Political Self-Fashioning in the Portraits of Isabella d'Este
Fig. 1 Peter Paul Rubens, 1601. Isabella in Red. Oil on canvas, 101.8 x 81cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum © KHM-Museumsverband.
Titian’s portrait of Isabella d’Este, known as Isabella d’Este in Black and now in the Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna, was completed between 1534 and 1536, when Isabella was in her early sixties. Yet the painting represents her as a very young woman, perhaps a few years after her marriage to the marquis of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, which occurred in 1490. The retrospectivity of the work has puzzled scholars. Indeed, a number of eminent art historians have judged the portrait to be less successful than Titian’s other works in this genre, on the grounds that its artistic integrity was compromised by the absurd vanity of its patron, who insisted on being depicted as young and beautiful when she was in fact elderly and stout. Titian had produced an earlier portrait of Isabella in 1529 which represented her at around the age she actually was at the time. Rubens copied that first lost portrait in 1601. Dubbed Isabella d’Este in Red, the painting is also in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches museum (Fig. 1). It depicts Isabella as a corpulent woman in her late fifties, splendidly bejewelled and magnificently clothed in red velvet. The stark contrast between the elderly and youthful Isabella in Rubens’ copy of Titian’s 1529 work and the latter’s second portrait of the mid-1530s encouraged the idea that Isabella could not come to terms with her aged appearance in Titian’s first portrait and sought to sooth her injured ego with another, more flattering one.
The notion that Isabella was very vain can be traced back to Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), a friend of Titian and himself the subject of one of Titian’s most arresting portraits. Aretino was harshly critical of Isabella’s attempts to camouflage her advancing years through artifice, writing satirically in 1534 that she only made herself more monstrous by doing so. Although infamous for his self-aggrandising attacks on certain contemporaries, undue credence has been given to Aretino’s characterisation of Isabella and has led to misunderstandings about the nature of Titian’s representation in Isabella d’Este in Black.
In this short analysis, I argue that the portrait is consistent with earlier images that Isabella commissioned to highlight and to underpin the political influence she wielded for much of her life. She became marchioness of Mantua only a few years before the outbreak of the Italian Wars (1494-1559), a series of conflicts sparked by the French king Charles VIII’s determination to wrest the kingdom of Naples from its Aragonese rulers and the ensuing struggle for dominance between the Valois and Hapsburg monarchs. Once her husband Francesco was obliged regularly to take to the battlefield from the mid-1490s onwards, Isabella took on significant political responsibilities and the couple cooperated closely to protect the marquisate from the territorial ambitions of the main protagonists of the Wars. In a society that took a sceptical view of the capacity of the female sex to rise above a supposedly innate physical and intellectual inferiority and to resist a propensity for vice, Isabella had to work hard to persuade her contemporaries that she was deserving of power and capable of exercising it. Strategically conceptualised portraits were one of the means she used to construct herself as possessing the qualities required to rule and to reassure those who worried about her authority that she represented no threat to the gendered norms of her day.
Fig. 2 Giancristoforo Romano, ca. 1498–1505. Portrait medal. Gold and enamel, 6.9cm diameter. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum © KHM-Museumsverband.
Early evidence of such visual self-fashioning is provided in a striking portrait medal of Isabella created in 1498 by Gian Cristoforo Romano (Fig. 2). Cast in various metals, the bronze versions of which were distributed to clients in large numbers, the medal emphasises the marchioness’s nobility and gravitas. Although not represented with the characteristic nodus, a bun like roll at the front or back of the head seen on many medals, cameos and sculptures of ancient Roman empresses, Isabella’s elaborately crimped and partially braided hair nonetheless evokes the female coiffures of the imperial era, associating her with elite women of power from the classical past. The classicising lettering of her name on the obverse, and the winged female victory with the sign of Sagittarius flying above on the reverse, also leaves little doubt about Isabella’s concern to be perceived as steeped in ancient cultures.
Fig. 3 Leonardo da Vinci, 1499-1500. Portrait of Isabella d’Este. Chalk on paper, 61 x 46.5cm. Paris, Louvre © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Michel Urtado.
Leonardo da Vinci’s chalk drawing of Isabella, dating from 1499 and owned today by the Louvre Museum (Fig. 3), combines a pleasing idealisation of her features with a sufficient degree of verisimilitude to render her recognisable. The well worked up sketch shares some aspects in common with Romano’s medal, especially the distinctive flowing hair and, of course, the face in profile. However, the large size of the drawing made it possible for Leonardo to include many more allusions to his subject’s intellectual qualities and virtuous character. Most significantly, he depicted Isabella with her right index finger pointing to a book, as can be seen from a copy of the drawing preserved in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. However, the work suffered damage, perhaps even in Isabella’s own day. The book was lost when the base of the sheet was cropped, probably because of a tear. The drawing was copied a number of times for distribution as diplomatic gifts and it may have been this process that caused the damage to the original. While Leonardo’s emphasis on Isabella’s learning and intelligence thus disappeared, the vibrant posture created by the slight turn of the body to the viewer, while the head looks steadily ahead, communicates an impressive dignity and aristocratic refinement. Isabella liked Leonardo’s drawing very much and pressed him to create a painted version of the portrait. Four years later, she referred in a letter to his promise to portray her in colours one day, yet her tone suggests she had resigned herself to the likelihood that she would never be satisfied, as indeed turned out to be the case.
While it might not be immediately apparent to a modern viewer, Titian’s portrait, Isabella d’Este in Black, also invites a political reading. The zazara headdress, which became a signature feature of Isabella’s wardrobe and was much copied by others, as well as the elaborately curling hair beneath, recall the wig-like hairstyles seen in ancient Roman busts of Faustina the elder, while the clothing and pose allude to her possession of the princely virtues of fortitude and magnificence. Titian was renowned for his ability to convey the personality, achievements and qualities of his subjects, without painting from life, or even knowing the individual. He relied on verbal descriptions, existing portraits and recognisably distinctive clothing and accoutrements to communicate identity. Yet, the challenges of a radically retrospective portrait were considerable. The degree to which Isabella directed Titian’s representation of her youthful self in Isabella d’Este in Black is not directly documented. However, we know that in 1534 she sent Titian a portrait of her that Francesco Francia had painted in 1511 to serve as a guide for the new work. Francia’s portrait could not have been much use as a record of Isabella’s actual appearance in the 1490s, since, apart from the fact she was around twenty-seven when Francia produced his portrait, Isabella had refused to sit for it. She commented when it was finished that it did not much resemble her. Upon receiving Titian’s portrait, Isabella said much the same: In a letter of 29 May 1536 to the Mantuan ambassador in Venice, she reported that she was pleased by the work, but had never possessed the beauty that Titian ascribed to her.
Francia’s portrait may have provided an example of the pose and clothing that Titian was to follow, but with respect to the other details of the image the Venetian master showed himself to be well in tune with what his patron expected. Isabella d’Este in Black depicts its subject gazing out regally, but decorously, without engaging the eye of the beholder. Her piety is suggested by the firm grasp of a rosary, while the stylish clothing, set off by a marvellously rendered fur, alludes to her magnificence. One of the striking features of the image is the fine line it treads between the suggestion of a subtle sensual allure, conveyed by the hint of skin visible beneath the open neckline of the chemise, and the depiction of virtuous wifely chastity implied by the stiff posture and the notable absence of jewels, apart from the superb pearl and gem brooch worn on her headdress. As well as memorialising Isabella’s precocious political qualities by depicting her in a way that suggested her early possession of the princely virtues, the subject’s youthfulness served to remind contemporary viewers of her long centrality to the Gonzaga regime’s survival over the difficult years of the early sixteenth century. Rather than testament to Isabella’s physical vanity, Titian’s Isabella d’Este in Black provides evidence of its patron’s intelligent use of visual media, in this case to craft an image that would attest to her extraordinary status and remarkable moral qualities and would secure the memory of her political legacy long after her death.
Carolyn James, Monash University
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