ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the language of the portrait and that of the sonnet are perceived by the Petrarchan poets as answering a common aesthetic code. Their affinity was reinforced by the fact that Renaissance painters were actually inspired by the vernacular poetic tradition in their representation of feminine beauty, and could only exist, as Elizabeth Cropper maintains, "in a situation where the concept of one, perfect ideal was upheld". Elizabethan poets actively perceived and reflected upon the established association between painting and poetry. Both an artistic expression and a fashionable jewel, a love token and a political instrument, the miniature was the objective and visual counterpart of the Petrarchan sonnet, and as such, literarily as well as artistically linked to the Italian tradition. In her essay on Shakespeare and the fine arts, Margaret Farrand Thorp wrote that, with a few exceptions, Shakespeare's pictures are "merely convenient pieces of dramatic furniture.
