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Constructing Identity Image-Making and Female Patronage in Early Modern Europe

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Constructing Identity Image-Making and Female Patronage in Early Modern Europe CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY IMAGE-MAKING AND FEMALE PATRONAGE IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE A Thesis Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTERS OF ARTS By Laura Sandoval May, 2011 _______________________ Tracy Cooper, Thesis Advisor _______________________ Marcia Hall, Secondary Reader i TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...ii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………………………...iii CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………1 2. ISABELLA D’ ESTE……………………………………………………………………………………………6 3. BESS OF HARDWICK………………………………………………………………………………………22 4. MARIE DE’ MEDICI…………………………………………………………………………………………38 5. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………………….50 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………….56 FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….66 ii ABSTRACT This thesis will use a case study approach with the purpose of analyzing three female patrons from the early modern period, each serving as individual models for locating forms of identity and self-fashioning through the art they respectively commissioned. As women in unique positions of power, Isabella d’ Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, Bess of Hardwick, the second wealthiest woman in Elizabethan England—second only to the queen—and Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France, each constructed and maintained a visual program of self-identity through art and architecture. Through an examination of the patronage of these women from different geographical and chronological moments it becomes evident the way in which powerful women were especially capable of exploiting marital and familial circumstances. Twentieth-century Renaissance scholarship has been greatly influenced by the study of individuality and by an effort to understand a uniquely Renaissance experience and manufacturing of identity. I have selected these three particular patrons, from three distinct countries and generations of the early modern period to draw out similarities in their collective experience as women in positions of power. The notion of constructing identity through patronage will be explored in an effort to locate the common factors that further illustrate the fact that in the Renaissance both the internal, subjective experience of self and the more objective experience of collective social, political and religious forces be considered to create a cohesive explanation of the Renaissance formation of identity. iii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.............. Mantegna. Mars and Venus. 1497. Tempera on Canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 2……….. Mantegna. Expulsion of the Vices. 1502. Tempera on Canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 3……….. Perugino. Battle of Love and Chastity. 1505. Tempera on Canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 4……….. Lorenzo Costa. Coronation of a Woman Poet. Tempera on Canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 5……….. Lorenzo Costa. Comus. c. 1507. Tempera on Canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 6……….. Robert Smythson. Drawing plan for Hardwick Hall. 1590-97. Derbyshire, England. Fig. 7……….. Robert Smythson. Hardwick Hall, exterior view. 1590-97. Derbyshire, England. Fig. 8……….. Peter Paul Rubens. The Birth of Marie de’ Medici. c. 1622. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 9……….. Peter Paul Rubens. The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici to Henri IV. c. 1622. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 10 ……….Peter Paul Rubens. The Birth of Louis XIII. c. 1622. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 11………..Peter Paul Rubens. The Coronation of Marie de’ Medici at Saint Denis. c. 1622. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 12 ……….Peter Paul Rubens. The Meeting of the Queen with Louis XIII at Angoulême. c. 1622. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Fig. 13 ……….Robert Smythson. Hardwick Hall, detail of exterior view. c. 1622. Derbyshire, England. 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION This thesis will use a case study approach with the purpose of analyzing three female patrons from the early modern period, each serving as individual models for locating forms of identity and self-fashioning through the art they respectively commissioned. As women in unique positions of power, Isabella d’ Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, Bess of Hardwick, the second wealthiest woman in Elizabethan England—second only to the queen—and Marie de’ Medici, Queen of France, each constructed and maintained a visual program of self-identity through art and architecture. Through an examination of the patronage of these women from different geographical and chronological moments it becomes evident the way in which powerful women, as daughters, widows and wives, were particularly capable of exploiting marital and familial circumstances in their distinct efforts to construct and display a visual program that would convey a message of self-identity. Twentieth-century Renaissance scholarship has been greatly influenced by the study of individuality and by an effort to understand a uniquely Renaissance experience and manufacturing of identity. Since the 1860 publication of Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, scholars have been compelled to explore the possibilities of a theory that posits Renaissance Italy as a period of reawakening the concept of individual identity. Burckhardt argues: 2 In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness—that which was turned within as that which was turned without—lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family or corporation—only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the state and of all things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual and recognized himself as such.1 Subsequently, historians have continued to debate, challenge and redefine this argument, which has become a significant point of departure across many disciplines of the early modern period. One blatant challenge of the Burckhardtian concept of individualism has been Stephen Greenblatt, and his influential theory of Renaissance self- fashioning.2 Greenblatt contends that in the sixteenth century the experience of self was not solely subjective and that identity was largely a construct. He argues: “There is considerable empirical evidence that there may well have been less autonomy in self- fashioning in the sixteenth century than before, and that family, state and religious institutions imposed a more rigid and far-reaching discipline upon their middle-class and 1 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 98. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980). 3 aristocratic subjects.”3 In recent scholarship Greenblatt’s theory has been continually expanded upon and many scholars have begun to argue that “individualism itself is a construction, that indeed, the human self is in many ways nothing more than a fiction, and that it is above all what might be called Renaissance representations of the self as an individual, expressive subject that require explanation.”4 Both sides of the debate on Renaissance identity have made their way into art historical scholarship, specifically through the subject matter of portraiture as a self- identifying construct of both patron and artist. It is no coincidence that an increase in portraiture occurred in direct correlation with a rising interest in humanist values and in fact, “the portrait in the Renaissance has long been connected with a particular notion of individuality that is held to have emerged in the early years of the fifteenth century and which provoked men and women to have their features recorded accurately for the first time since antiquity.”5 However, the physiognomic rendering of one’s likeness is not the only agent by which a patron’s identity can be captured and manufactured through the production of images. Renaissance patrons utilized a variety of mediums through which identity was articulated. In addition to the painted portrait, other expressive forces ranged from allegorical paintings of mythological subject matter to grand feats of architectural innovation—all intended in a carefully calculated manner to tell the story of the patron. 3 Ibid. 4 John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe,” The American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1309-42. 5 Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson, The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 9. 4 In 1984 Joan Kelly asked the now infamous question: Did women have a Renaissance?6 In an attempt to answer this question, scholars have greatly responded to the task of digging up the significant contributions of female patrons that have largely lain dormant in dusty archives for centuries.7 This study is indebted to the work of scholars such as Stephen Campbell, Alice Friedman and Deborah Marrow, who have contributed comprehensive works on each of the three patrons included in this paper.8 However, Renaissance patronage studies remain saturated with interrogations of male patronage. One obvious response to the fact that scholarship weighs heavily on the side of male patrons is simply that there
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