I. Humanism and the Glorification of the Self in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century L. M. Sleptzoff has noted that, "The originality of the artists of the fifteenth century was to stress the significance of man as an individual," and that their attitude itself "was influenced by currents of thought that had spread in the previous century: nominalist philosophy, mystical religious tendencies and, in the case of Italy, humanism."3 These currents led to the conflicting trends of exalting the individual physical specificity of the subject, while also seeking to emphasize the general, noble conceptions of man inspired by the reappreciation of classical Roman and pre-Christian thought through simplified, idealized likeness.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the most common pose for Italian portraiture in the first half of the fifteenth century was that of the profile bust. Philip Hendy wrote of A Young Man in a Scarlet Turban, which he attributed to Masaccio, "Painted between 1425 and 1427, this is one of the first of modern portraits ... .It exemplifies both the individualism to which Masaccio gave expression and the growing courage with which secular life was laying hold on the arts."4 The prototype of the monumental profile pose of the subject in antique medallions and coins has long been recognized and was one also adopted by Pisanello in the 1440s. The profile itself, besides its obvious and venerable antique reference, is highly functional in presenting a monumental, noble image of the subject, fundamentally reduced to contour, so that the salient features may be presented, yet emphasis upon the momentary and transient is transcended in a calm, non-confrontative, seemingly eternal pose. The result has been characterized by John PopeHennessy as not so much a realistic image, "but a schematic abstract of reality."5 Due to the wear of the surface in the Gardner painting that conceivably has resulted in the loss in the subtleties of lighting, atmospheric effects and spatial suggestion for which Masaccio's stylistic innovations were so celebrated, the painting's attribution to that master still has its defenders.6 The attribution has, however, been questioned, and in his classic study, The Portrait in the Renaissance, Pope-Hennessy simply defined the work as Florentine, second quarter of the fifteenth century.7 Paolo Uccello has also been suggested as a possible alternate attribution. Similar portrait figures of the profiles of young men wearing brightly colored turbans and set before neutral grounds, generally dated to the 1440s, exist in Washington, D.C., 3 L. M. Sleptzoff, Men or Supermen? The Italian Portrait in the Fifteenth Century, Jerusalem, 1978, p. 1. 4 Philip Hendy, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1974, p. 160. 5 John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance (Bollingen Series XX.XV, 12), New York, 1963, p. 35. 6 Hendy, pp. 160-61. 7 Pope-Hennessy, pp. 35-36, fig. 34.
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