Tour: Portrait Painting in Florence in the Later 1400s

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Overview

It is hard to imagine a world without images of living people, but in western Europe portraiture had essentially disappeared with the collapse of Roman civilization. Only such figures as saints, the Virgin and child, and angels—or devils and the anonymous damned—were depicted in paint (although rulers, in imitation of Roman and Byzantine emperors, might put a generic profile on coins). It has been suggested that physical appearance was not a particularly important element of self-image or even a primary means of identification in the Middle Ages. Station in life, family and local affiliations, occupation—these were how people knew themselves and others. But by the time these paintings were made between about 1450 and 1500, a thousand years after the fall of ancient Rome, notions about identity and the individual had changed.

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Captions

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1	Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de' Benci [obverse], c. 1474/1478
2	Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de' Benci [reverse], c. 1474/1478
3	Andrea del Castagno, Portrait of a Man, c. 1450
4	Pietro Perugino, Portrait of Lorenzo di Credi, 1488
5	Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere or Donnino di Domenico del Mazziere, Portrait of a Youth, c. 1495/1500
6	Filippino Lippi, Portrait of a Youth, c. 1485