Picturing the Writing Woman: The Representation of Three Early Vernacular Female Poets in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Abstract

The emergence of the writing woman in fifteenth-century Italy has been established by the literary historians Virginia Cox, Sarah Gwyneth Ross and Fabio Finotti in recent years. However, art historians have not previously considered this nascent cultural figure in relation to contemporaneous developments in female portraiture. This thesis focuses on the three fifteenth-century Italian writing women who are also firmly identified subjects in independent painted portraits: Lucrezia Tornabuoni (1427-1482), painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in c.1475; Ginevra de’ Benci (1457-c.1520), painted by Leonardo da Vinci in c.1475; and Cecilia Gallerani (1473-1536), painted by Leonardo da Vinci in c.1490. Significantly, their portraits have all been recognised as innovative in the way the female sitter is presented, but there has been little consensus amongst scholars about the reasons for this change. In highlighting that these portraits were all painted while the sitters were actively involved in vernacular literary circles, I propose that they visually document this newly emergent figure in intellectual culture. These developments in female portraiture are further situated within the humanistic redefinition of female virtue as well as the poetic output of these writing women. A close analysis of these portraits suggests that they should be understood within the contemporary debate about female potential. Whereas previous portraits had been defined by their emphasis on a singular feminine virtue – chastity – and were related to a sitter’s marriage, this thesis argues that these portraits of writing women expand on the existing feminine virtues of piety and chastity to include the emerging feminine virtue of erudition. This expansion of feminine virtue, which Ross has termed “learned virtue” and which I use throughout this thesis, was not only current in the intellectual circles in which these women participated but is also an idea that appears particularly in the writing of Lucrezia Tornabuoni as well as in many of her female contemporaries. Even though there is little extant writing by Ginevra de’ Benci and none by Cecilia Gallerani, there remains ample primary documentation in these cases to demonstrate their engagement with the ideal of learned virtue. Through an investigation into all three women as actual historical personages, this thesis demonstrates other ways in which they engaged with and demonstrated female capability and autonomy while remaining exemplars of piety and chastity. In engaging with a burgeoning tradition, these women played important roles in establishing the paradigm of the writing woman but also in the translation of this paradigm into portraiture. Through their actions in life, their writing, and their portraits, they became role models of female achievement, and encourage the continuation of the female voice.