Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art

Originally published in 2000. Fashioning Identities analyses some of the different ways in which identities were fashioned in and with art during the Renaissance, taken as meaning the period c.1300-1600. The notion of such a search for new identities, expressed in a variety of new themes, styles and genres, has been all-pervasive in the historical and critical literature dealing with the period, starting with Burckhardt, and it has been given a new impetus by contemporary scholarship using a variety of methodological approaches. The identities involved are those of patrons, for whom artistic patronage was a means of consolidating power, projecting ideologies, acquiring social prestige or building a suitable public persona; and artists, who developed a distinctive manner to fashion their artistic identity, or drew attention to aspects of their artistic personality either in self portraiture, or the style and placing of their signature, or by exploiting a variety of literary forms.

Mary Rogers, University of Bristol, UK and co-editor with Frances Ames-Lewis of Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art. Introduction by Joanna Woods-Marsden, University of California, Los Angeles

1. Introduction: Collective identity/individual identity, Joanna Woods-Marsden.  2. A Knight in the Arena: Enrico Scrovegni and his 'true image', Laura Jacobus.  3. Reconstructing Benozzo Gozzoli's Artistic Identity, Francis Ames-Lewis.  4. Patronage and Identity in Renaissance Florence: The case of S. Maria a Lecceto, Jill Burke.  5. Art and Life in Renaissance Italy: A blurring of identities, Rupert Shepherd.  6. A Preface to Signatures (with some cases in Venice), Creighton Gilbert.  7. Fashioning Identities for the Renaissance Courtesan, Mary Rogers.  8. Beauty and Identity in Parmigianino's Portraits, Mary Vaccaro.  9. Problems of Identity in an Age of Change: The Viewer of Art in Renaissance England, Tatiana C. String.  10. Moretto and the Congregation of S. Giorgio in Alga 1540-1550: Fashioning a visual identity of a religious Congregation, Gabriele Neher.  11. 'Ut vita scultura': Cellini's Perseus and the self-fashioning of artistic identity, Victoria C. Gardner Coates.  12. Artists into Heroes: The commemoration of artists in the art of Giorgio Vasari, Joan Stack.  13. 'Cittadin nostro Fiorentino': Michelangelo and Fiorentinismo in mid-sixteenth-century Florence, Frances E. Thomas.  14. The Identity of the Prince: Cosimo de' Medici, Giorgio Vasari and the Ragionamenti, Paola Tinagli.  15. 'Frail fresh, as in a glass': The portrait as an immortal presence in early modern England and Wales, Tarnya Cooper.