Art and the Eye in Renaissance Portraiture

When we view art, we often walk through galleries glancing at beautiful pictures until one catches our eye. What causes us to take pause and really examine the image? Did the artist use bold colors and execute the piece with precision? Does the subject of the piece draw us in and command our attention ? The famous art critic John Berger has said that “We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within reach – though not necessarily within arm’s reach.”
What remains outside our reach, or outside of our view when we view art in museums? We choose to take in the pieces that strike us and we enter into a dialogue with the pieces through our choice to look. Yet this dialogue is limited if we know little about the context in which the piece was made; knowing this context may significantly shift the meaning we derive from the painting. Throughout history, paintings of women have been created for male viewers and we must keep this in mind when gazing upon these images. We must consider the way the subjects were viewed both by the artist and by society and recognize that artists treated female subjects differently than male subjects. Only then can we see the subjects for who they were and begin to consider the structural inequalities faced by the women portrayed in the pieces. This differential treatment is particularly apparent in portraiture and we must keep this in mind when we view portrait in museums.

Portraits became popular in the Renaissance because people began to view themselves as individuals and commissioned portraits to commemorate their unique qualities. This period marks the time when artists shifted towards as a more realistic, detailed style of painting. Man was seen with a new sense of self in the Renaissance and this was reflected in the many symbols found in portraiture. Male subjects of paintings wanted to be shown in such a way that they would be recognizable to those who knew them and they wanted to be depicted in surroundings that communicated who they were. Portraits of men were created to display the subject’s wealth and power while female portraits were more decorative in nature. Male portraits often include symbols of the man’s job or status – for example, if the man was a trader a symbol like a map would be included in the image. Female portraits were commissioned as images shown to suitors and to be hung around the homes of the wealthy. The women in these pieces were quite literally objectified; they were turned into home decor or commodities to be won by the highest bidder for their hand for marriage.

This objectification is especially troubling given the Renaissance’s newfound concern with individualism; men were seen as individuals while women were seen as less than human. Female portraits were not meant to tell the viewer about the sitter’s public or social activities. These portraits are almost always done in profile, preventing the subject from making eye contact with the viewer. This was done to highlight their facial features and give them a powerless role in the composition. This contrasts sharply with the way male subjects are posed in portraits. They look at the viewer head on, often making strong eye contact with them. Portraits of women were made for the male eye and the women in them were there to be gazed upon and not gaze back themselves. Art has obscured the lives these women lived and little effort has been made to retroactively attach the inequalities these women faced to their portraits. Museums could offer background on what life may have been like for these women, but all too often they leave them to stand alone as pretty pictures.

While it may seem like the women depicted in portraits are those that society remembered, this is not the case. They remain invisible to us even though we “see” them.  These women may have had images recorded of them but are we truly able to know them and see them? Some portraits have names attached to them while others do not and are known by a generic title like Portrait of a Woman. All we have left of them of is an image, an image that does show their experiences at that. Artists were sure to include indicators of experience in male portraits; here, they include symbols like books and scrolls to indicate the subject’s status and position. The viewer can then have an idea about what life was like for that person and what they may have experienced. There are no such clues about the experiences of female subjects in portraits. The artists could have included symbols in female portraits that would have given us a clue about the subject’s daily lives and hinted at the structural inequalities they faced. They could have shown the women in their homes or in rooms where they spent time. This would begin to show the way these women lived and show the types of activities and spaces that they were confined to. This representation of their lives would be evidence of experience and show the way gender roles shaped these women’s existences. While this kind of evidence would not be enough to allow the viewer to understand the inner workings of these gender roles, it would make both these roles and the women trapped in them visible.

The kind of evidence left behind in these paintings is much more nuanced and would require the viewer to look at multiple different portraits of men and women to key in on it. After looking at several portraits in this style, the most apparent difference between male and female portraits is in the gaze of the subjects and the way their bodies are positioned in the piece. It might seem odd the women are typically shown sitting in profile while the men are portrayed in active stances looking back at the viewer. Women were shown this way to highlight their features and show them as passive, marriageable women or passive, obedient wives. Because we do not have evidence of experience in these portraits, we must be conscious of the context in which these pieces were made in order to understand some of the inequalities these women faced. Portraits of women were meant to objectify the women in them, similar to the way society did at the time. Having prior knowledge of this evidence is useful when viewing these paintings and gives us a subtle reminder of the inequalities these women faced.

Let’s now take a look at two portraits held in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, del Pollaiuolo’s Portrait of a Woman and d’Antonio’s Portrait of a Young Man. They are both painted according to typical Italian Renaissance conventions and are prime examples of the style. The piece Portrait of a Woman depicts a young woman shown in profile against a monochromatic, blue background. She is shown wearing a dress made out of a rich brocade fabric and ornate jewelry. She conforms to typical Renaissance standards of beauty – she had a high forehead, fair skin, and light blonde hair. The image is very two dimensional and the composition is simple. It is entirely devoid of symbolism or references to her lived experiences. There is nothing to look at in the painting other than the woman and our understanding of her is as flat as the background she is shown against. The piece Portrait of a Young Man is very different from the female portrait. It depicts a man facing the audience gazing back at the viewers while they look at the painting. He is shown posing atop a hilly landscape with a river winding far below him. The river below him appears to have boats on it suggesting that he lives near a city involved in trade. The image projects strength and power. We are instantly able to tell that is he is athletic given the fact that he was able to climb to the top of the hill that he is standing on. His face is more expressive than the female subject’s face and a hint of smile appears across his lips. These differences in the way the male and female subjects are portrayed come together to create one image that shows an object and another image that shows a complete person.

The varying treatment of the female and male subjects in Portrait of a Woman and Portrait of a Young Man hints at the inequalities between men and women in the Italian Renaissance. When walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a visitor might pick up on some of the differences in these compositions but not necessarily understand why they exist or the inequalities that produced them. The subject shown in del Pollaiuolo’s Portrait of a Woman is not truly visible and we have no idea what she experienced. The only thing we can tell from the image is that she was wealthy as indicated by her elaborate hair ornament and jewel necklace. We know nothing about what she did and are left with few ideas about what her life would have been like. As Scott has said all experience is mediated and so too is the experience shown in a portrait. We believe we understand the man’s life while we are left wondering about the way the woman lived. We see the elements of the man’s life that place him squarely in a position of power while the woman’s roles are passed by. We must go beyond the canvas to begin to understand her. We must walk into the gallery armed with the knowledge that depictions of men and women vary and take it upon ourselves to reflect on the inequalities the women in art faced.

When we walk through art galleries, we must remember that what we see hanging on the walls does not tell us a complete story about the subjects shown in the pieces. As with many issues of structural inequalities and gender bias we must go beyond what is presented in the mainstream to learn about these issues. When artwork is removed from time its meaning is hidden. As viewers we do not always think to place it back into the context in which it was made and both the subjects and the issues they faced remain invisible. It is possible for us to see the women of the Renaissance when we couple their images with a reflection on the roles their gender confined them to. Because names were not always attached to pieces and the images themselves are highly stylized versions of the real subjects the paintings can be thought of as general representations of upper class women in the Renaissance. This is not to homogenize these women but rather to shed some color on what their lives may have been like and escape the trap of becoming yet another viewer that sees them as an object. All of these women had different individual experiences but their experiences were united by the tie of sexism and gender inequality and remembering this when we view their images allows us to better see them.