Laura Battiferra: creating a new female image

Agnolo Bronzino, Laura Battiferri, c. 1555-60, oil on canvas, 83 x 60cm (Florence, Palazzo Vecchio) 

Poet and Florentine socialite Laura Battiferra was an incredibly visible female figure by Renaissance standards, navigating the perilous public sphere of cinquecento Florence where she found great fame and success. In the days before Instagram, television and tabloids, poetry and portraiture were the two media that ruled the public image. In his anthropological study of Early Modern Italy, Burke identifies these arts as ‘a form of communication, a silent language, a theatre of status, a system of signs representing attitudes and values, and as a means to the presentation of self’.[1]As a poetessa and friend of Michelangelo and Bronzino, Battiferra was well aware of the power of art and poetry: how she could wield them to create a rather different female image.

Traditionally, Renaissance poetry and portraiture placed women in the position of objects rather than subjects. The lyrics of Petrarch and the paintings of great masters represented the ‘lady’ as an idealised figure of beauty, intellect, and virtue. In Petrarch’s verse, his lyrical lady is Laura who crucially lacks a direct voice and a complete physical form. Nancy Vickers described Laura’s body as ‘scattered’: different images of her beautiful physical form appear throughout the verse to the effect that ‘Laura is always presented as a part or parts of a woman’.[1] The influence of Petrarch’s model on Renaissance literature cannot be understated and as such ‘his role in the history of the interpretation and the internalization of woman's "image" by both men and women can scarcely be overemphasised’.[2] Simply, Petrarch established a mode of presenting women that stuck around, where the woman was primarily a body, and one to be deconstructed and admired for all its beauty as an object and potential possession.

Alesso Baldovinetti, Ritratto di donna, c. 1465, oil on wood, 40.6 x 62.9 cm

(London, National Gallery) 

In portraiture we see a similar tradition emerging, but in this case the female body, in its pictorial representation, could be a physical possession. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts who started many cultural initiatives to encourage and support artists and the letterati such as his Accademia Fiorentina (Florentine Academy), which on rare occasions women, such as Battiferra, took part in. As we can imagine, his own palaces were adorned with artworks from the finest artists working in Renaissance Florence. A letter exchange is recorded of the Duke’s search for a new pearl for his collection, as he seeks out a type of portrait that was popularised in the preceding century: la bella (the beautiful woman). Portraits of unknown female sitters that served as decorative or ornamental works were increasingly common in the 15th and 16th centuries. Depicting women in the latest fashions, embellished in jewellery, and adorning intricate hairstyles, these portraits aimed to display an idealised female figure of grace and wealth, as opposed to communicating the personality and individualism of the sitter. Just as in the lyric poem, the woman’s subjectivity is necessarily absent as she is objectified and transformed into a symbol of the paradigms of feminine virtue.

Tiziano Vecellio, La bella, c.1536–38, oil on canvas, 89 x 75.5 cm, (Firenze, Palazzo Pitti)

Battiferra’s portrait is a startling and a welcome deviation from this tradition. Her portrait could never be mistaken for an idealised vision of la bella donna (the beautiful woman) but rather her profile, stance, and aquiline nose evoke the classical images of rulers found on imperial coins and medals, or more contemporaneously to Battiferra, images of her poetic forefather, Dante.

Giovanni del Ponte, Dante, c. 1450. MS 1040, fol. 0V, paper manuscript, 29.5 x 20 cm

(Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana) 

Naturally, individual portraits of famous and powerful women existed in the Renaissance, but they appear to be more grounded in feminine modes of representation. A comparison of Battiferra’s portrait with Eleonora de’ Toledo, the wife of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and dedicatee of Battiferra’s first anthology, sheds light on this. Both portraits are by Bronzino, the Duchess’s painted ten years earlier. Whereas Battiferra’s profile conjures male figures of power, Eleonora is depicted in the popular three-quarter profile, showcasing more of the illustrious fabric of her dress, her costly jewellery; her good taste, wealth, and beauty. What’s more, in Battiferra’s hands we find two verses of Petrarch, written by her in her zibaldone (creator’s notebook). This is a sure indication of her status as a poet and thus a gendered-male creator, whilst also being a nod to her newly published book. The theme of creation is gendered female in Eleonora’s portrait, the healthy, rotund child under her arm suggestive of her fertility and motherhood.

Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora di Toledo with her son Giovanni de' Medici, c. 1544-45, oil on wood, 115 x 96 cm

(Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) 

Battiferra’s portrait transcends portraiture’s gendered conventions, simultaneously celebrating her grace with her long neck and veil, whilst positioning her amongst celebrated male figures of authority and creativity. This portrait is believed to celebrate the recent publishing of her Primo libro delle opere toscane (First book of Tuscan poems), a work that in its title suggests the poetessa intended a second. Given that her first book was published when she was of child-bearing age, this is a clear indication her intentions to continue her career and her refusal to submit to the gendered expectations of patriarchal society. Her portrait reflects this ambitious, challenging individual, toeing the line between masculine and feminine. Indeed, shortly after it was painted, she found great fame and success in Florence, where in male literary groups and public poetry occasions she was often the only female presence.

[1] Nancy Vickers, ‘Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme’ in Writing and Sexual Difference, 8.2, 1981, p.266.

[2] Ibid, p.267.

[1] Peter Burke, The historical anthropology of early modern Italy: essays on perception and communication, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.151.