Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist [Hardcover]

Joanna Woods-Marsden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1998

The autonomous self-portrait, a central mode of expression in Western art, was a Renaissance invention. This book explores for the first time the genesis and early development of this important genre as it took place in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Joanna Woods-Marsden examines a series of self-portraits in Renaissance Italy and their relation to the social status of art and artists. She argues that these selfimages represented the aspirations of their creators to change the status of art and thereby their own social standing.

The book provides a rich account of the intellectual and social context in which the Italian Renaissance artist worked. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, an individual's social status depended upon his occupation's proximity to -- or distance from -- manual labor. The visual arts, unlike literature or music, were defined as manual, and their creators were considered craftsmen. Seeking to reclassify art as intellectual, the artistic community denied the role played by manual execution in the creation of art. Woods-Marsden investigates how artists from Mantegna and Alberti to Raphael, Parmigianino, Titian, Sofonisba Anguissola, and Annibale Carracci constructed themselves pictorially and how they used these self-representations. She shows how self-portraits mediated between the creators artistic self and his or her Renaissance audience. Those artists who experimented with autonomous self-portraiture usually worked for courts, Woods-Marsden finds, and in the highly competitive court culture, the artists' celebrations of themselves in self-images were part of their jostlings for increased social recognition and position.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Woods-Marsden (art history, UCLA) presents a clear and convincing argument that Italian artists in the 15th and 16th centuries used autonomous self-portraits (which do not depend on their setting for interpretation) to raise the status of artists from craftsmen/technicians to intellectuals. She writes clearly and develops her arguments through case studies ranging from Alberti to Michelangelo, including women such as Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fonatana. She identifies substantial differences between the works of the 15th century and those that followed, indicating a successful effort on the part of artists to be accepted into their desired worlds of court and intellect. Within its self-imposed boundaries of time and form, the book is highly convincing. Highly recommended for advanced and special collections.AJack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Libs.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300075960
• ISBN-13: 978-0300075960
• Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 10 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,400,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pleasure for the mind as well as the eye. Highly readable!, August 18, 1999

By 

anonimo "personna" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (Hardcover)

The author takes on a difficult task and fulfills it beyond expectation. It allows the modern reader insight into the workshop and world of all the artists discussed, from the modest presentation of the artist as a member of the mourners at the Crucifixion to the self-conscious, presentation of the artist as a courtier. All those who have ever transformed themselves before a mirror will learn something about the art of self-imaging. The author places the artists in their time and place, yet relates all those who, sharing the constraints of patronage, took liberties in the privacy of their studios when they put their own features on canvas. The artists could then appear, not only as they were, but as they wished to be seen. From self-revelation to self-marketing, we are able to follow the process of creation from preliminary drawings to engraved reproductions. The book leaves room to browse among many diverse painters, male and female, or to read in depth about one's favorites - whether Artemisia Gentileschi or Raphael, or many less well known. Even though the text is filled with erudite scholarly information, the author never condescends to her readership but writes clearly and simply. The plates are beautifully printed( a rarity in solid - non coffee table - art books) and the text legible. A book which blows away myths to reveal the motivations of the status conscious artist, ever seeking immortality. Recommended for those who want to find out 'why' it was painted as well as 'how'. A revelation of the multiplicity of our potential selves and the multiple strategies used to visualize each of them in the Renaissance. A book that should appeal not only to art historians but painters and advertising executives, corporate imagers and fashion consultant, poets and narcissists alike.