The Abyss Behind the Mask: Ekphrastic Disembodiment and the "Bronzino" of Henry James's The Wings of the Dove (1902)

Abstract: Explicating overlooked art-historical allusions to Vasari and other commentators, this article recontextualises Henry James's ekphrasis of Bronzino's Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (c. 1540) in The Wings of the Dove (1902). James's ekphrastic prose imitates the painterly abstraction of the body characteristic of Bronzino's portraiture, in which faces become masklike, to dwell on dysphoric experiences of dis-embodiment. In placing his incurable heroine Milly Theale in front of the Bronzino in the novel, James intimates how the characteristic deformations of mannerist portraiture can help us accept the vagaries of both interpersonal and embodied existence—our vulnerability to disease, betrayal, and death.