Women, Art and Society 2nd edition

Around 1536 Titian painted La Bella, an anonymous aristocratic lady “who looks out of the frame with candid gaze, the curves of her flesh visible under the rich brocade of her bodice”. According to Whitney Chadwick this was the earliest “well‐documented case of a portrait sold as a work of art rather than a description of a specific person”. Titian was working under the influence of Neoplatonist doctrine: the Italian philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433‐99) thought that “physical beauty excites the soul to the contemplation of spiritual or divine beauty”.

Professor Chadwick discusses La Bella in an early chapter here entitled...