PORTRAITURE AND

SELF-PORTRAITURE

HUAS 6315/SPRING 2011

PROF. MARK ROSEN

Course Information

AHST 6315 Section: 001

Spring 2011
W 9:30 am–12:15 pm

Professor Contact Information

Office: JO 4.636
Email: mark.rosen@utdallas.edu
Office phone: 972-883-2367
Office hours: Thursday, 1–2 pm

Course Pre-requisites, Co-requisites, and/or Other Restrictions

None, other than graduate-student standing

Course Description

This course will investigate the concept of representing another individual or one’s self in the
visual arts. We will look at concepts of portraiture and self-portraiture across time, but we will be
especially focused on Early Modern Europe, the time and place when modern conceptions of the
self and likeness were first developed and explored in detail. Our course will be aligned with an
ongoing project at the Dallas Museum of Art to study a little-known and potentially important
late-sixteenth century portrait of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Bianca Cappello, by the
Florentine artist Alessandro Allori. During the spring our class will look closely at the painting
during a visit to the museum. Each student will do a directed research project that relates to
portraiture of the Medici, with the purpose of learning issues associated with museum studies and
curating objects and exhibitions.

Syllabus: Portraiture and Self-Portraiture Page 1

Student Learning Objectives

• Students will grasp the interdisciplinary ways that history and works of art can be
understood, with the goal that they can carry this skill beyond this class to the study and
evaluation of texts and artworks from other periods and cultures.
• Students will develop their skills of visual analysis and critical reading through writing a
series of short essays, leading class discussion on occasion, and doing an in-class presentation.
• Students will learn research approaches and curatorial techniques for studying objects
from distant cultures.

Textbooks and Materials

Required books:

Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (Reaktion, 2004)

Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal in the Court
of Cosimo I (University of Toronto Press, 2007)
J. R. Hale, Florence and the Medici (Phoenix Press, 2001)
John North, The Ambassadors’ Secret: Holbein and the World of the
Renaissance (Hambledon and London, 2004)

Other required readings will be available online through electronic course reserves. The
password will be given out on the first day of the course.

Readings should be done before each class meeting. Readings will be discussed during the
lecture and it is expected that students will be prepared to participate in the discussion.

Papers and Assignments

All of your grade depends upon writing and participation. Twice during the semester you will
come to class with a 4-page reading response and critical essay. At the end of the term every
student will submit a 12-page final paper concerning a portrait (topics will be chosen relatively
early in the semester). You will also be required to lead discussion for various readings, and to
also do an in-class presentation of the work(s) you are writing about. The day you lead an in-
class discussion you will also do some supplementary reading on our featured portraitist of the
day and discuss his/her work in detail.

For information regarding plagiarism and other issues of academic integrity, see the university’s
website: http://provost.utdallas.edu/home/syllabus-policies-and-procedures-text. Let me confirm
that it plagiarism a very serious offense and will not be tolerated. It will result in your being
forced to rewrite a paper or accept a failing grade for the assignment. Your own intellectual
honesty is of the greatest importance in this class.

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 Assignments & Academic Calendar

Class Topic Reading

12 Jan. Introduction
19 Jan. Complexities of a John North, The Ambassador’s Secret
Portrait

Four-page response
due
26 Jan. Thinking Broadly Richard Brilliant, Portraiture
About Portraiture

2 Feb. Early Portraiture: James D. Breckenridge, Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient

Some Historical Portraiture (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 3–14
Considerations (electronic reserve); you will also be assigned a chapter to read
from the copy on reserve in McDermott Library

Thomas E. A. Dale, ―The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and

Romanesque Portraiture: The Tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben in
Merseburg,‖ Speculum 77 (2002): 707–43

Stephen Perkinson , ―Rethinking the Origins of Portraiture,‖ Gesta

46 (2008): 135–157
9 Feb. Early Renaissance Harry Berger, Jr., ―Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early
Portraiture (Male Modern Portraiture,‖ Representations 46 (1994): 87–120
and Female)
Patricia Simons, ―Portraiture, Portrayal, and Idealization:
FEATURED Ambiguous Individualism in Representations of Renaissance
PORTRAITISTS: Women,‖ in Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. A.
Domenico Brown (Oxford, 1995), 263–301.
Ghirlandaio and
Leonardo da Vinci Mary D. Garrard, ―Leonardo da Vinci: Female Portraits, Female
Nature,‖ in The Expanding Discourse, eds. Norma Broude and
Mary D. Garrard (New York, 1992), 58–85.

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 16 Feb. Gender and the Leonbattista Alberti, Della Famiglia, Prologue and Book 2 (in The
Early Modern Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. R. N. Watkins [Columbia,
Family S. C., 1969], 25–32, 92–150).

FEATURED Primary source documents on ―Marriage and Married Life,‖ in M.

PORTRAITIST: Rogers and P. Tinagli, Women in Italy, 1350–1650 (Manchester,
Parmigianino 2005), 137–66.

Diane Owen Hughes, ―Representing the Family: Portraits and

Purposes in Early Modern Italy,‖ in Art and History: Images and
Their Meaning, eds. R. Rotberg and T. Rabb (London, 1988), 7–38.
23 Feb. DMA Visit— Jaqueline Marie Musacchio, ―Wives, Loves, and Art in Italian
Meet at the Renaissance Courts,‖ in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, ed. A.
Museum at 9:30 Bayer (Yale, 2008), 28–41

Heather L. Sale Holian, ―The Power of Association: A Study in the

Legitimization of Bianca Cappello through Medici Matriarchal
Portraiture,‖ Renaissance Papers (2006): 13–41

DMA Museum File on the Cappello portrait

2 Mar. The Medici Hale, Florence and the Medici
Family: Power and
Portraits Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800
(University of Chicago Press, 1973), 2–82
FEATURED
PORTRAITIST:
Titian
9 Mar. The Medici Court Kurt W. Forster, ―Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and
in the Late History in the Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici,‖ Mitteilungen des
Sixteenth Century Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15 (1971): 65–104

FEATURED Essays by Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti, Janet Cox-Rearick,

PORTRAITIST: Suzanne Butters, and Marco Chiarini in The Medici, Michelangelo,
Bronzino and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale,
2003), 24–45, 66–83

Caroline Murphy, The Murder of a Medici Princess (Oxford

University Press, 2008), 253–271, 289–344

RESEARCH PROJECT ABSTRACT DUE

16 Mar. No class—Spring
break
23 Mar. No class—Prof out Work on Annotated Bibliography for your research project
of town

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 30 Mar. Medici Women Heather L. Sale Holian, ―Family Jewels: The Gendered Marking of
Medici Women in Court Portraits of the Late Renaissance,‖
Mediterranean Studies 17 (2008): 148–173

Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

6 Apr. Renaissance Self- Frances Ames-Lewis, ―Self-Portraiture‖ (The Intellectual Life of
Portraiture (Male) the Early Renaissance Artist [New Haven, 2000]), 209-43

FEATURED Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture (New

PORTRAITISTS: Haven, Yale, 1998), 13–40, 224–253
Albrecht Dürer
and Annibale Joseph Leo Koerner, ―Prosopopoeia‖ (The Moment of Self-
Carracci Portraiture in German Renaissance Art [Chicago, 1993), 2–33
13 Apr. Renaissance Self- Catherine King, ―Made in Her Image: Women, Portraiture, and
Portraiture Gender in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,‖ in Gender and
(Female) Art, ed. G. Perry (New Haven: Yale, 1999), 33–60.

FEATURED Mary Garrard, ―Here’s Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and

PORTRAITISTS: the Problem of the Woman Artist,‖ Renaissance Quarterly 47
Sophonisba (1994): 556–622.
Anguissola and
Artemisia Felicity Edholm, ―Beyond the Mirror: Women’s Self-Portraits,‖ in
Gentilleschi Imagining Women: Cultural Representations and Gender, eds. F.
Bonner et. al. (Polity Press/Open University, 1992), 154–172.
20 Apr. Presentations,
Part 1
27 Apr. Presentations,
Part 2
May 6 Final Paper Due by
2 pm

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Course Requirements

1. Two Short Reading Responses—Everyone will write a four-page response to North’s

book, due Jan. 19). You will also write a four-page response for the week that you
present the readings.
2. Leading class in discussion of readings (your slot will be determined in the third class
meeting). You’ll circulate via email an outline of questions or topics you’d like to discuss
the day prior to our meeting. You should make use of the instructor’s office hours to help
you outline this.
3. In-class presentation on a work of art (April 20 and 27)
4. Final Essay—12 pages long (due May 6) plus a two-page abstract (due March 9) and a
five-page annotated bibliography (due March 30)

Grading Policy

The final grade will be broken down approximately like this:

Final essay: 40%
Short papers: 20%
Leading Class Discussion: 10%
In-Class Presentation: 20%
Participation: 10%
Note: the final grades will use minuses and plusses, if necessary—that is, it is possible to get an
A- or B+ (etc.) for the course.

These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the Professor.

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