Portraits and self-portraiture in the arts Books

Book SynopsisCatálogo gathers photographs of prostitutes that were provided to the select clients of a brothel and shown to artist Miguel Calderon by his uncle when he was thirteen years old, so that he could choose one of them to undergo his “initiation into manhood.” Thirty years later, Calderon has recovered these images and transformed them into part of a narrative which, out of a very specific context and age, he uses to analyze and recount his sexual awakening. But what happens when a child grows into a youth thinking that sex has a monetary value and that making love without paying for it is rather the exception than the norm? The loss of their virginity has always been a rite of initiation that adolescents have to face. In Mexico City in the 1980s the beginning of a youngster’s sexual life was largely conditioned by the social pressures exerted by his classmates. To remain a virgin was synonymous with weakness and mockery; losing one’s virginity became a matter of life and death, generally achieved by a visit to a brothel. The girls in the boy’s life, whether classmates or neighbors, only increased the pressure by insisting that they would not lose their virginity until marriage. The girls themselves were part of a social construct in which it was implicit that the boys would lose their virginity to a prostitute. But the brothels were not charitable organizations: you had to pay. For that there were the grandfathers’ gold pens, the candlesticks, the wallets of absent-minded mothers, and the complete collections of Star Wars.

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Book SynopsisThe Medici family ruled unofficially and later as dukes the city of Florence and Tuscany, from the end of 14th to the end of the 18th century. Under their patronage the Renaissance was born. The members of this powerful family were able to build their public image in a sophisticated cultural environment where famous artists such as Raphael, Pontormo, Bronzino, Vasari, as well as poets, men of letters, scientists, humanists, were active. Portraits played an important role in this public relations strategy. The portrait types were quite different: from State portraits to family portraits, from those depicting the young heirs of the family name to those of the women that either ruled or played important roles in the dynastic allegiances. In this guide the marvellous works, held in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti, are presented in chronological order making possible to trace the main stages in the history and genealogy of the Medici family.

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Book SynopsisThrough some 50 works, this book seeks to establish a dialogue between the different ways of approaching the exercise of self-portrait: firstly between artists, but also between the works of the same painter, like Bonnard, whose dark and sometimes disturbing side of his self-portraits takes the opposite view from the usually peaceful and serene oeuvre of the French master. Text in English and French.

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Book SynopsisApart from a handful of art historians no one has ever heard of the Brussels painter Hendrick De Clerck (1560-1630). Nevertheless, De Clerck was a contemporary of Peter Paul Rubens, the latter having gone down in history as an artistic trailblazer and painting powerhouse, while Hendrick De Clerck has quietly faded into oblivion. Yet the subtly coded, vibrantly coloured pictures that De Clerck painted for Archduke Albert of Austria and his wife Isabella are political propaganda of the highest order. In creating a mode of archducal representation that could help to gain an empire, the sky is quite literally the limit. De Clerck represents Isabella as wise Minerva, chaste Diana, the Virgin Mary. And that's nothing compared to her husband, for in De Clerck's paintings Albert is transformed into the sun god Apollo or even into Jesus Christ himself. Hendrick De Clerck's mastery of ingenious pictorial strategy made him a leading player in one of the most ambitious projects history has ever seen. For those who know how to read them, his paintings tell a story of power, political promises, and grandiose ambition. Most of all, they are supreme examples of image-building; for as the Archdukes were well aware, even as a monarch you're only as important as you make yourself.

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Book SynopsisThe volume presents a wide-ranging investigation of the ways in which Petrarch’s legacy informed the relationship between visual and literary portraits in sixteenth-century Italy. Petrarch’s vast literary production influenced the intellectual framework in which new models of representation and self-representation developed during the Renaissance. His two sonnets on Laura’s portrait by Simone Martini and his ambivalent fascination with the illusionary power of portraiture in his Latin texts — such as the Secretum, the Familiares and De remediis utriusque fortune — constituted the theoretical reference for artists and writers alike. In a century dominated by the rhetorical comparison between art and literature (ut pictura poësis) and by the paragone debate, the interplay between Petrarch’s oeuvre, Petrarchism and portraiture shaped the discourse on the relationship between the sitters’ physical image and their inner life. The volume brings together diverse interdisciplinary contributions that explore the subject through a rich body of literary and visual sources.Table of Contents1. Introduction (Ilaria Bernocchi, Nicolò Morelli, Federica Pich) 2. Widows, Poetry, and Portraits. Livia Spinola and Francesca Turina on the Portraits of their Dead Husbands (Simone Monti) 3. In Medusa’s Eyes. Petrification and Marble Portraits in Late Sixteenth-Century Poetry (Martina Dal Cengio) 4. The Portrait of the Ideal Woman. Petrarch in Conduct Literature Texts for and about Women (Francesco Lucioli) 5. Anti-Petrarchist Portraiture or a Different Petrarchist Portraiture? A Literary Outlook on Some Non-Idealised Female Sitters in Renaissance Art (Diletta Gamberini) 6. The Shadow of Petrarch. Benedetto Varchi and Agnolo Bronzino on Portraiture (Antonio Geremicca) 7. Double Portraits of Petrarch and Laura in Print (c. 1544–1600) (Gemma Cornetti) 8. Double Portraits and Sonnet Diptychs. Figurative Allusions in the Encomiastic Poetry of the Sixteenth Century (Muriel M.S. Barbero) 9. Images of Women from Subject to Frame in Printed Portrait Books (Susan Gaylard) Index

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