Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
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Title:
Profile of a Woman
Creator:
Pollaiuolo, Piero, artist
Description:
From a series of portraits executed by Piero and Antonio Pollaiuolo. This woman wears a costly garment with elaborately embroidered sleeves. She wears a headdress that is adorned with pearls, and her necklace is composed of black and white pearls and a ruby pendant. This image once bore an inscription that was erased during a restoration. It identified the woman with the wife of the Florentine banker Giovanni de' Bardi. Portraits in which the female sitter displayed her material wealth were typically commissioned at the time of her wedding or as a commemoration of the event. Rendering the female sitter in profile drew from the majesty of classical portraiture but also served an ideological purpose: the woman's beauty and confident expression make her the embodiment of humanist virtue, in which outer beauty reflects inner merit, but her gaze is averted from the (likely male) viewer, thus encoding a sense of voyeurism into the work.
Source:
Wikimedia Commons
Rights:
Public Domain
Subject
(See Also)
:
Classical Influences
Jewelry
Nuptial Imagery
Profile Portraits
Geographic Area:
Italy
Century:
15
Date:
ca. 1470
Related Work:
Current Location:
Original Location:
Artistic Type (Category):
Digital images; Paintings
Artistic Type (Material/Technique):
Panel; Tempera; Oil
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm):
45.5 cm/32.7 cm/
Inscription:
Related Resources:
Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Inv. 442