TY - JOUR TI - Beloved rivals DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3862DSP PY - 2014 AB - This dissertation focuses on a genre of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century painted portraits and accompanying sonnets inspired by Francesco Petrarch's fourteenth-century book of love sonnets called Il Canzoniere. Petrarch's poetic description of his beloved Laura and his commemoration of a portrait he commissioned of her from Simone Martini inspired the Renaissance tradition of commissioning portraits of a female beloved and writing Petrarchan poems in honor of both the sitter and the painter. I present evidence that these Beloved Portraits were commissioned and produced by a small elite circle of artists, patrons, and poets beginning with Lorenzo de' Medici. Central to the tradition was a spirit of rivalry and competition between one another, Petrarch, Simone Martini, classical examples, and the paragone of the arts. I also provide an in-depth analysis of the relationship between specific portraits and contemporary illuminated manuscripts of Petrarch's Canzoniere and identify never before recognized visual and iconographic similarities found in both mediums. Furthermore, I consider regional variations in Florence, Venice, Milan, and Rome and I introduce a new category of Petrarchan portraits reflective of changing interpretations of Petrarch in the Counter-Reformation. KW - Art History KW - Paragone (Aesthetics) KW - Portraits, Renaissance KW - Portraits, Italian LA - eng ER -