Spectacles of Shame: Examining Visual Narrative Through Bodily Inversion in 14th Century Punitive Portraits of Florentine Renaissance

The Florentine trecento, fourteenth century, was a transitional time rife with struggles such as plague, war, class mobility, and political tension. As a result, secular and non-secular governing bodies sought to take creative measures to enforce social order, going so far as to commission artists to create unflattering paintings of those who had committed treasonous offenses. The emerging trend of legally sanctioned, punishing portraits were called pitture infamanti, or “defaming portraits,” which served to publicly dishonor citizens for their crimes by way of artistic humiliation. A distinct motif that exists within these original portraits is the depiction of bodily inversion. Unfortunately, there are no surviving pitture infamanti from trecento. Therefore, it is necessary to utilize supplementary artwork such as Andrea del Sarto’s sixteenth century sketches, which appear much later in history and are considered incomplete. Methodology of this project includes the application of Karl Whittington’s theory of Visual Pictoriality upon the artwork of relevant artists such as Giotto di Bondone, Lucas Cranach, and Mark Chagall. Michel Foucault’s theory of the socially constructed body enriches discussion of experienced suffering. Interpretations of the evolutionary Hanged Man tarot card, as well as the scaffolding of religious, political framework during trecento are useful in isolating the narratives that are illustrated by the depiction of individuals and their punished bodies. Pitture infamanti reveal simultaneous visual narratives as a result of the infliction of shame through the punishment of forced bodily inversion. These spectacles are complex, layered in meaning, and offer symbolism that references the martyrdom of Saint Peter, harkening back to the Imitatio christi, or Imitation of Christ. Defamation and salvation co-exist within the punitive portraits of pitture infamanti, as their subjects reckon with the paradox of perspective.