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Portrait of Isabella d'Este (Titian)

Portrait of Isabella d'Este (or Isabella in Black) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian painter Titian that was completed some time between 1534 and 1536. It depicts the Marquess of Mantua, Isabella d'Este, daughter of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Eleanor of Naples with an ermine zibellino draped over her shoulder.

Although Titian depicts Isabella as a young woman, she was around 62 years old at the time of the commission. Isabella was socially ambitious and aware of the effect a painting by a renowned artist might have on her reputation and prestige - she also commissioned portraits by Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea Mantegna, among other notable Renaissance artists. The identity of the female figure in this portrait is not explicitly confirmed to be Isabella, but most art historians agree, due to the extensive scholarship and availability of written accounts, that she is the rightful subject.

Titian, Portrait of Isabella d'Este (Isabella in Black), c. 1534-36, Oil on canvas, 102 cm × 64 cm (40 in × 25 in). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This painting is one of two portraits that Titian painted of Isabella; The first, Isabella in Red (or Aged Isabella) of 1529 is known only through a Peter Paul Rubens copy. It showed a more aged and matronly Isabella, but she was so displeased with the picture that she asked for a second idealised portrait, showing how she thought she looked forty years earlier. Art historian Lionel Cust mentions that Isabella's renown was not due to "beauty, but to intellect and character." Similarly, Fred Kleiner wrote that the work is a "distinctive portrayal of [Titian's] poised and self-assured patron that owes little to its model." Today it is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Before being housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the portrait belonged to the collection of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria who had it engraved in 1656 for his Theatrum Pictorium

Background

During Isabella's lifetime, women of the Italian court were commonly viewed as "cultural possessions" that men acquired in marriage after intense competition and negotiation. When Isabella's parents married, her mother was integral in uplifting the Este family and recasting it with greater prestige, something she did by "occupy[ing] an unusually visible place in the court." It is no surprise that Isabella, like her mother, assumed such a prominent position in the eyes of northern Italian society and was portrayed a number of times in her youth. She was painted by Cosme Tura as a child and on several other occasions around the time of her wedding to Francesco Gonzaga, a period during which she was also honoured by the striking of a commemorative medal. Isabella "disliked sitting for her portrait at any time," but her natural aversion grew even stronger as she aged. Unhappy with her appearance, owing largely to the fact that she was short, becoming stout, and growing older, Isabella often declined artist's requests to paint her. When she allowed or commissioned portraits of herself, Isabella overcame her dislike for her looks, and her subsequent fear of unflattering reproductions, by taking a heavy-handed role in the creative process. She was known for rejecting displeasing portraits of herself or demanding that artists change whatever she found uncomplimentary. On account of such strict oversight, historians have often characterized Isabella as exceedingly vain and manipulative.

Rubens's copy of Titian's 1529 Isabella in Red. Isabella was 55 when the original was painted, but she was unhappy with her matronly appearance and requested Titian paint a second portrait, showing her as a woman in her 20s.

At the time of the Titian portrait, Isabella had already developed strong ideas as to how she should be portrayed. She retained this specific visual language and pictorial program for most of her life. From the 1520s onwards she asked that she be painted from written descriptions - with the rationale that words captured more closely a person's essence than life sittings. This was convenient for Titian, who was highly sought after as a portraitist, disliked travel, and already prided himself on his ability to capture a subject's likeness from written description. Nonetheless, Isabella rejected his first portrait, the now lost Isabella in Red of 1529, feeling it did not flatter, and five years later asked that he paint a second. The complaints registered of the first painting indicate that the last thing sought by the patron was anything approaching a likeness. There was displeasure with the portrayal of her nose, posture, costume, facial expression, and the highlighting of her squint.

For the second portrait, Isabella sought to influence Titian by sending him a 1511 portrait painted by Francesco Francia, which shows her as a young woman and highlights her girlish beauty. Francia's work was, in turn, based on an even earlier portrait by Lorenza Costa (Isabella's favorite image of herself) and supplemented by oral descriptions of Isabella provided by her half-sister, Lucrezia d'Este-Bentivoglio. Francia was given the opportunity to travel to Mantua so that Isabella could sit, but he declined, believing that he would paint better from the original version and verbal explanation. This was agreeable to Isabella, who later exchanged correspondences with Francia and admitted that he had "indeed made [her] far more beautiful by [his] art than nature ever made [her]."

In addition to Francia's portrait and Lucrezia's spoken account, Titian also drew inspiration from the Venetian humanist Gian Giorgio Trissino's written description of Isabella. Trissino's work, titled I Ritratti (The Portraits), was a fictional dialogue with vivid narration of a beautiful woman whom historical and contemporary readers alike have identified as Isabella. Trissino's manuscript continued the tradition of carefully constructing Isabella's image, and many scholars consider it "a direct source for Titian when he undertook [her] portrait in 1534." Thus Titian, like Francia, used a combination of mediums to capture Isabella's essence and interpreted being, more so than he used her actual and physical self. Considered a success in her eyes, Isabella was so pleased with Titian's second depiction that she wrote, "The portrait by Titian's hand is of such a pleasing type that [I] doubt that [I] [was] ever, at the age he represents, of such beauty that is contained in it."

Others were not so impressed by the obvious deceit of the final Isabella in Black. Contemporary writer and satirist Pietro Aretino described the second painting as "dishonestly ugly" and "supremely dishonestly embellished." Art historians examining the work tend to focus on Isabella's vanity, only secondarily acknowledging that court women of the time were on public display and expected to be physically pleasing and personally charming while simultaneously showing signs of modesty and chastity. This was not the first time that Titian had flattered a sitter with a rejuvenated, retrospective, or idealised image; his portrait of Philip II of Spain shows the king, who was puny in life, as a military hero bathed by light to grant both an aura to the hero and an actual halo.

Description

Isabella in Black concentrates on Isabella's high social rank, forceful personality, intelligence, and beauty (according to manufactured second-hand accounts). Isabella was a collector of antique and contemporary art, and as a powerful patron of culture was partially responsible for developing the highly refined court which came to exist at Mantua. Recognized for her "superhuman" stature as a female who directly challenged prescribed social positions and partook in the masculine practice of art patronage and collection, Isabella understood the power of representation and self-image.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c. 1503-19, oil on wood, 77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in) The Louvre Museum. A source of inspiration for Titian's later Portrait of Isabella d'Este.

Moreover, when working on a commission, Titian would have been economically dependent, and thus keen to flatter and pay tribute to his sitter. While Isabella had a particular self-image in mind, Titian also knew exactly how we wanted to convey his patron. Although Isabella is portrayed as a beautiful, much younger woman, the viewer is left in no doubt as to her elevated social status and cultural sophistication. She has a small rounded mouth, large oval eyes, and dark, arched eyebrows. She has pale skin but rosy cheeks, and a dimple at the end of her chin. There is a duality in her facial expression; although she has soft features, her strong and forceful personality is evident, accentuated by the fact that her body is stiff and she sits upright, giving her an air of the imperious.

Scholars have noted similarities between Isabella in Black and Leonardo da Vinci's famed Mona Lisa portrait. In fact, Titian's rendering of Isabella was partially inspired by certain developments in the Mona Lisa. Isabella sits in a chair with her shoulders contorted to face the picture plane, a posture which likely derives from da Vinci's work. Like the subjects in many of Titian's portraits, Isabella is dressed in mostly dark, somber colors that vanish into the equally dark backdrop surrounding her. Yet Titian offsets the overwhelmingly subdued and shadowy color palette by adding contrasting details in white. This skillful use of white, as well as the intricate embroidery on the sleeves of the dress, give vitality to Isabella's otherwise static and impassive figure. Titian deliberately pays great attention to the sleeves of the dress and their careful gold and silver brocade to indicate that the fabric is heavy and, therefore, sumptuous. This artistic maneuver also enlivens Isabella's body and confers it with a greater physicality. The gown is also decorated with velvet over a ribbon-edged guimpe and, in some places, the silk is lined with jewels. Isabella also holds an ermine zibellino. However, while the sheer weight and pronounced materiality of Isabella's dress articulate the marchesa's realistic and immediate presence on the canvas, some experts argue that these details allow the dress to serve as the portrait's subject. Proponents of this theory believe that Titian ultimately describes Isabella's beauty, which contemporaries considered lacking, through a "rendering of her clothing." The garments adorning Isabella are beautiful and thus contribute to notions of Isabella as beautiful.

In addition to the dress, Isabella's red, curly hair is bound in an updo, and she wears a sumptuous balzo headdress. Just like the dress, the hat is embroidered in gold. A brooch consisting of one large sapphire surrounded by several smaller pearls rests in the middle of the hat. "The layering of color involved implies [the hat's] physical heaviness, giving the impression of layers of embroidery and jewels, and of a more substantial weight than that of the head itself." Again, Titian manipulates and aggrandizes clothing "to lend a sense of physicality to a figure who is otherwise unseen in the dark background."

Women in Society

Many social and cultural factors underpin Isabella d'Este's interesting self-figuration. Historians have, all too often, mischaracterized the marchesa and dismissed her as vain. However, Isabella's gender and the emerging court social structure had a great bearing on her patronage, collection, and self-presentation, all of which she navigated with great care and poise. As a highly visible figure of the Mantuan court, Isabella used, and strictly oversaw, portraiture of herself to control how audiences perceived her. "The painted female portrait gave tangible form to the unattainable ideal which court women were compelled to pursue." Isabella cleverly used portraiture as a tool to maintain and elevate her social status. Because of the widely-circulated belief that Isabella was not particularly pretty, Titian's painting played a significant role in capturing and giving physical form to an interpretation of Isabella's character, rather than a reproduction of her appearance. How Renaissance viewers perceived art, and how that perception shaped and concretized images, were significant factors taken into consideration when commissioning artwork. Portraits often sacrificed physical accuracy in favor of essence, attributes, and behavior, which had no material form but were essential to whatever impression the subject wanted to make and, therefore, critical for the audience to understand correctly. Titian is a prime example of an artist who captured the "likeness" of his sitter's aura, but not the "likeness" of their physical being. Titian did this through referencing other portraits, as well as through conversation produced by audiences of the work. This combining of visual and oral modes gave new meaning to portraits and imbued the art with a certain multidimensionality otherwise lost when understood simply as an inactive, unengaged object. Isabella's "social prominence was carefully cultivated via a program of self-promotion nurtured through artistic commission," and her "Chief arena for staging her public persona was through the cultivation of her image in portraits given as gifts and widely circulated among her contemporaries." Isabella was a " shrewd cultural strategist" who believed a successful portrait seamlessly balanced both the sitter's actual appearance and the sitter's idealized self. "Titian's willingness to participate in Isabella's project of self-invention...helped establish, extend and refine the ludic permutations of the game of representation."

Identity of Sitter

For many years, scholars have disputed the true identity of the sitter depicted in the Portrait of Isabella d'Este. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria created an inventory of his private collection in 1659 and described the painting as a portrait of the Queen of Cyprus. Titian experts Leandro Ozzola and Wilhelm Suida deny Wilhelm's identification. Instead, Ozzola asserts that the figure is, in fact, Isabella d'Este, and he points to the cajoling idealisation so common throughout Isabella's imagery, as well as the many similarities the work shares with other portraits of the marchesa (i.e. 'Ambras Miniature', KHM Vienna), as evidence that Titian's figure is undoubtably Isabella d'Este.

Portraits of Isabella d'Este showing certain variation as well as certain uniformity in her image over time

Rona Goffey identifies Isabella based on the sleeve knots of her gown, which contain a pattern the marchesa was known to commission often. Other identifying features include the characteristic plunging neckline and elaborate headdress. However, the related 1531 portrait by Giulio Romano, long presumed to be another painting of Isabella d'Este (now in the Royal Collection, London), has been re-identified as Margaret Paleologa in recent years. The light-gray eyes of Romano's female figure contrast to other portraits of Isabella in which her eyes appear brown. The re-identification of Romano's sitter points to a larger art historical phenomenon in which experts and audiences alike mislabel artists and subjects with great certitude, only to later realize their wrongdoing. While overwhelming evidence points to Isabella d'Este as the subject of Titian's Isabella in Black, certain art historians have challenged this conviction throughout history.

Romano's 1531 portrait (far right) changed identification from Isabella d'Este to her daughter-in-law, Margherita Paleologa