Courses

The portrait has long been central to the very idea of the Renaissance: it has reinforced the Burckhardtian characterization of the period in terms of naturalism and of the rise of the individual; it has exemplified the notion of a recovery an ancient past (Roman busts, coins); and it has seemed the typifying expression both of the bourgeois mercantile republic and of its opposite, the court. The seminar will consider all of these possibilities, but also raise questions that cut in other directions: in a period where the human body and life study became the basis for art making, was the portrait even a coherent category? Why did some artists (Sofonisba Anguissola) build careers around portraiture when others (Michelangelo) avoided the practice? How should we think about anonymous portraits, about works that cannot be approached in terms of the sitters’ identity? How might questions of race change our approach to the genre?