"Poets and Fashion Icons in Early Italy" by Margareta Rosenthal
Margareta looks at 16th c Renai ssance highly fashionable and cultivated women. She focusses on a Titian, of an anonymous noblewoman, which was done as a commission for the Duke of Urbino, who wanted a portrait of a beautiful woman in a blue dress. The model is probably a prostitute, as Titian liked to use prostitutes. However, it does not mean that the portrait is of a prostitute. She has the crescent eyebrows, the alabaster skin, the rounded chin, and the pearl earrings, symbolic of chastity and purity. Her gaze is beyond the viewer, representing "purity" .. The lace border near her bustline shows refinement and elegance, not again, as enticement. The portrait is Prescriptive. Tintoretto did a portrait of "Franco" a famous courtesan in Venice, with her nipple peeking out through her bodice, which is a signal of her status. Tintoretto's son makes a portrait of a woman who uncovers her breast, a gesture tha...