SIGNPOSTS OF INVENTION: ARTISTS' SIGNATURES IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART

Abstract

The opening lines of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy provide the starting point for a consideration of the ways that artists inscribed themselves within their works during the Renaissance. This is a matter both of signatures and of authorial complicity. This article examines how signatures were defined in the period and how they were used in a process of artistic definition. Conventions of inscription are outlined, and four particularly inventive instances (Fra Filippo Lippi, Donatello, Michelangelo and Titian) are considered in greater detail to show how artists' names could be used to direct the viewer's experience of their works and appreciation of their authorship.