Portrait of Tullia d'Aragona as Salome

A centrally-positioned woman gazes directly at the viewer, her head cocked to the side as she reclines on a stone wall bearing an inscription. This inscription identifies one level of the figure’s identity as the biblical femme fatale Salome: "QVAE SACRV[M IOANIS] CAPVT SALTANDO OBTINVIT," which translates from Latin to “I won John’s head with a sacred dance.” John’s head is not shown here, nor is Salome engaged in dance, her infamous act of seduction. She is in repose, coolly and regally eyeing her audience, richly dressed in lace, fur, and velvet with an elaborate, jeweled coiffure. The scepter lazily held in her hand demonstrates both her power and her confidence in her authority (compare to Judith’s sword).

In the late nineteenth century, Guido Biagi presented this portrait as a faithful likeness of Tullia d’Aragona – a sixteenth-century philosopher, poet, and courtesan – as a type of Muse in the guise of Salome [1]. This portrait has been dated to c. 1537, when d’Aragona was living in Ferrara, where she inspired legendary passion in the literary men at court. In 1547, d’Aragona’s philosophic Dialogue on the Infinity of Love and volume of poetic exchanges were published by the Venetian printing house Giolito. Years earlier, her home in Venice had functioned as literary salon and became the setting for Sperone Speroni’s Dialogue on Love, written in 1537 and published in 1542. D’Aragona’s dialogue responds directly to Speroni’s, as Speroni included Tullia as a character who was unflatteringly associated with irrational, animalistic, carnal love. In her own dialogue, Tullia again appears as a character, but one who controls the conversation and establishes parity between men and women in sensual and intellectual love. If this portrait is indeed of d’Aragona, it alludes to the power of her beauty and sexuality, and her ability to corrupt men. 

The circumstances of this commission are unknown, though it is unlikely that d’Aragona would have chosen to represent herself this way. In her writings, d’Aragona skillfully crafts her persona, and her self-representation consciously creates distance from her occupation as courtesan. While this image projects the image of refinement that d’Aragona strove for, it lacks any allusion to her learning or cultural production, and emphasizes the very aspect of her identity that she struggled to subsume. This image shows her as she might have been viewed by a man who lusted after her, but not as she wished to be perceived.

[1] Guido Biaggi, Un’etera romana: Tullia d’Aragona (con ritratto) (Florence: R. Paggi, 1897), 3-4.

• Biaggi, Guido. Un’etera romana: Tullia d’Aragona (con ritratto). Florence: R. Paggi, 1897.
• d'Aragona, Tullia. Dialogue on the Infinity of Love. Venice: Giolito, 1547.
• Gombosi, György. Moretto da Brescia. Basel: Holbein-Verlag, 1943.
  
  Image Source: Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo