Hi guys! This video concludes the early Renaissance Court and focuses
specifically on Isabella d'Este or Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, if you include
her married name. Her dates are on the screen, and I include two portraits: one is the Leonardo
portrait that we saw in the previous lecture. So, it's by Leonardo da Vinci. It's on
the right side here. It is cropped, so we'll talk about that in a second, and
then also the image by Titian that was created in the 1530s -- so well into
Isabella's life. She was towards the end of her life at that point, however, Titian, as a
portrait artist who often created very flattering images, represented her in her
youth, and many people thought that this really looked nothing like her, however, Isabella was
always on the hunt for a good portrait, so I'm sure it pleased her immensely. So
Isabella, as the most famous female collector of the Renaissance, was a
patron of artists -- like the painters we see here -- but also sculptors, lots of
different field, art objects. She had rooms where she kept her collections, which we'll
see in a minute. And then she also was a patron of music, and of literature, poetry.
And she was always interested in learning, and she was very interested in
mythological subject matter mater and the collection of antiquities, which was
somewhat unusual during this period. Most women
limited themselves primarily to religious imagery, so it's interesting
that Isabella had this wide array of interests. So,
focusing in on the Leonardo cartoon, which we've already seen, but I'm gonna go into it in bit more
detail. This work is a nice precursor to the Mona Lisa. So, we can see a bit more
of the female frame here. We're getting more of that three-quarter view here, however, her face
still is in profile, whereas the Mona Lisa will be facing forward. We can see
Isabella's hands, which will also be an important part of the Mona Lisa, however,
in this case, because it has been cropped, we are missing a portion at the
bottom. This image has been pricked for transfer, so the plan was that it would
be a completed
portrait at the end. This was just a preparatory work -- a cartoon. He clearly is
showing off Isabella interest in fashion. She was well known for setting
trends in the Italian courts, so we could see her gown here on
full display -- at least the upper part. There were some rumors that
this finished painting has been rediscovered recently although
most scholars don't necessarily agree with that, so if you google this image in the
news you may see a painting, however, this painting was probably created later and
based on this particular cartoon. So the original cartoon would have had a lower
portion that has been cropped off, and it would have had Isabella pointing to a
book, so it's nice to see this version that is after Leonardo, where we actually can see
Isabella pointing to a book. And this is a nice indication of how she not only
wanted to be seen as beautiful and fashionable, but also learned -- so this
idea that she wanted to show herself as literate, and although, she did complain
that she didn't necessarily understand Latin all that well, she clearly was interested in
literature and wanted to show it off in her artworks. Isabella, like many of the
men in the courts of the Renaissance, commissioned Renaissance medals to be
distributed. They were created in bronze, however, she had one created in gold and
it also was adorned with gems. We see this very fancy medal that survives to us today
and we're very lucky to still have it. So, Isabella was born to the Duke of Ferrara -- a city very
close to Mantua, and then she married the marchese of Mantua and became the marchesa of
Mantua. So she went from one relatively small, but important court on the Italian
peninsula over to this other court. In both cases, art and culture were very
very important, so it's no surprise that this interest stayed with her. Isabella had spaces for
her collections: both paintings and sculptures and art objects, so she had her studiolo
which was adorned with paintings, including paintings
by Andrea Mantegna. She also had an area that was called the "grotto" [or "grotta"] that included
art objects. So, here we see an example of the Andrea Mantegna Mars and Venus. She
collected antiquities. This was just to give you a sense of the type of
antiquity she collected. This is not an exact antiquity in her collection. So,
here I am just giving you an image that shows a combination of the types of
objects in our collection. So, the gold medal was actually in her collection. She
did collect bronze sculptures by Antico, who was a sculptor that created
relatively small bronze sculptures based on ancient examples. She
also collected maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware) with mythological subjects,
probably commissioned by her daughter, the Duchess of Urbino. And this was created
by an artist from Urbino. She also collected cameos -- not this exact cameo,
but probably something similar. Let's focus in on these maiolica dishes because they do give us a nice
sense of her interests in mythology and ancient culture and literature, so these dishes
commissioned by her daughter (most likely, as I said, in Urbino) have different stories from, for
example, the text of Ovid and also Virgil. But let's look at two examples
from Ovid. You can see they're almost directly taken from printed texts that
were probably in circulation among artists, including maiolica
artists -- these ceramic painters who created these very beautiful, almost painting-like dishes.
Here we have the story of "Apollo, Python, and Daphne," so Apoloo is
represented three times: once with Cupid because he's going fall in love with
Daphne; once with Python, who he's defeating; and once chasing Daphne, who
he's in love with, and Daphne is crying out to her father to save her from
Apollos advances, so she's turning into a laurel tree, which will become Apollo's
favorite tree. This dish also features the coat of arms Isabella d'Este -- marking it as
her own, and also some of Isabella d'Este's emblems, her markers, how she would mark
her different possessions, her spaces within the palace, so we'll go through those in just
a second. So here they. These are just six of them. We have the 27, which was a
sign of her probably meaning to imply that she could overcome
adversity. Musical rests and repeats may relate to the virtues of silence. The Alpha
and the Omega could have religious connotations, or just ideas of a
beginning and an end
or a comprehensive, universal quality. Lottery tickets have to do with the
unpredictability of fortune. Her motto has to do with not living with extremes, so
"neither by hope nor by fear" [nec spe nec metu], and then her initials for Isabella were also often
included in her spaces and also on her maiolica. So, here we can see one other dish, the "Explusion of Myrrha and the Birth of Adonis"
So, this particular story is about a daughter, who falls in love with her father, creates a plot
for them to have an intimate relationship. When he discovers that it his daughter, he
casts her out of the house, which you can see over here, and then you can see that
she is pregnant. She's turned into a myrrh tree -- so the stories of Ovid have to
do with metamorphosis or change -- so here she is changing into
the tree, but we can still see her head, and because she's pregnant, out comes the
baby. The baby is Adonis, who Venus will fall in love. So we see that story in the back,
and, again, Isabella's emblems are included on the dish, so anyone who
looked at them would clearly see that these were Isabella's. And, here we
can see that connection again between text and image across these two examples.
There's a recent film that has come out with an artist named Ester Mantovani, who is from
Mantua, who recreated these dishes so that we could see all of them together
because today these dishes are many different collections so it's hard to get
that sense of an ensemble in a banquet setting, so here we have a still
from the short film "Illustrated Credenza."