Niccolò Liburnio on the Boundaries of Portraiture in the Early Cinquecento

Niccolò Liburnio's "Selvette", published in Venice in 1513, is an undiscussed source for the role of art as ambiguous evidence in the early cinquecento. One of the stories in Liburnio's book is a fictional adultery trial, in which the main evidence is a painting by Giovanni Belli...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: D'Elia, Una Roman (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc. 2006
In: The sixteenth century journal
Year: 2006, Volume: 37, Issue: 2, Pages: 323-350
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:Niccolò Liburnio's "Selvette", published in Venice in 1513, is an undiscussed source for the role of art as ambiguous evidence in the early cinquecento. One of the stories in Liburnio's book is a fictional adultery trial, in which the main evidence is a painting by Giovanni Bellini. Both the prosecutor and the defense use this painting in their arguments. No such painting by Giovanni Bellini survives (nor probably ever existed), but similar works do survive from the same period. Other paintings (Giovanni Bellini's "Nude Woman with a Mirror", Giorgione's "Laura", and Raphael's "Fornarina") do not show adulterous lovers, but do exhibit, like the image described in Liburnio's text, a structured ambiguity, in that they could be portraits, mythological works, or allegories. This article studies how Liburnio, Bellini, and others blur the boundaries of genre in order to claim both the immediacy of realism and the license of poetic feigning.
ISSN:2326-0726
Contains:Enthalten in: The sixteenth century journal
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/20477839