Flora, Laura, and Others: The Allegorized Pictures of Beautiful Women in Early Cinquecento Venetian Art

Abstract

This article explores the study of pictures of beautiful women, so-called “bella” paintings that were a significant phenomenon in the history of Venetian Renaissance art. The uniqueness of such research is that it investigates such pictures within the broad historical context, highlighting its historical evolution as well as specifying the meaning of some important art works. The genesis of such an artistic form returns to the beginning of High Renaissance art in Venice, which has its origins in the works of Tullio Lombardo and Giorgione. Their masterpieces, “Portrait of a young couple” by Tullio Lombardo and Giorgione’s picture “Laura,” made an important contribution to the invention of its compositional formula and content with its complexity of meaning and allegory. Building on the compositional type of the Renaissance portrait, it developed narrative components taken from classical and Renaissance literature. The next phase in the development of “bella” paintings is in the oeuvre of Titian. This painter created iconographic versions in this genre, which developed plots taken from Holy Scripture or connected with the Classical past. Titian’s artistic output greatly influenced many other painters, among them Palma il Vecchio, Paris Bordone, and Bernardino Licinio. Later in the century, Titian’s portraits of the Italian aristocracy made a cardinal impact on the evolution of “bella” paintings and invested them with new features of aristocratism and courtly elegance, but paradoxically it played the crucial role in the gradual disappearance of this type of painting from the stage toward the end of the sixteenth century.