In the 1350s one of the world’s longest series of ruler portraits was installed in the Maggior Consiglio in Venice. This major cycle was emended, imitated and commented upon for generations yet has not been included in discussions of Venetian portraiture. Scholarship on portraiture, influenced by Burckhardt and others, has placed its attention on the individual and the autonomous portrait.
This cycle, however, continued to inspire and arouse interest well through the Renaissance “re-discovery of the individual” and employed diverse identities and communal history alongside developments in “independent portraiture.” This cycle affords an opportunity to examine differing approaches to identity and individuality in the Renaissance.
Joseph Hammond is a Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Victoria at the University of Toronto. Previously he was a Research Associate at the National Gallery of Art in Washington where he worked on Jacopo Bellini. He has published on the cult of the saints in Venice and on the Carmelite Order in Italy. He is working on a book on Venetian portraiture, c. 1350-1450, that aims to explore portraiture’s complex relationship with likeness, identity, and the historiography of the Renaissance.
Northrop Frye, Room 205
3:30-5:00 pm
