Italian Renaissance Portraiture free essay sample

Style, influences, development, humanism, major creators of medallion marble bust portraits. The tradition of Italian Renaissance portraiture derived from numerous sources: formal Gothic tomb sculpture, the realism of Northern European painters, Roman sculptural portraits, and Humanist scholars notions of the significance of portraiture in antiquity. As in most undertakings of an intellectual or artistic nature, the Italian Humanists searched for sanctions for portraiture in the literature and art of antiquity. A brief review of these influences on medallion and bust portraits provides an overview of the origins of Renaissance portraiture. Individualized Italian Renaissance portraiture began to develop as early as the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Portraits from that period are found mainly on tomb monuments and the portrayals were usually highly idealized, conforming to the stylistic dictates of the International Gothic style. White has..