Van Ausdall, Kristen2021-04-022021-04-021980-12https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26137155 pages"Quattrocento Female Portraiture: A Study of Literary, Cultural, and Artistic Relationships," is an analysis of the unique visual nature of female portraiture in fifteenth-century Italy. Although rarely commented on in modern scholarship, depictions of men and women during this period had differing rates of evolution and divergent stylistic characteristics. The distinctions between male and female portraits can be interpreted by investigating not only the early visual precedents, but also the literary ideals of women that pervaded Italian society, the examples of womanly perfection established in Catholic doctrine, and the special social roles that upper-class women fulfilled. The inter action of cultural ideals created a complex feminine image; a conflation of these ideals is revealed in the portraiture. The necessity of an image which conveyed this desirable information about a woman was determined by the transitional character of Quattrocento society.enCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USFifteenth_CenturyportraitureItalyCatholicismFeminine imageThesis / Dissertation