Literature and Painting: A Non-Canonical Case of Intermedial Interaction (with Re­ference to Andrea del Sarto’s Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Petrarch)

Abstract

This article focuses on the issue concerning the interaction between different media, functioning as components of a single work of art. The authors consider a non-canonical case of intermediary relations between literature and painting, more particularly, a case when a phenomenon of verbal culture becomes the subject of a pictorial representation. The material of the research is a picture of the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto Portrait of a Woman with a Volume of Petrarch (1528). It is proved that the image helps clarify the implications of the literary work. The authors conclude that the image of the reader serves as a commentary to the contents of the book depicted, and also helps understand the nature of its perception by contemporaries. This becomes possible as the painting in question is placed against a broad aesthetic background — the context of the presentation of the book and reading in European Renaissance painting. In order to do this, the authors refer to the images of Virgin Mary reading, as well as Leonardo da Vinci’s painting St John the Baptist (1516–1517). This context helps reveal the specificity of Petrarch’s works interpretation by his immediate descendants. This observation, in its turn, contributes to an understanding of Petrarch’s internal conflict associated with the Laura cult. Additionally, within the framework of the intermedial analysis, the authors formulate a common artistic attitude of the late Renaissance to the phenomenon of female reading, different from the general anti-feministic background.