Disguised symbolism

Chap. 2. A specific Dutch terminology for portraits historiés did not exist in the 16th and 17th centuries. In inventories of estates one finds descriptions of subjects of the paintings which mention the individuals who figure in them. The element of identification was often neglected and not elaborated further than in terms of ‘as’ or ‘in the guise of’. In contemporary art theory and other writings, the attention was usually drawn to the manner of apparel and other formal characteristics (portrait à l’antique). Partly due to the lack of terminological and artistic differentiation, biblical portraits historiés seem to approximate related image types such as pastoral portraiture, in which individuals are dressed up as shepherds in antique dress. In many cases one could speak of “genre transition”. It was not until the 18th century that the term portrait historié was introduced for allegorical and narrative portraits, in which the person portrayed could play a historical role. In addition, there are many “borderline cases” that partially meet the definition of the portrait type, such as oriental tronies and recognizable models that have been “portrayed” from/after life but are not intended as portraits.

2. De kenmerking van het portret in het portrait historié 43
2.1. Opdrachtsituatie en atelierpraktijk: poseren of model staan 43
2.2. Gezichten naar het leven: portretten, figuurstudies en tronies 46
2.3. Kenmerken van portret en gelijkenis in het portrait historié. 52
2.4. Op sijn antijcks: zeventiende-eeuwse omschrijvingen van portraits historiés 60
2.5. Portretten in ‘fantastick garbs’ door Nederlandse kunstenaars in Engeland 64
2.6. De portretwijze à l’antique en pastoraal portret 69
2.7. Portraits historiés vermeld in Karel van Manders Schilder-Boeck (1604) 75
2.8. De etymologie en betekenis van ‘historier’ en ‘portrait historié’ 79
2.9. Het portrait historié als historiestuk 85

This article considers the generic and temporal heterogeneity of a painting titled Holy Family, made by the Antwerp painter Joos van Cleve around 1515. Hans Belting has used Joos’s hybrid painting, in which a still life appears before the Virgin and Child, to illustrate where ‘the era before art’ ends and the era of art proper begins, placing the genre of religious icon and the genre of still life on opposing sides of the line separating the medieval from the modern world. It is to Belting’s compelling account of the painting that this article responds by asking what is lost in the drawing of such periodizing lines.

The question of disguised meanings, and particularly moralizations, in Titian's painting has been the subject of extremely conflicting opinions. I  approach this problem by examining certain leitmotifs in Titian's paintings that appear to have either a subordinate or an incidental purpose, or else are relegated to the background where they can easily be overlooked. My purpose is to demonstrate that these images serve a key function in the iconography and have been deliberately disguised. While disguised symbolism is a common ploy in Renaissance art, the central importance of animals as a recurrent theme in Titian's work has not been recognized. Animals are portrayed in about twenty-five of his paintings, in the context of mythological, secular and religious themes.