ABSTRACT
In the following pages, the author explores ways in which a particular type of portrait image — the portrait medal — offered more than a genre of self presentation to the Renaissance men and women, in particular, who situated themselves within their cultures by its means. This essay argues that the portrait medal provided a forum wherein its subject might speak through a language of symbols and texts. This visual and literary language was recognizable to both public and private audiences, and was seen and read while the woman was, herself absent. As described here, such portrait images literally created an environment for women humanists through an iconography firmly siting the female subject within the traditionally male humanist paradigm.
