Poems, portraits, and paper: Raphael's sonnets and the fabric of friendship

In this essay, I argue that Raphael's double portrait of Agostino Beazzano and Andrea Navagero formed the painter's fullest response-made in purely pictorial terms-to Renaissance prosody as it was then being developed by his friends, especially the portraits' sitters and Pietro Bembo....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWord & image (London. 1985) Vol. 40; no. 3; pp. 117 - 135
Main Author Pon, Lisa
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 02.07.2024
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Bembo, Pietro (1470-1547)
Ekphrasis
Friendship
Literary theory
Painters
Pietro Bembo
Poetry
Portraits
portraiture
Raphael
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483-1520)
Renaissance period
Renaissance prosody
Sonnets
Stanza della Segnatura
Visualization
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Summary:In this essay, I argue that Raphael's double portrait of Agostino Beazzano and Andrea Navagero formed the painter's fullest response-made in purely pictorial terms-to Renaissance prosody as it was then being developed by his friends, especially the portraits' sitters and Pietro Bembo. The drafts of Raphael's own sonnets on drawings made while he was painting the Stanza della Segnatura are visualizations of the intellectual labor his poetic compositions entailed. A close looking at their placement across the paper on these "ekphrastic sheets" (to use Francesco Di Teodoro's term) as well as changes in the sonnets' texts offer tools for understanding the double portrait of Raphael's poet-friends. Raphael's often dismissed efforts at poetry made on these study drawings thus blossomed half a decade later in the contribution to Renaissance literary theory he made as a painter.
ISSN:0266-6286
1943-2178
DOI:10.1080/02666286.2024.2350734