Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
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Title:
Giovanna Tornabuoni
Creator:
Ghirlandaio, Domenico, painter
Description:
Giovanna Tornabuoni is rendered in stark profile, facing to the left. This work was created shortly after her 1488 death in childbirth. It commemorates her virtue and beauty through objectification, quite literally portraying her as one object among many. Her stiff-backed posture is unnatural and therefore dehumanizing. Her gold brocade surcoat bears an "L" for her husband Lorenzo, and her family's emblem appears as a simplified triangular element. She stands before an open cabinet that contains a costly book with gilded edges, prayer beads, and a bejeweled gold brooch of a dragon--objects that speak to her status and piety. The cartellino to the right bears part of an epigram by Martial that empahsizes the ineffable quality of virtue. According to a palace inventory, this image was framed in a golden cornice displayed in a room of golden stalls. Thus Giovanna, becomes an idealized object in a niche much like her objects in the painting itself.
Source:
WikiMedia Commons
Rights:
Public domain
Subject
(See Also)
:
Books
Commemoration
Jewelry
Profile Portraits
Tornabuoni, Giovanna, Wife of Lorenzo Tornabuoni
Geographic Area:
Italy
Century:
15
Date:
ca. 1488
Related Work:
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Young Woman, ca. 1485, Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.938
Current Location:
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, INV. Nr. 158 (1935.6)
Original Location:
Artistic Type (Category):
Digital images; Paintings
Artistic Type (Material/Technique):
Panel paintings; Tempera; Oil
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm):
77cm/49cm/
Inscription:
Ars utinam mores animum que effingere posses, Pulchrior in terris nulla tabella foret MCCCCLXXXVIII [Art, if you were able to represent the costumes, character and soul, there would not be a more beautiful painting on earth. 1488]
Related Resources:
Simons, Patricia. "Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture." History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Historians 25 (Spring, 1988): 4-30.