California Italian Studies

The study of all the portraits of Giovanni Pontano and Jacopo Sannazaro aims to enlighten the process of iconographical creation in Naples in the Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth century). These famous humanists, very close to the Aragonese dynasty, used the same patterns but in a different way than the kings. The "right to portrait" at the royal court had precise codifications. The portraits of Pontano and Sannazaro are at the same time inside and outside this frame of codes. That's why their study allows a wider analysis of the question of the portrait in Aragonese Naples, the unique monarchy of the peninsula and great example for the other Italian and European courts.