The Light of Italy by Jane Stevenson

Author:Jane Stevenson [Stevenson, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800241992
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Luciano Laurana’s coolly dignified posthumous portrait bust of Battista Sforza, based on her death mask. It was probably originally painted in lifelike colours.

DeAgostini/Getty.

Piero della Francesca’s double portrait of Battista and Federico must surely be one of the most discussed paintings in the whole field of Renaissance Italian art. Owing to the long Roman and Byzantine tradition of profile coin portraits, the profile had strong associations with antiquity, and consequently with the idea of a commemoration that would last for all time. Pisanello’s introduction of portrait medals emulating Roman coins into Renaissance court culture profoundly influenced portraiture conventions in the courts of condottiere rulers such as the Montefeltri, Sforza, Malatasti and Gonzaga. The profile pose favoured by the emperors for their coinage carried dynastic and political significance for the condottieri, because it connoted both magnificence and legitimate governance. Additionally, women donors had also long preferred to be represented in profile, kneeling at the margins or in the side wings of the pictures they commissioned. Since it was widely considered improper for a woman to lock gazes with anyone but her husband, profile, in which the gaze was averted completely, marked a woman as virtuous.48

Federico, as is well known, had a special reason for wanting to be represented in left profile only, since he had lost his right eye, but even without this disfigurement he would probably have chosen this format. Around 1455, Francesco Sforza had commissioned a double ruler portrait of himself and Bianca Maria Visconti, tentatively attributed to Bonifacio Bembo (fl. 1447–78) and now housed at the Pinacoteca di Brera. This seems to have set a fashion among condottiere princes: Baldessare d’Este painted Ercole d’Este and his wife Eleonora of Aragon, each kneeling in profile in front of a doorcase, in 1473. Duke Ercole wears a captain’s beretta and sumptuous golden robes.49 Around the same time, in Lombardy, Zanetto Bugatto painted profile portraits of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Bona of Savoy. Baldassare d’Este also painted a head-and-shoulders profile portrait of Ercole’s predecessor, Borso d’Este, in a beretta, and other beretta-wearing condottiere not now identifiable. As already discussed, Piero della Francesca seems to have made a ‘Condottiere Prince Portrait’ of this type for Federico in 1465/6.

The Duke of Milan had been an important patron for Federico in his younger days, and was certainly a major role model. Bianca Maria had taken the motherless Battista and Costanzo into her care, and was the living woman who most effectively embodied the idea of a wife as half of a ruling conjugal pair when Battista was growing up. The Urbino panel, then, probably took its inspiration from the Sforza double portrait. Francesco is shown wearing a captain’s red beretta, which has seen better days, though he is clad in fine brocade. Bianca Maria displays gem-embroidered borders on her magnificent garments, many pearls, and has her hair caught up in a jewelled net. They both have a mild, neutral expression. One unusual aspect of this painting is that Bianca Maria has a double chin and

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