The Renaissance Portrait in France and England: A Comparative Study (review)

Setting the development of the portrait in its historical context, the author of this study balances the notion of the portrait as a product of the humanist interest in the emergent individual against the political context of diplomacy, court authority, and the exercise of power. There was no clean transition from the portrait used as a journalistic or diplomatic tool — in wedding negotiations, for example — and the Renaissance portrait proper, in which the focus was on the 'personality', admitting a third person, the spectator, into the artist-subject relationship. The chapters, alternating between France and England, risk some repetition but bring out very well the parallels and divergences between the two countries' attitudes towards the uses of the portrait. At times the reasons for divergences are obvious: for example, the ban on idolatrous images in the wake of the English Reformation. Sometimes they are less so, and it is perhaps surprising that despite the close relations between the two countries — vacillating between antagonism and tentative friendship — in the sixteenth century, there was very little influence or exchange of ideas in the domain of art. The initial chapters on the 'pre-Renaissance' portrait in fact take in a rather broad chronological sweep, covering as they do the fortunes of two 'pre-portrait' genres throughout the period. The author examines examples of the effigy and the history or story-work. The latter genre continued to be popular throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the device of pluritemporality had a life well beyond its medieval origins, especially in England. Bentley-Cranch clearly sets out the political context and suggests new ways in which it might have informed the development of the portrait. The role played by diplomacy is particularly important. The author convincingly argues that the gift from François I^er of two portraits of his sons, held hostage in Spain, to Henry VIII — intended to persuade the English King to help raise the ransom—sparked an artistic rivalry that eventually led to the English pre-eminence in 'limning' or the art of the personal miniature. This is one of very few easily identifiable points of contact between the two countries in the domain of portrait painting. The birth of the English Renaissance portrait can be traced back to this single event. In patronage there was a shift from the monarch to courtiers and the middle classes. The author examines the changing role of the artist in the English and French courts, drawing comparisons with court poets, and quoting widely from poetry to demonstrate that poets and artists shared common concerns. There are good explanatory discussions of techniques and methods, and how they differed between French and English or Northern European artists, as well as fascinating insights into the contrasting fortunes of individual artists: the Clouets and Holbein, for example, followed very different paths. The study as a whole provides a well-illustrated overview of the Renaissance portrait, affording new insights into its origins and development, and advancing new interpretations and attributions for individual portraits.