Subverting Conventions

Bronzino used the conventions of his time and his own personal strategies to create portraits his sitters both expected and identified with. Yet in some cases, it was more productive to subvert a convention in order to draw attention to some aspect of the sitter. Subverting could mean using conventions that had fallen out of style in general, or ones that Bronzino normally did not use.

An example of a subversion used to make an explicit reference in a portrait can be found in Bronzino’s portrait of Laura Battiferri. As we have seen, Bronzino did not typically employ profiles in his portraits, preferring to see most of the sitter’s face and have their gaze towards the viewer. For Laura Battiferri, a poetess in the Florentine intellectual circle, a profile would resemble one of the only other profiles that Bronzino had painted: an allegorical portrait of the poet Dante, in which his nose is a predominant feature. Profiles were less popular in the mid-sixteenth century, and therefore profiles were reminiscent of an earlier age. Her dress is also out of fashion with its high neckline tied off and headdress.

By placing Laura in profile, emphasising her likeness to the famous poet, and placing her in older dress, he was invoking a person immersed in the traditions of the past. This is paired with her own name, ‘Laura’, which is the same name as the beloved of another great poet, Petrarch. Profiles for women made them seem detached and removed, which is ideal for depicting an unrequited object of affection like Petrarch’s Laura. It is thus evident that Bronzino used every tool he had to paint the poetess with all the references to poetry. With her face in profile, her hands on a poetry book where two of Petrarch’s sonnets are written, and her nostalgic dress, Bronzino provides a resounding image of poetical expertise. While some elements are uncommon for Bronzino, the implementation in Laura Battiferri’s portrait is intentionally drawing attention to her occupation and personality.