The "Motions of the Mind" in Renaissance Portraits: The Spiritual Dimension of Portraiture

• Autores: Frank Zöllner
• Localización: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, ISSN 0044-2992, Vol. 68, Nº. 1, 2005, págs. 23-40
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • An article based on a lecture delivered at the conference “Virtue and Beauty” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in October 2001. The soul was expressed in 15th- and early-16th-century portraiture with the help of attributes, signs, symbols, metaphors, and references to both antique and Christian texts. Portraits thus correspond to the attempts of humanists to reconcile antique ideas with Christian belief and to describe the immortality of the soul with the help of antique metaphor. Furthermore, the portraits display a particular attachment to virtue as the most important inner value of a person, as well as to the survival of virtue after death.