Ritratti e trattative matrimoniali nel XVI secolo: il caso della dinastia dei Medici

The thesis aims to explore more extensively a possible stream of artistic influences, identifiable in the practice of exchanging marriage portraits among sixteenth-century European courts, an issue only partly investigated by scholars. The importance of these paintings in artistic influences was instead extremely relevant. Commissioned and exchanged on the occasion of marriage proposals, marriage portraits used to travel between the courts as diplomatic gifts, entrusted to the hands of ambassadors and delegates as testified by several letters. In most of the cases, it is exactly the ambassadors’ correspondence that provides scholars with detailed information on portrait commissions and exchanges as is the case of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, sending his portrait by Raphael to his bride-to-be Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne in 1518 or even as clearly shown Belisario Vinta's letters in 1580s. Focusing on the Medici dynasty, the thesis thus analyzes the introduction and the development in Florence of such a kind of paintings throughout the sixteenth century, showing how the use of marriage portraits was mostly related to the coeval affirmation of the Medici family as an international court and, from this point of view, must be considered a relevant result of exchanges with European royal families.