slight pulling to one side and inclination of her head, with a bold, direct gaze can also be read as reminding the viewer of the sitter’s participation in these traditionally masculine spheres; a cortigiana onesta had more agency and autonomy than most other women in

Renaissance society. As an honest courtesan, it would be the sitter’s business to act seductively, which is evident in the painting, though her more masculine posture might simultaneously suggest her exerting control over her body and her business affairs.

This mixing of the masculine and feminine within Lotto’s Lucretia could also be a reference to the ambiguity of courtesans themselves. Venice became famous for the beauty of the women who lived there, and it became even more famous for the courtesans, particularly the cortigiane oneste who called Venice their home. Poems, satires, defenses, and other writings were created about (and sometimes by) Venetian courtesans. This has left us with a wealth of information about the dress and lifestyle of both Venetian noblewomen and their courtesan counterparts, as even in the Renaissance it was noted that one dressed similarly to the other.

While courtesans were useful to the Venetian civic government in many ways, including acting as spies, drawing wealthy merchants and foreign dignitaries to the city, and as a source of income tax, there was still an interest in controlling them through the use of sumptuary laws.

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Despite these, cortigiane oneste mimicked the outward dress and appearance of Venetian noblewomen to draw in patrons and delineate themselves from other courtesans and common prostitutes. However, there was one element of their dress that courtesans and prostitutes shared, and noblewomen did not: they would wear men’s clothes underneath their voluminous dresses.

This was also recorded at the time, as can be seen in an unattributed engraving from 1590, showing a Venetian courtesan wearing trousers beneath her skirt (Figure 18a and 18b).74 The reasoning for this is well explained by Lynne. She explains that courtesans often “needed to switch, from one instant to the next, from simulacrum of respectable lady to enticing gamine free to move about the city in disguise. The ambiguity must have been appealing to the men of that time, who enjoyed mingling the natural and “unnatural” ways of making love, often keeping male lovers and alternating them with their chosen courtesans.”75 This aspect of courtesans’ lives was also documented and commented upon during the Renaissance. Therefore, the assumption can be made that it would have been well-known enough for certain viewers of this portrait to understand the reasoning behind the combination of the masculine and feminine in Lotto’s

Lucretia. Perhaps it would even have been seen as an eroticizing element of the portrait, further identifying the sitter as a cortigiana onesta.

74 This engraving shows another Venetian fashion. Pianelle were a type of very tall clog with fabric shoes attached at the top. Venetian noblewomen wore it as a fashion and in a patriarchal context, as Lawner points out, the extreme height meant that they must always be accompanied as it was difficult if not impossible for them to walk in pianelle unassisted, and so they could not have gone about on their own. Cortigiane oneste, on the other hand, were sometimes required to make their way across the city quickly and without the presence of assistants or servants. Therefore, their choice to wear these clogs could only have been to make their apparent “noble” status seem as authentic as possible. Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans, 19-20.

75 Lawner. Lives of the Courtesans, 20.

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Let us return to the question of the decision to identify the sitter with Lucretia.

Courtesans would often take on pseudonyms, usually a name that was associated with a virtuous or chaste figure – “Lucrezia” then itself would have functioned as a witticism designed to attract the courtesan’s noble and learned clientele, while also demonstrating that she (the courtesan) was learned as well. By aligning herself with the nude Lucretia, the sitter is creating an erotic comparison that functions by means of a series of sly interventions, including the juxtaposition with the jewels tucked into her bodice and the shawl slipping from her shoulders.

At the same time, there is also a contrast between the clothed sitter and nude Lucretia.

Because of this distinct contrast between the two figures, a possible reading of this painting is that the sitter has autonomy over her sexuality, in a way that the historical Lucretia did not. The crumpling up of the paper, as if the sitter is about to cast it aside, supports this hypothesis.

This also relates to the idea of a gendered beholder, and a lyric, chivalric relationship between the woman in a painting and the (presumed male) viewers, a normative “I-you” model that Elizabeth Cropper has also discussed.76 This model is related to the amorous, gendered relationship between the presumed male beholder of a work of art and female subject, expressed through direct eye contact. The lyricism in this model comes from the paragone, or competition, between poetry and painting happening during the Renaissance (see Chapter Three). Portraits of women in the Renaissance took on a rhetorical meaning and became separated from the identity of the actual woman portrayed. It became more about the artist’s ability to depict ideal beauty, regardless of whether the woman was real or fictional, resulting in idealized features, and many

76 Elizabeth Cropper, “The Place of Beauty in the Renaissance and Its Displacement in the History of Art,” in Place and Displacement in the Renaissance, ed. Alvin Vos, (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995), 197-199.

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unnamed portraits from the period. Cortigiane oneste figure into this new rhetoric of beauty, as they were often the models for artists such as Titian, Raphael, and Parmigianino, whether posing as themselves or in an allegorical guise. This new genre of courtesan portraits was prevalent in

Venice and the , though it was also seen in other major artistic Italian cities such as

Rome. This led to the popularity of paintings depicting a beautiful woman who engaged the viewer in a way that could be challenging and titillating, but still resided in the patriarchal context of an eroticized or idealized portrait of a woman. Because of this, many Renaissance portraits of women that are unidentified, and either erotic, ideal, or both, are now assumed to be nothing more than idealized beauties.77 Though idealized, they are assumed to be based on the real-life models/mistresses of these artists, or at least modeled after cortigiane oneste known to the artists moving in similar humanistic circles. The reasoning behind this is, as Cropper explains, “that certain women were portrayed for their physical beauty alone, that individual artists had favorite models who conformed to their ideal of beauty and who’s portrayal implies no specific identity, and that in painting female beauty the artist must first possess it.”78 Many of these themes were discussed by critics in the Renaissance. Regardless of how true these were, it is evident that paintings depicting women in a portrait-like manner did not necessarily mean that woman was intended to be identified with a real-life person. A less overtly eroticized example would be Parmigianino’s Antea (Figure 19), with her bodice quite low, and her hands playing with a necklace that reaches to her slightly exposed bosom. She gazes out and slightly up at the

77 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 178.

78 Cropper, "The Beauty of Woman,” 176.

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viewer, engaging them, but not necessarily challenging the lyric relationship between the sitter and the viewer.

Titian’s Venus of Urbino (Figure 20), more overt in its eroticism, comes closer to challenging the lyric relationship between the viewer and the figure in the painting. She also gazes out but slightly up at the viewer, and therefore also engages them but in way that balances invitation and erotic challenge, and so arguably still does not completely rupture the amorous, gendered relationship between the (male) beholder and (female) sitter.

By contrast, the sitter in Lotto’s Lucretia offers an overt challenge to the beholder of the painting. The bold, direct gaze at the viewer upsets the lyric relationship and forces the viewer to consider the nature of the challenge. The exaggerated pose and twisting of the body so that the sitter can direct the viewer’s attention to the print of Lucretia suggest that the sitter wants the viewer to think of the historical Lucretia’s fate, and make it clear that she (the sitter) rejects the outcome of that story. The figure in the portrait is rejecting Lucretia’s action of ending her life because she is no longer chaste and virtuous, and in so doing was able to exercise more agency over her own fate than most women in the Renaissance. The piece of paper with the inscription –

“Nor shall any unchaste woman live through the example of Lucretia” – could be there simply to ensure the viewer is able to identify the figure in the print. The inscription could also be a witty joke on the “unchastity” of the sitter by contrasting it with Lucretia’s action. The fact that it also appears crumpled up could suggest that it too has been cast aside, further supporting the idea that the sitter is rejecting Lucretia’s fate.

The clothing and accessories of the figure provide further clues concerning the sitter’s identity. The headpiece she wears on her head is reminiscent of the capigliara, or cap, that was popular among noblewomen, as can be seen in another of Lotto’s paintings, Portrait of Lucina

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Brembati (Figure 21), as well as Titian’s portrait Isabella d’Este (1534-1536), and Bernardino

Luini’s Portrait of a Lady (1520-1525). These caps were made of real or fake hair, caught up in a net and embellished with jewels and ribbons. Cortigiane oneste were known for mimicking the fashions of Venetian noblewomen. However, the cap that is worn in the Lucretia portrait, while mimicking the general idea of capigliara, has noticeable differences from those worn by the sitters in the previously mentioned portraits. It is not secured as seamlessly to her hair as in the other portraits, there is a noticeable difference in hair color, the hair in the cap is not bound up in a net and the ribbons seem oddly placed. The cap simultaneously shows that the sitter follows the current fashions often seen on wealthy women, but by striking a discordant note with the disheveled state of the hair in the cap and the contrast in hair colors, Lotto could be drawing attention to the artificiality of the woman’s “noble” status. It could also be a reference, perhaps a bawdy one, to Petrarchan ideals of beauty, which preferred blond hair, pale skin, and dark eyes.79

Renaissance standards of beauty developed from Petrarch’s poems about his beloved, Laura.80

As for Petrarch’s basic description of Laura, it was so influential for Renaissance standards of beauty that many women in the Renaissance, noble or otherwise, would dye their hair blond or wear blonde capigliara in an attempt to mimic the Petrarchan beloved. Petrarchan ideas were seen as a tool of cortigiane, and many used the Petrarchan ideas to help parallel

79 As discussed in Chapter One.

80 There is some uncertainty as to the identity of Laura. Most scholars agree she was a woman named Laura de Noves, from Avignon. The basis for this identification of Petrarch’s Laura comes from an inscription the poet wrote in the front of his copy of Virgil, “Laura, famous for her own virtues, and so long celebrated in my verses, was first seen by me in my early youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth of April, in the Church of Saint Clare at Avignon, in the morning hour: and that light was taken from daylight in the same city, in the same month, on the same sixth day, in the same morning hour, but in the year 1348, when I chanced to be in Verona, sadly unaware of my fate.” From: Petrarch. The Complete Canzoniere, trans. A.S. Kline (Middletown, DE: Poetry In Translation, 2017). Laura de Noves died the same day as mentioned by Petrarch in his dedication.

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noblewomen. As Cropper wrote, Antea (a Roman courtesan, the same one from Parmigianino’s

Antea), “created her style, as did so many of her kind. She took an illustrious name from the

Orlando and from Pulci’s Morgante, and with all her artifice strove to acquire the graceful manners of her more aristocratic sisters.”81 By wearing a capigliara that draws attention to the fake, blond hair it is made of, the sitter of Lotto’s Lucretia could intend it as a kind of witty, humanistic joke – one that draws attention to the artifice of those who try to imitate the poetic, or

Petrarchan, beloved.

We will now turn to the clothing and jewelry of the sitter. The fact that Lotto shows the figure with the shawl falling off her shoulder could point to the idea of undressing or re-dressing.

The jewels tucked down the front of her bodice are one of the most interesting choices in iconography for this painting. By placing them there, it draws attention to the sitter’s bosom, unlikely to be associated with a virtuous noblewoman. It also suggests it has either just been placed there or is falling out, possibly after the sitter received it from a grateful patron. It can also be read as pointing to the idea of avarice, perhaps even the idea of commerce. Either way, the placement of the jewels suggests that an exchange of goods has taken place, the jewels for the sitter’s body and intellect. However, given that the sitter is the one with the jewels, as well as other aspects of the painting, it is suggested that the sitter is the one who handled the financial transaction herself, not through a third party.

There is another small detail, related to jewelry and artifice, that could also help to explain the ambiguity in Lotto’s Lucretia. Some scholars have drawn attention to a thin gold band on the sitter’s left hand, the one holding the Lucretia print, identifying it as a wedding

81 Cropper. “The Beauty of Woman,” 392.

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ring.82 While this could support the identification of the sitter as Lucrezia Valier, I believe it further supports the artifice typical of courtesans, when considered in the context of the other iconographic choices in this painting. This also circles back around to sumptuary laws. While courtesans would often bribe or pay their way out of the consequences of breaking these laws, there was another option they used. Many courtesans would take on the name of a lover or patron, acting as if they were actually married so they could get around sumptuary laws, like the one that prohibited courtesans from wearing pearls.83 This practice offered them a level of legal protection, but one where they were still able to maintain autonomy and agency over their own lives. On its own, the inclusion of a ring, possibly a wedding ring, might point to the sitter being a married noblewoman, but when considered in light of the other iconographic choices present, it too becomes another ambiguous symbol.

The considerable wit that is conveyed in this portrait can be read as a challenge to

Petrarchan ideals of beauty, as well as societal norms concerning gender and sexuality. This wit, characteristic of many Renaissance artists, is used to a very different advantage in Lotto’s

Lucretia. It demonstrates the humanistic learning of the sitter, and stages her status and identity in a bold, even humorous way. Further, Lotto does not paint the sitter according to the standards of abstracted, ideal female portraiture during the Renaissance. Instead, he draws attention to the realism in his portrayal of her, which further imbues her portrait with a sense of distinct control and autonomy.

82 Goffen. “Lotto’s Lucretia,” 759-760.

83 Lawner. Lives of the Courtesans, 17-19.

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By looking out at the viewer and pointing to the picture and inscription of and about Lucretia, it is as if the sitter is challenging the viewer to participate in an amusing game of discernment.

Ultimately, however, the suggestion that she rejects Lucretia’s heavily moralized example, offers a subtext of autonomy normally unavailable to Renaissance noblewomen. The iconographic and compositional choices made in this portrait lead into the next chapter. Yet another reason behind the choices could be a way of Lotto (and possibly also the sitter) interacting with, or at least acknowledging, the multiple paragone taking place in Renaissance Italy.

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CHAPTER THREE

PARAGONE AND LOTTO’S FEMALE PORTRAITS

The rise of vernacular poetry and the rediscovery of ancient artists and their works led to the idea of a paragone, or comparison, between the different arts. This idea soon expanded to include not only different media in art, but also artists, the subject matter they chose, and the composition of paintings. An investigation into some of these competitions in the Renaissance will help in unpacking the innovations in Lotto’s portraits of women by looking at the artistic context in which he was working. The types of paragone that will be considered here are: painting versus poetry, masculine versus feminine, painting versus sculpture and print, Venice versus Florence, and artist versus artist. Many of these categories fall into another paragone – colore versus disegno – which will also be discussed, along with the influence it had on Lotto’s portrait style.

The idea of a paragone between poetry and painting was first recorded by the second- century philosopher and writer, Lucian.84 He wrote of literature’s ability to portray a person’s outer beauty (effictio) as well as their inner beauty and virtue (notatio).85 It was thought that only poets could achieve this complete portrait through the descriptive power of their words. There were ancient debates between visual and literary art, but as Claire Farago explains, this comparison was done only to show the superiority of poetry and the literary arts.86 This debate used the ancient literary style of rhetoric, switching between questions, blame, and praise as each

84 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 175-176.

85 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,” 175-176.

86 Claire J. Farago. Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone. (Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1992), 32.

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contributor made his case. As the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries progressed, this idea of a paragone between the arts, famously articulated by Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci, would gain momentum, with more and more artists participating in the game of imitation and improvement.

Their responses can be seen not just in written form, but also in their actual works of art.87

As noted in previous chapters, poetry had a significant impact on the development of the paragone, especially the metaphors poetry used to convey the subject’s inner beauty and virtue.

There are some early attempts by artists to convey something of the sitter’s individual virtue, besides more general allusions to female chastity, in portraits by early fifteenth century artists. A good example would be Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (Figure 22).

He painted her still in the profile view, so the viewer is only able to see half of her face.88 He also placed some objects in the painting, most likely as a reference to her inner beauty, including a rosary, prayer book, and small inscription proclaiming her virtues. This can be read as an attempt to compete with poetry by including objects to portray the abstract notatio, however

Ghirlandaio still relies on words, and does not have the poetic metaphors, merely simple signifiers of Giovanna’s piety and chastity.89

The first real stride forward in the paragone between poetry and Renaissance can be seen in Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’Benci. This portrait is significant for many reasons. It was the first time in Italian portraiture that the woman was no longer shown in a profile view, she is

87 Leatrice Mendelsohn, Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi’s Due Lezzioni and Cinquecento Art Theory, (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982), 38.

88 See Chapter One and the discussion of Patricia Simons’ article about the move from profile to three-quarter view, and why it took longer for women’s portraits to make the change.

89 Simons, “Women in Frames,” 13. It is interesting to note that, while there is no reference to Giovanna’s name, there is a letter ‘L’ for her husband Lorenzo.

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shown in an open landscape, and she is shown as less of a Petrarchan beloved, and so it is safe to infer that Leonardo’s portrayal of her is closer to the truth. The vernacular poetry of Petrarch, particularly his Canzoniere was important to the paragone between painting and poetry. He used particular metaphors to describe the inner and outer beauty and virtue of his poetic beloved,

Laura, which artists picked up on and began using in their portraits of women.90 Among the metaphors Petrarch used to describe Laura were references to laurel bushes (for her name) and the sunlight shining on her blonde hair, making it appear golden. Although Leonardo shows

Ginevra as more brunette than the typical Petrarchan blonde, he has added some gold leaf highlights to her hair, to represent the sunlight shining down on her.91 He has also placed her in front of a juniper bush (ginepro in Italian, and a play on her name, Ginevra). By placing Ginevra in a three quarter profile view, thus giving her more agency, Leonardo is perhaps referencing specific traits of Ginevra. She was a poetess, well recognized at the time for her writings and respected in literary circles, and may have even commissioned the portrait herself.92 However, although her face is turned outward towards the viewer, her gaze does not quite meet that of the person looking at the portrait. This could be Leonardo’s way of visually describing her inner virtue, while the more frontally facing position in which she is placed allows the viewer to also see her outer beauty. To ensure the viewer understands, Leonardo has placed an inscription on the reverse side of the painting – VIRTUTEM FORMA DECORAT / Her beauty adorns her virtue – and so Leonardo not only claims that she is both beautiful and virtuous, but also claims

90 See Chapter One for more information on the effect of Petrarch’s poetry on painting and portraits in the Renaissance. See Chapter Two for a deeper discussion of the larger impact Petrarch’s poetry had on Renaissance society, and particularly women in Renaissance society.

91 Mary Garrard. “Who was Ginevra de’Benci?” 26.

92 Garrard, “Who was Ginevra de’Benci?” 23-56.

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that he is able to portray both visually93, something that supposedly only poets were able to do in words. This play-on-words approach to female portraiture would become commonplace across

Renaissance Italy. 94

Giorgione’s Laura is another good example of the kinds of poetic, witty, visual references artists devised to compete with literary descriptions – this time in an overtly erotic form that offers a crucial precedent to Lotto. These references could be to poetry, the identity and personality of the sitter, or all three. Because these objects or references could often relate to more abstract ideas, it can be harder for us to unravel their significance, especially with little historical records about the portraits or their creation. By examining the paragone between painting and poetry, and the conventions for poetic references in the new style of portraiture, it becomes easier to see how artists like Leonardo, Giorgione, and Lotto were innovating portraits of women.

Of interest here are the ways in which Lotto engaged with this paragone in his three, single-sitter portraits from the mid-1500s. The first, Portrait of Lucina Brembati features, instead of the usual poetic, metaphoric reference to her name, a rebus in the form of a crescent moon

(luna) with the letters “C I” inscribed in the center to make ‘Lucina’.95 Though it is not the usual poetic reference, it can be argued that it is closer to the imitation of literary descriptions, as a rebus is the replacement of words with things, but still containing the same, unambiguous

93 Cropper, “The Beauty of Woman,”187-189.

94 See Chapter One for a discussion of the use of flowers courtesan portraits.

95 Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco, Lorenzo Lotto, 115.

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meaning – in this case ‘Lu(ci)na’.96 The Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia does have objects that point to the name of the sitter, the print of Lucretia and the piece of paper with a phrase referencing her story, but does not contain any of the usual poetic references to who she was.

Also of interest is the fact that both Lucina and Lucrezia are staring directly out at the viewer.

While this would seem like a break with the idea of showing a woman’s beauty through the three-quarter view but maintaining her virtue by her not directly engaging with the viewer, as seen in earlier portraits, artists were already doing this in earlier portraits. For example,

Botticelli’s Portrait of a Woman at a Window (1480), made at approximately the same time as

Leonardo’s Ginevra de’Benci, not only shows the woman in three-quarter view and from the waist up, she is also staring out directly at the viewer. However, Botticelli also placed her in an indoor setting, possibly as a way to still convey the chastity and virtue of the sitter. Similarly,

Palma il Vecchio’s Portrait of a Young Woman (La Bella) (Figure 23) also shows the sitter in three-quarter view, but with a bold gaze out at the viewer. The Palma il Vecchio portrait is an even more interesting precedent since it is more ambiguous and left open to multiple interpretations. In Lotto’s Laura da Pola (Figure 24), there is no reference to a laurel bush anywhere, in fact there are very few objects in the painting. The background is similar to the one in the Lucretia portrait, and features Lotto’s characteristic red and green drapery. The sitter holds a feathered fan in one hand, attached to a thick gold chain at her waist by a smaller gold chain.

The lack of laurel bush, but emphasis on the fan in her right hand and the book in her left, probably also held some kind of multiple meanings, which have since become less easy to decipher.

96 Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto, 115-116. The other objects in the painting were discussed further in Chapter Two.

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The ambiguities present in all of the portraits mentioned above overtly relate to the paragone debates. As Steele explains, there were several different translations and editions of poets, such as Petrarch, circulating at the time. This resulted in the “Petrarchan reader, here delimited as male to accord with the predominant viewer of paintings, delighted in the erotic text, probed moral issues, and pondered nuances that multiplied interpretations.”97 Therefore, much like the different publications of literary material that could provide various meanings after reading and re-reading, so too did the ambiguities present in portraits of women (like those mentioned above) provide the viewer with the opportunity to re-look at it again and again, deriving different meanings from their iconography each time.

Another paragone that is important to the Lucretia portrait is the one between painting and sculpture. This was formulated by Alberti and famously voiced by Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo not only extolls the virtues of painting over sculpture, he also comments on the importance of color to painting and design, something that was considered more in line with

Venetian artists than Florentine artists, which I will discuss below.98 This paragone is important to understand as it sets the tone for yet more paragone that Lotto may have been engaging with in his portraits of women. As Patricia Reilly explains in her essay “Taming of the Blue”

Leonardo argued that “unlike the sculptor, the painter inscribes his idea first in the form of a drawing, to which colors are only added later. This additive nature of painting ensures the primacy of the painter’s idea or form, and thus the superiority of his art.”99 These ideas of

97 Steele, “Venetian Beauties” 487-489.

98 Leonardo, Paragone: A Comparison of the Arts, trans. Irma A. Richter, (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1963).

99 Reilly, “The Taming of the Blue,” 89.

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painting, drawing, and color are very interesting when looking at the print the sitter is holding in

Lotto’s Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia, especially when we consider how the sitter is crumpling up the print in her hand, as if it is unimportant.100 This could be a humanistic reference to the paragone between not only painting and print, but also color and design. The fact that the print was at one point polychrome, and appears to have been changed to monochrome during the painting’s creation supports this proposal.101 The print, as a representation of disegno is being crumpled up by the sitter embedded in a richly pigmented . This decision could have been either a reference to Lotto’s knowledge of the paragone, or a way of showing the sitter was also up to date on the different paragone current in humanistic and artistic circles, with which, as a courtesan, she could have participated.102

Another significant paragone pertains to gender.103 This paragone does not refer solely to the idea of binary gender roles that we think of today, and plays into the two paragone discussed above. The competition between colore and disegno can be traced back to Aristotle and his discussion of form and matter. Form and matter were the two main building blocks of the world, according to the philosopher. He identified matter as female, as it made up physical, material things and therefore should be considered inferior to form, which was associated with

100 The implications of the sitter crumpling up the paper in regard to the story of Lucretia is discussed in Chapter Two.

101 Dunkerton, Jill, Nicholas Penny, and Ashok Roy. "Two Paintings by Lorenzo Lotto in the National Gallery." National Gallery Technical Bulletin 19 (1998), 60.

102 For the significance of the significance of the sitter’s knowledge of humanistic and artistic ideas, see Chapter Two.

103 This has already been discussed to some degree in both Chapters One and Two, regarding how portraits of men and women were approached differently.

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the soul and the masculine.104 During the Renaissance, this philosophy would spill over into art theory, with form being understood as disegno (design) and matter understood as colore (or in

Venice, colorito since Venetian artists wanted to refer specifically to the concept of using color as an expressive tool within the painting, not merely the actual pigments themselves).105 As Rona

Goffen explains, this paragone was not, “a simple question of stylistic preference but was understood in relation to the ancient, gendered discourse regarding the structure of the universe” meaning that colore and disegno had now taken on the masculine and feminine alignments given to matter and form, respectively.106 Because of this, it was considered more important to have mastery over design, and color came secondary. The fact that Vasari identified Florentine artists as being stronger in design, and Venetian artists has better at color, meant that artists from

Florence were considered superior, while Venetian artists were then identified with the feminine and the weaker side of art. As her book explains, some artists, such as Titian, turned this to their advantage, leaning into the “feminine” aspect of their art. Goffen argues that Titian gave his female subjects, both religious and secular, an individuality and focus on their own sexuality, as a way of showing that feminine could be dominant in art.

Although there were specific societal and familial roles men and women were expected to follow, art was a place where these binary lines could become ambiguous, as seen in Leonardo da Vinci’s, Giorgione’s, and Titian’s portraits discussed above. Leonardo removed Ginevra from the traditional setting typical of female portraiture and instead approached her portrait like those of men. However, he managed to still maintain a sense of chastity and grazia within the portrait,

104 Rona Goffen. Titian’s Women. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 10.

105 Goffen, Titian’s Women. 10.

106 Goffen, Titian’s Women, 10.

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making it acceptable for a woman to now be portrayed in a three-quarter view.107 Giorgione’s

Laura takes this idea one step further. The robe the sitter is wearing is red with fur trim, an outdoor garment that would have been recognized at the time as being male fashion, as

Junkerman explains.108 As she further points out, this creates an interesting play between feminine (her body) and masculine (the coat she wears around her body). Lotto’s Portrait of a

Lady as Lucretia also plays off of the idea of the paragone between the masculine and the feminine, through the presentation of an ambiguously depicted subject matter. The print the sitter is holding (which was once polychrome) would most likely have been understood by humanist audiences has having the further layered nuance of the form (masculine)/matter (feminine) debate. The fact that the print was once in color but is now monochrome, and appears to have been changed at the time Lotto created it, further lends support to the idea that it is a reference to the masculine vs. feminine side of the colore versus disegno debate, especially given the way the sitter is holding the print. As discussed in Chapter Two, the pose of the figure and the twisting of her body further play into the ambiguities between the masculine and the feminine. In this way,

Lotto is responding in a similar manner to Leonardo and his Ginevra de Benci; however, Lotto is leaning into the crossover between the two, which allows him to create a portrait that places more emphasis on the individuality of the sitter. The same can be seen in his other two portraits,

Lucina Brembati and Laura da Pola. Lucina makes a gesture towards herself similar to ones typical of male portraits, and Laura is shown in a twisting position as if she is rising up. Further, the lack of jewelry and references to either her natal or marital family in the Laura portrait helps emphasize that Lotto is focused on the presentation of the sitter. While Lucina wears more

107 See Chapter Two for a longer discussion of this subject.

108 Junkerman, “The Lady and the Laurel” 52-53.

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jewelry than Laura, the only reference to a family name is a very tiny coat of arms in one of her rings, further suggesting Lotto is placing emphasis on the sitter and her individual personality, something that was more typical of male portraits.

Artists traveled all over Italy (and Europe) and accepted commissions in many different cities, giving them access to each other’s art. It is known that Lotto traveled to Rome in 1509 to work on the Vatican stanze alongside artists such as Raphael, and it is thought that he might have traveled through Tuscany on his way back to Venice.109 The evidence for this can be seen in the change in his artistic style from before he left for Rome and after his return.110 This was not unusual, and many artists sought to equal then surpass in skill other artists, both those who came before them and those that were working at the same time. This was part of the paragone between artists, and part of what led to texts like Vasari’s Lives and Dolce’s Aretino. The fact that Lotto went to Rome and painted rooms in the Vatican (now lost) and possibly traveled through Tuscany, means he would have been made aware of the vanguard trends happening in

Renaissance art. Further, as there is a definite change in the way he approaches subject matter and composition, it is reasonable to make the assumption that he was engaging in the paragone of artist versus artist. Even if he was not directly exposed to the works of Tuscan artists, he would have been aware of their innovations and styles through reproductive prints, or other

Venetian artists who had seen these works and incorporated elements into their own art. This artist versus artist paragone was practiced by almost every artist in the Renaissance, and could explain some of the iconographic and compositional choices in Lotto’s portraits. As discussed in

109Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco. Lorenzo Lotto, 6.

110 Mark Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino and Art Theory of the Cinquecento, (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 77.

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Chapter Two, Lotto (directly or indirectly) was aware of the innovations in female portraiture by

Leonardo da Vinci, as well as the rise in portraiture that sought to destabilize conventional norms, like the various Flora portraits and Giorgione’s Laura.111 The Portrait of a Lady as

Lucretia could be an example of Lotto responding to and surpassing these innovations. However, it is important to note that just because Leonardo’s innovations in female portraiture rose as a way of competing with those artists who came before him, this does not mean that was his sole purpose. He also claimed to be more sympathetic to the feminine in nature, and so it naturally follows that he was willing to work with his female sitters to portray them more as they wanted to be portrayed. Titian, whose art Lotto would have had direct access to, is discussed in a similar way by Goffen. As she explains, Titian portrayed his women, “as individuals and requires the beholder to respond to them as such. Representing physically vibrant women, Titian also represented individual female personalities, imbricating psychology and sexuality.”112 Titian plays with ambiguity in his female portraits by making them seem more active but also presenting them in a more sexually available way. For example, the direct gaze of the sitter in

Venus of Urbino challenges the active gaze of the male viewer/artist, however, Titian has also placed her in a more sexually charged variation of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (Figure 25). Lotto responds to and challenges this in his female portraits by implying sexual availability (either in the role of courtesan or married woman) through the placement of clothing, jewelry, or gestures.

However, agency and individual personality are also implied through particularized facial features, as well as active poses that fully challenge the male viewer/artist. Though he kept a very detailed account book, it does not contain everything that went into the decision processes

111 See Chapter Two and the discussion of Leonardo’s court portraiture in Milan.

112 Goffen. Titian’s Women, 5.

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of a commission, and so the reasoning behind his choices might not ever be fully known, but they can be persuasively hypothesized.

The ambiguities present in Lotto’s portraits can themselves be read as a reference to the multiple paragone debates, as can the multiple layers of meaning in the iconography. However, this ambiguity and destabilization of the portrait traditions from the previous century also allowed artists such as Giorgione, Titian, and Palma il Vecchio to focus more on the individuality of the women in their portraits. As this thesis has argued, by looking at the Lucretia as well as the Lucina and Laura portraits, Lotto can be understood as doing the same thing. His full motivations behind this might not ever be known: whether, like Titian and Leonardo he sympathized with his female sitters, or he was participating in the paragone debates, or both.

What is evidenced in his portraits of women is a level of individuality and autonomy that places him among the innovating artists of the time.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Note: Due to copyright restrictions, the illustrations are not reproduced in the online version of this thesis. They are available in the hard copy version that is on file in the Visual Resources Center, Art Department, Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington, DC.

1. Fra Filippo Lippi, Portrait of a Woman at a Casement, 1440, tempera on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

2. Alesso Baldovinetti, Portrait of a Lady, 1465, tempera and oil on wood, National Gallery, London

3. Antonio Pollaiuolo, Portrait of a Lady, 1460-1465, tempera and oil on wood, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

4. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’Benci, 1474/1478, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

5. Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1506 (finished 1517?), oil on wood, Louvre, Paris

6. Leonardo da Vinci, The Lady with an Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani), 1489, oil on wood, Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland

7. Titian, Flora, 1515, oil on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

8. Palma il Vecchio, Young Woman as Flora (A Blonde Woman), 1520, oil on wood, National Gallery, London

9. Giorgione, Portrait of a Woman (Laura), 1506, oil on canvas (transferred from panel), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

10. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman as Lucretia, 1533, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

11. Marcantonio Raimondi, The Death of Lucretia (After Raphael), 1511-1512, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

12. Parmigianino, Death of Lucretia, 1540, Royal Collection Trust, London

13. Francesco Vecellio, Lucretia, 1530, oil on canvas, Royal Trust Collection, London

14. Titian, Tarquin and Lucretia, 1510, oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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15. Titian, La Bella, 1536, oil on canvas, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

16. Parmigianino, Portrait of a Man, 1523, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

17. Portrait of a Man (possibly Girolamo Rosati), 1533-34, oil on canvas, Cleveland Museum of Art

18. (Figure a and b) Unattributed. A Courtesan Exposed/Unexposed, 16th century, Print Collection, New York Public Library

19. Parmigianino, Antea, ca. 1524-1527, oil on canvas, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

20. Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

21. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Lucina Brembati, 1518-23, oil on canvas, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

22. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, 1488, tempera on wood, Museo Thyssen-Bornemiszo, Madrid

23. Palma il Vecchio, Portrait of a Young Woman (La Bella), 1518-1520, oil on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemiszo, Madrid

24. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Laura da Pola, 1543-1544, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

25. Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, 1510, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

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