Alessandro della Latta - 'Imprese' as Disguised Portrait of the Prince

The Power of Luxury: Art and Culture at the Italian Courts in Machiavelli’s Lifetime
The Australian Institute of Art History
The University of Melbourne
19 and 20 February, 2013

Session Three - About Principalities and Courts
Wednesday 20 February 9.30 am

Alessandro della Latta
"The Labour of Each Knight in His Device”: Imprese as Disguised Portrait of the Prince

Abstract

The ancient literature on the imprese, from the middle of the XVI century, established the book as their privileged medium. Our perception of these visual images is conditioned by the immaterial monochromy of the engravings which illustrate the treatises. If we turn to investigate the devices before the moment of their theoretical definition, it emerges clearly that they were displayed in very different artistic genres and contexts, and that humanists, poets, artists and courtiers concurred to create their meanings and forms. Focusing on several meaningful examples of these devices as and in works of art, this paper will argue that the different ways these imprese were conceived were as the lord’s disguised portrait and symbolic signature.

Video
Not posted at source

Alessandro Della Latta, currently Studiengast at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and scientific consultant to the SUM Foundation in Milan and Florence. After graduating in Art History at the University in Pisa, he received a PhD at the Istituto di Studi Umanistici in Florence (now Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane - SUM), under the supervision of Peter Cornelius Claussen of the Universität Zürich; he has been a post-doctoral fellow at the Kusthistorisches Institut in Florence, at the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitzt in Berlin, and a lecturer at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence. He collaborates with several Italian and European museums. The interdisciplinary approach of his research, connecting literature, philology and visual arts, has led him to become a member of research projects at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. His published works include studies on Imprese as symbolic portraits and on decorative arts. He is preparing a book on artist's signatures in Florentine Renaissance.

nb. Entry created May 5 2013. Dated to Feb 20 (date of presentation) for indexing purposes