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| Fra Bartolomeo Adoration of the Christ Child (detail) 1499 tempera on panel Galleria Borghese, Rome |
Italian painting of the 15th century stood between the old courtly culture of European tradition – expecting "rich ornament" and "idealized figures" – and a novel, avant-garde fashion for depicting "the visible world" of ephemeral appearance. But, as Stephen J. Campbell and Michael W. Cole write in A New History of Italian Renaissance Art, "It is not easy to imagine what naturalism looked like in a pre-photographic world, what its hallmarks were, what qualities might have competed to earn that label."
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| Filippino Lippi Disputation (detail) 1481-82 fresco Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence |
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| Piero di Cosimo Simonetta Vespucci as Cleopatra ca. 1480 oil on panel Musée Condé, Chantilly |
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| Sandro Botticelli Madonna of the Magnificat (detail) 1480-81 tempera on panel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
The authors maintain that the majority of portraits painted before 1450 presented sitters in profile, still conforming to the convention established by portraits of the ancients on coins and medals. Between 1450 and 1500, the sitter began to turn toward the viewer, responding to the new technological potential of oil paint. During the next century the profile portrait would become the exception rather than the rule.
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| Domenico Ghirlandaio Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni 1488 tempera on panel Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Fra Carnevale Portrait of a man 1460s tempera on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Paolo Uccello Portrait of a woman 1460s tempera on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Baldassare d'Este Portrait of a Young Man ca. 1475 oil on panel Museo Correr, Venice |
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| Piero del Pollaiuolo Portrait of a woman ca. 1475 tempera on panel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Leonardo da Vinci La Belle Ferronière ca. 1490 oil on panel Louvre |
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| Antonello da Messino Il Condottiere 1475 canvas Louvre |
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| Andrea Mantegna Portrait of Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan 1459-60 tempera on panel Staatliche Museen, Berlin |
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| Cosimo Rosselli Portrait of a Man ca. 1485 tempera on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Pietro Perugino Portrait of Francesco delle Opere 1494 tempera on panel Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |